Some excellent book marketing advice today...Marketing that entices prospective buyers by forming an author-reader bond is highly effective marketing and the kind you want to employ...Now, how do you do that?

Phyllis Zimbler Miller has written on this subject for Wordpreneur and included some good links:

In order for readers to spend their money on a novel, they must have the desire to spend time (plus their money) in the world that you the author have created.

To encourage readers to want to do this, you should provide information that helps them enter into your world.

One way to do this is to provide the first chapters for free on your website so that prospective readers can get a good feel for the story and characters. You can do this with PDF downloads or audio or video recordings or all three methods.

And you can encourage book groups to choose your book by providing book club discussion questions off your website.

If you have other information related to your book that you can share on your website, do so. For example, if your novel is connected to a historical event, you can include photos or videos or commentary about that actual event.

Or let’s say you wrote a novel about a woman fighting breast cancer. You could include on your website names and contact information for organizations that help breast cancer patients. By sharing such information with your prospective readers you’re creating a bond between you and them.

Of course, there is the basic question of do you need a website at all? Couldn’t you put your book club discussion questions and sample chapters on book author websites and forget about having your own website?

Yes, you could. But you’d be foolish to pass up the opportunity to have a destination URL for you and your books.

On the other hand, there is an alternative to having a website designed for you. You could do what many people are doing now — using WordPress blog software to create a website. This is usually less expensive and easier than having a programmer design a website, and you have the added advantage of more easily changing content.

With your own website featuring sample chapters, helpful information and book club discussion questions, you will be providing prospective readers with a number of reasons to say yes to reading your book.

With her daughter, author Phyllis Zimbler Miller publishes the Queens of Book Marketingsite where you can get free book marketing tips. Visit her novel’s site, Mrs. Lieutenant, for examples of book discussion questions.