There are many resources that you can use when it comes to advertising a book. I like to take the passive marketing approach, joining in with discussions posted on communities and groups such as Kindle Boards (KB) and Goodreads and getting clicks from signatures, rather than aggressively posting about my work. KB really is a must if you’re a self published author, and you’ll find all manner of help in the Writer’s Cafe forum. Meanwhile, I am slowly getting to grips with Goodreads, and after my post the other day, I’ve noted that Inside Evil is now on several people’s ‘to be read’ lists. I haven’t actively advertised at all. I’ve simply engaged with readers and writers in the forum and they’ve decided to add my book.
I’ve been looking for a way to offer a limited number of freebies of late because, of course, getting people to read your book must be your main aim. Having opted out of KDP Select, there’s no way I can offer freebies of my book on Amazon other than changing the actual book price to zero. However, someone on KB talked about Library Thing and the opportunity for no-cost free promotions and so I decided to get involved.
I’d taken a look at Library Thing once before, when I initially published and was looking for advertising options. However, I hadn’t realised that they offered a wonderful give-away option. It’s superbly easy to navigate and as long as you’re not offering your title for free anywhere else, you can sign up a certain number of copies to be offered to members. I’ve set a one month deadline and 50 copies, and on June 5th, Library Thing will email me a list of people who have requested my free book in turn for a review, along with their email address so that I can send out the correct files.
I only set this up a few hours ago, and I already have one request, so it seems like it could be a great way to get a book out there, especially if you’re a new writer. I can only speculate as to whether reviews will come out of this promotion, but I think Library Thing could be a good resource for building fans and spreading the word.
Geoff Wakeling 
Geoff, I am interested in this. Marketing is still quite a mystery to me! I have a couple of questions and I hope they are not too naive:-
After your kdp select experience you have now decided to come out – why is it not as effective to simply set your book to zero on amazon? Your blurb looks great! I can’t see how to use bold/italics etc
I have one book on amazon ‘The Palaver Tree’ and like you am working on the second
Thanks -by the way, I like your new cover!
Hi Wendy, thanks for stopping by and I love the new cover too!
I actually never went into KDP Select. I only first published in March, and noted a lot of the forum comments about the pros and cons. Thus, I decided to opt out of Select and instead make use of Smashwords and MYO etc to get my book on as many channels as possible. However, that did lead me to the difficulties of finding places to offer freebies other than my website. Yes, a website giveaway is great, but like a book, it takes time to grow a following. The LibraryThing members giveaway MAY be a gem. I’ll send out on June 5th, so I’m excited to see what happens.
Took me a while to work out the bold and italics too. You can’t do them through your Kindle bookshelf. Instead, go to your .com and .co.uk Author pages, navigate to your book page and you can edit the description there. That allows for lots of lovely html so that you can customise. 🙂
I do think that one way of selling more is to write more, so we both best finish our second novels!!