How to Promote Your Book Online for Free

If you've published a book, either through a traditional publisher or by self-publishing, you will need to promote it yourself if you want to see more sales. While a traditional publisher will do some of the promotions for you, you will still want to do whatever you can to promote it on your own. When you self-publish, you will almost always have to do all of the promoting yourself.

There are plenty of tried and true methods for advertising your book, be it book signings, paid advertisements in magazines, newspaper reviews or a hundred other methods that have been used by writers over the years.

The Internet, however, provides easy as well as free methods to promoting your book. Here are some of the best methods for free online book promotion and advertising.

First of all, you will need a website of your own. These days it it easy to make a free website. Just do a search for "free web hosting" and research the best place to host your site. Your website should be the main focus for selling your book. Include excerpts from your book. A free chapter or two for potential buyers to read will go a long way in getting more sales. Sell the book directly from your site, or make it easy to link to Amazon or wherever your book is for sale.

A personal blog is a good idea as well, and a link to your blog can be included on your website. You can create a free blog through any number of free blogging sites like Blogger or Wordpress. Make a writing themed blog, with a personal slant. Talk about the daily life af a writer, give writing advice to blooming writers, talk about your publishing experiences.

Post interesting comments in other writers' blogs, leaving a link back to your book's website or your own blog. Don't spam, though. Make sure your comments are relevant.

You can also post in forums, especially writer's forums. Find forums where you can have links in your signature. Make friends, be interesting, but don't try to sell your book in the forum. Just be yourself. If people like you, they will likely visit your site or blog through your links.

Social networking sites are also good free places to use for promoting your book. Myspace, Yuwie, Facebook and other social networking sites are all free to use, so use them to your advantage. Be careful to read the terms of use on each site, as some sites won't let you link to commercial sites, but you will probably at least be able to link to your writing blog.

There are tons of free ways you can promote your book online for free. The idea is to get your website advertising your book out there in front of as many people as possible. The more links you have, the more people can find your site, and buy your book. Use as many different forums and social networking sites as you can, with all your links leading back to your website.