Okay, so my eBook, Any Tomorrow: The Calling, is out there, published, available at Amazon, Smashwords, and Diesel, soon to be at Barnes and Noble, Apple iBookstore, Sony, and Kobo.  My eBook is out there floating around in the ether with thousands of other eBooks.  It’s out there, but how do I get anyone to notice?

Unfortunately, unlike the paper book self-publisher, I can’t exactly set up a table in front of my local bookstore and hawk my book.  I can’t say, “I see you’ve bought my eBook, would you like me to autograph it?”  That would be a bit awkward.  Perhaps I could autograph a CD with the file on it, but otherwise it’s hard to autograph a digital file.

The digital version of the table in front of the bookstore is social media, trying to get posts out to groups, boards, and blogs.  I’ve already joined groups in Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Gather.  Trying to keep up with them alone is a fulltime job, but to get the word out I not only need more social media, but somehow need to figure out which groups in the various social media have the potential for being beneficial.  For instance, I joined one group in the Amazon user community, but soon discovered that the discussions were limited to zombies and sparkling vampires.  So not good.

Towards the end of getting into more social media, I ran across a list of the Top 15 Social Networking Websites here.  I’m on two of the top 15, only 13 more to go.  And if I add say Twitter and others to my social network, how on earth do I keep track of them all.  More specifically, how do I keep track of any discussions or postings that might be of interest to me?

To paraphrase an ad, there may be an app for that. Dreamgrow.com has compiled a list of 48 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools here.  So now I’ve got to decide on tools to help me monitor my multiple social media.  But which one?

As if that wasn’t enough, there is always the possibility that there are distribution outlets I have missed.  A quick Google search revealed that bookmarket.com has a fairly comprehensive list of eBook publishers and distributors here.  The tough part about signing on with additional distributors is that every time I need to make a revision to the published file, I’ll have to make sure all the various distributors have the same version.  That could be a nightmare.

I don’t know about you, but the marketing has me a bit overwhelmed.  I know that once I get the kinks worked out the whole marketing thing will take on an air of normalcy.  I’m just not there yet.

If you are published, I’d like to know what’s worked for you.  Do you focus on social media?  Do you use a social media monitoring tool?  Have you used other distributors besides Amazon or Smashwords?

If you’ve found something that works, why not leave a comment by clicking the Leave a comment link.  Thanks.
© Copyright 2011 by Kevin Fraleigh.