Go to Amazon.com. At the bottom of the page, click on the link to "Become an Affiliate" under the tab marked "Make money with us" (they really pull you in). Or, you can click the link below.  In order to sign up, click on the big blue "Join for Free" button. You will then be directed to enter your payee information (name, mailing address, and phone number) in order to get paid in the future via check. Next, you can create your website profile. For this you will need the name of your website, the website URL, and a brief description of your website. You can choose primary and secondary topic tags which best describe your website, how you drive traffic to your website, how you build links, etc. After you agree to the terms and conditions, you can begin using Associates Central via a step-by-step process.  Remember, if someone clicks a link for something on your website--say, goes and looks at your book, but then buys something else while they are there, you get paid for that purchase, too.  So don't pass up these "mad money" opportunity!

Navigate to authorcentral.amazon.com and click on "Join Now" on the right side of the page. Provide your e-mail address and a password, which will be the same password you use for your amazon.com consumer account if you already have one. If not, you can create a new password. Click on "create an account," agree to the terms, and then you will be guided through an easy step-by-step process to confirm that you are, in fact, you, the soon-to-be-famous author.

Please note, if you are a previously unpublished author, you may need to navigate to your book's Amazon page, and "claim your book," but usually, you can set up your Author Central page and then add your book from there.  You can do a lot of things to promote your book on your Author Central page--import your blog articles automatically, and your tweets--so don't overlook this important part of marketing your book. 

Straight from the horse's mouth, HootSuite and TweetDeck are "a personal real-time browser, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more." You can download either system to your desktop, iphone, android, or Chrome. Essentially it's a dashboard service that arranges all of your social networking accounts into neatly organized columns, enabling you to connect and navigate among all of them simultaneously. Go to tweetdeck.com, or hootsuite.com, choose which option you'd like to download the service to, at the top of the page (computer or mobile phone), then click on the "Download" button provided and follow the step-by-step instructions to piece your virtual media life together. (Please see above instructions on how to sign up for any of the aforementioned networks).  (Note from Hitch:  Personally, I use Seesmic, which I like.  For power-tweeters, there are other tools like TweetAdder.  However, you should try them all--most have free trials--and see which suits you best).   

Here are some articles, comparing different social-networking management tools:

1. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-social-media-management-tools/
2. http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/09/22-social-media-marketing-management-tools/ (from 2010, but still a good list)
3. http://www.socialmediadelivered.com/2012/05/18/top-20-social-media-management-tools/ --this is a must-read.

Hope you find these useful!  The link below is for Seesmic, which is affordable.  Not all social networking tools are; but make sure you search until you find the right one for you--which means, the one you'll use. 

Bitly is an online engine that shortens, shares, and tracks your links. Shortened links are helpful because they enable you to post direct links to Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, instant messaging, and websites, without taking up the annoyingly large amount of space most complete link codes require. Shortened links are particularly helpful in services like Twitter, which restrict your posts' character counts.

To create a shortened vanity url, simply go to bitly.com, copy and paste the link you'd like to shorten in the empty box provided in the middle of the page, and click on the "shorten" box to... shorten.

To track and analyze links regularly, you can sign up for bitly by clicking on the blue "Sign up" box at the bottom of the homepage. To sign up, you will be asked to provide a username, e-mail address, and a password, then click on "Sign up."  Once you are logged in, you can choose to connect your bitly account to your Twitter and Facebook accounts in order to shorten and share links directly.

Type www.twitter.com into your browser. On the right hand side of the homepage, you will be invited to join Twitter as a newbie.

You will need to provide is a full name (this will be your user name!), a functioning e-mail address, and a new password for your account.

After you login, Twitter takes you through an easy-to-use step-by-step process to get your account up and running. It enables you to follow existing users you likely know (presumably via your e-mail address), list your personal and business interests, find friends via email address, and begin tweeting.

An omnipresent right hand sidebar also enables you to easily connect your new Twitter account to your mobile phone (you can download a Twitter application and/or set up mobile notifications to be sent directly to your phone), and to connect your account to existing accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail. 

For more detailed information, and step-by-step tips on Tweeting, please see our article on "How To Use Twitter, Really," in the News/Articles Section of our website.  http://www.booknook.biz/bk_news/post/how_to_use_twitter

I think it's safe to say if you don't already have a personal Facebook account, you haven't yet joined in on the party that is the 21st Century. In the event you don't have an account, setting one up is just as easy as setting up a Twitter account.

Type facebook.com into your browser, and after providing a first and last name, e-mail address, password, gender, and birthdate, you're signed up! After you've logged in (and, if you wish, provided varying degrees of unnecessary personal information), you will be directed to your homepage. If at any time you feel lost and forlorn, you can click on "Home" on your upper right hand corner to get back.

To set up a Facebook page, move your pointer over to the left hand sidebar, and click on the link to "More," located just below "Games" and "Apps" at the bottom. From here you can click on the "Pages" tab.

A box on the upper right hand corner of this page will enable you to "Create a page." To create a page for your book, click on the "Entertainment" box and choose "Book" from the drop down menu. To create a page for your website, click on the "Brand or Product" box and choose "Website" in the drop down menu. You can also create a page for a business, company organization or institution, artist or public figure, or cause or community. From here, Facebook will guide you step-by-step through creating a page for your product.  Get rocking!

Go to www.youtube.com. At the top of the page, click on the link to "Create an Account." To get started, you will need to provide an e-mail address, username, postal code, date of birth, gender, and then accept terms of use. Choose a new password for your account.

After you confirm your account via your e-mail address, you will be able to browse videos, view movies, and upload your own videos and book trailers. In case you lose track of it, the "Upload" link is always in the upper right hand corner of the YouTube page when logged in.  By setting this up, you "create" a "channel" that is strictly yours.  You can, if you wish, create a channel just for your book--or one for each book, if you have promotional videos that you want people to see for each book.  Videos are powerful marketing tools, although the jury still seems to be out on whether or not they are very helpful in marketing books.  If you write "how-to" or instructional books, however, short videos demonstrating some of the techniques in your book, or promotional videos describing what a prospective reader may learn in your book, can be invaluable. 

We've recently created a Handbook for use by our new customers.  You can download it below, where you see the red link that says "Download BooknookBiz Handbook.pdf."   Please note:  this is not a "how to make your own ebook" handbook. 

The Handbook comes in PDF format, and is easy to download and use.  It's not a "how-to" guide so much as a guide to what ebooks are; what they look like; what they can and can't do, and what you can expect your book to look like, and how it will function.  The Handbook is not meant to be read, front-to-back, like a novel, but is intended as more of a reference book.  Each section (Roman Numerals) speaks to a different aspect of ebooks and self-publishing.  If you click the "Bookmarks" icon on your PDF reader, it will open and display a fully-interactive, tree-style Table of Contents on the left-hand side, which will give you ease of navigation, and is fully searchable.  You can download the Handbook from our server by clicking the filename, at the bottom of the article. 

Please be patient when you download it--it's a 5.5MB file, with a lot of helpful images and screenshots.  Thanks!  We hope you find it useful, no matter what company you choose to do your conversion. 

So you’ve sold your novel.

Congratulations. Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for the reviews and royalties to come rolling in, right? Not exactly. The process of promoting your own work should begin before the ink is dry on your contracts. I’m not going to talk about including promotional language in the contract with your publisher. It doesn’t matter if you’re publishing your first novel or bringing an entire series out in e-book format.

So how do you make a splash when over 100,000 new books are published each year? How do you stand out when they are all vying for attention? Jeffrey Marks, the author of Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel, and the long time moderator of the Yahoo Group, Murder Must Advertise, can help. The book is in its fourth edition (courtesy of Booknook) and is the only book that helps genre authors (mystery, science fiction, romance and Westerns) find the keys they need to make their name stand out. Marks is internationally known as a marketer and has led seminars across the globe. His own works have been nominated for every major mystery award and has won the Anthony.

First of course, you can purchase his book, Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel, as an e-book for $5.99 or a paperback at $12.99 using the following links:

Kindle e-book: Click Here to Buy Me

Paperback edition: Click Here to Buy Me

If you’re hoping for more personalized services, Marks offers an e-mail course. The course consists of six lessons, which help you walk through the steps of creating the exact promotional items that a publicist would charge thousands for. He’ll read and critique the marketing materials that you create and suggest the best way to brand yourself as an author. He’ll look at the content on your website as well. The class runs six weeks, and each class only contains 6-10 students. You can share ideas with the other authors in the class or work 1-on-1 with the instructor. The six week course is just $75, well inside the budget of most authors.

Finally, if you’re hoping for more individual services on social media and marketing your book, Marks offers a series of video courses on how to harness the power of social networking sites to sell more books. There will be a series of 5 20-30 minute videos and 1 30 minute Skype session on how to create an on-line presence that allows you to sell books more easily. This package is only $149.99 and includes a copy of Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel.

Some additional resources:

MurderMustAdvertise– the site has articles by authors on techniques that work

The MMA Blog– more techniques by authors.

The Crime Fiction Group on LinkedIn

About Jeffrey Marks:

Jeffrey Marks was born in Georgetown, Ohio, the boyhood home of Ulysses S. Grant. Although he moved with his family at an early age, the family frequently told stories about Grant and the people of the small farming community.

At the age of twelve, he was introduced to the works of Agatha Christie via her short story collection, The Underdog and Other Stories. He finished all her books by the age of sixteen and had begun to collect mystery first editions.

After stints on the high school and college newspapers, he began to freelance. After numerous author profiles, he chose to chronicle the short but full life of mystery writer Craig Rice.

That biography (which came out in April 2001 as Who Was That Lady?) encouraged him to write mystery fiction. The Ambush of My Name is the first mystery novel by Marks to be published although he has several mystery short story anthologies on the market. He followed up with Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s/1950s and Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography.

His work has won a number of awards including the an Anthony in 2009 for his Anthony Boucher biography, Barnes and Noble Prize, and he has been nominated for an Edgar (MWA), an Agatha (Malice Domestic), a Maxwell award (DWAA), and an Anthony award (Bouchercon). Today, he writes from his home in Cincinnati, which he shares with his dogs. Visit Jeff's website at: www.jeffreymarks.com/

Jeff and his course (and, naturally, his novels!) are endorsed and recommend by: Booknook.biz