I have written four novels. Two, thankfully, are in the bin. One is published and the fourth is currently being edited ready for publication.

I have done quite a lot of work trying to promote the book and its website on the internet. Let's face it, a print on demand title is not going to be in bookshops, so amazon and other internet retailers is where people are going to find it. So the internet must be the number one priority for promoting a book like mine.

On this and the following pages I have published a guide based on what I have done. Please feel free to use the material - and please do let me know if I am naive, wrong, inaccurate or ineffective. I want to learn! I hope that something is useful to you. The introduction is below. Please use the links on the left to access the other pages. The topics should be read sequentially from top to bottom, starting with Your own website.

Promoting your work on the internet

Philip Spires, author of Mission, published by Libros International

This document is intended to offer guidance on how you can use the internet to promote your book. It is not a complete list of all the options available, but it does suggest a series of activities which will get you published on the internet and increase the visibility of your website. Since it is not comprehensive, please do send me your own suggestions so that I can include them and expand the coverage of the document.

I have included information in several sections and these can be regarded as sequential, in that it makes sense to address them and complete them in the order that they are presented. In each case, I have indicated roughly when each activity might be addressed. There’s a lot to do before the book is published, since it takes about three months for an existing website to be comprehensively indexed by search engines. The first four sections, therefore, need to be completed three months before the publication date! These activities, therefore, would be ideal tasks do while the book is being edited. Your priority, of course, is to respond to the editor’s requests, but you can be doing the rest in the meantime.

I have indicated at the start of each section roughly how long it might take. Please do not regard these sections as in any way representing equal amounts of time or work.

What I have not done, except in a few areas where I have included examples, is try to recommend particular websites, hosting packages, directories, etc. In most cases I have indicated how to search for such resources, but I will leave it to you, the author, to choose which particular sites and resources to use. Clearly, books from different genres need slightly different approaches and different focuses for their promotion, so the detail will always be your own choice. In certain cases the resources are so important and so general that I have referred to particular products, such as Web CEO