Wheatmark Author Climbing the Charts at Amazon.com

On Wednesday, November 26, 2008, Jim Best's book, The Shopkeeper, rose all the way to #2464 on the Amazon sales rank. This is 2,464 out of 5,000,000 and it puts his book in the top 0.0005% of all titles available. What's more interesting is that he's done it all without putting money into marketing. He's put plenty of time in, certainly, but since publishing with Wheatmark, Jim has utilized his Amazon page as his greatest marketing tool. He has 18 five-star reviews. He has a blog on Amazon. He's also published a second book with Wheatmark, The Shut Mouth Society, which ranks at #15,953.

In fact, if you went to Amazon and typed in Western, in the book department, The Shopkeeper would come in at #3, right behind Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian at #2.

An independent fiction author can compete.

How Blogging Benefits Your Book Marketing Campaign

Here at Wheatmark, we often encourage our authors to use blogging as a great way to reach readers and garner visibility for their books. Blogging can benefit authors in a multitude of ways.

Blogging during the writing process (before publication) can be a wonderful way to find support for your writing among those who share an interest in the subject of your book. By blogging about your book before you have completed your book, you can increase awareness of your writing, and even receive valuable feedback that you can incorporate into your final book.

By blogging after the publication of your book you can inform readers of any marketing activities and events you have going on, and can encourage readers to post reviews of your book on their own blogs or in other online locations. A resourceful author might include blog posts on material that didn’t make it into the final edition of your book, and post on any ideas for forthcoming publications.

For inspiration on getting started on your own blog, check out these popular author blogs, care of the Internet Writing Journal.

More Online Book Marketing Help for Authors

Hey all you authors in search of marketing help -- there's more free and valuable stuff for you. Hopefully you have already downloaded Wheatmark's free Marketecture Workbook and found it helpful (give us some feedback - we're here to please!).

Well, if you liked that you'll be happy to hear (via the fabulous Mr. Joe Wikert) about the free downloadable PDF that Penguin Group USA has made available to all authors. It's called Internet Advice for Authors: Getting Started, Getting Online, and Getting Noticed and we're told it's a great guide for authors in need of online marketing know-how. Kudos to Penguin for sharing the love!

Now you authors have plenty to do! Happy book marketing to you and have a great weekend!