Top 10 cool, free book marketing resources

Are you looking for free resources for book marketing and promotion? Check out this list of the top cool (and free!) resources authors are using to promote and market their books. Use them to boost your book marketing in ways that help you sell more books!

They’re listed in alphabetical order, not in order of preference. 

1. bitly

bitly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). When you use it to shorten the URLs you include in your tweets (I linked my TweetDeck and bit.ly accounts so this happens automatically), you’ll be able to see how many people re-tweet your links. This helps you fine-tune your social networking because you’ll see what interests people – and what doesn’t – so you can make adjustments accordingly. bitly even tells you who else tweeted the same link – which helps you find other people with similar interests to follow. And, you can see if people clicked through on your link from Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else you’ve shared it.

 2. Blog Grader

Use Blog Grader from HubSpot when looking at sites to visit for your virtual book tour. Enter the blog URL to learn how it ranks in the Blog Grader system, including its estimated traffic rank. You can use this resource to get tips on how to improve your own site, too. 

3. Book Grader

Enter your book’s title in the Book Grader search engine to get your Amazon ranking and a list of books that refer to yours. When you’re working on your book proposal, enter the title of a competitive book and discover what other titles Amazon suggests for your topic. Tip: When your book title comes up in the grid, click on it, then scroll down on the page to find the “suggested list” and “referring list.”

4. EdCals

This cool online tool from Cision lets you search its editorial calendar database covering nearly a half million publications at no charge. You’ll have to provide your name and address to get access to the results, which means you’ll be added to the company’s mailing list, but that’s a small price to pay for this powerful and helpful tool. (I’ll send you my recent newsletter article on how to use editorial calendars to get book publicity if you comment here with your e-mail address or send me a note to sb@buildbookbuzz.com. )

5. Find Journalists on Twitter

Journalists use Twitter and other social networking sites and services to find resources for stories and segments. Once you’ve identified the media outlets that are important to your book publicity campaign’s success, look for journalists representing your target outlets on Twitter using these and other resources:

• JustTweetIt
• JournalistTweets
• Muck Rack

6. HARO

Publicist Peter Shankman’s free “Help a Reporter Out” service gets good reviews from journalists and sources alike. Here’s how it works: Journalists use an online form to post a query for sources – expert or otherwise. Shankman sends the inquiries via e-mail to more than 80,000 subscribers three times a day. Subscribers contact journalists directly when they can help.

7. RadioGuestList.com

We know that radio interviews help sell books, but one of the challenges with booking these interviews is creating a list of stations to contact. This helpful no-charge service uses e-mail to help connect talk show hosts and producers with authors and other types of experts.  

8. Radio Locator

Compile your own radio station media list by typing zip codes into the site’s search engine and following the links. It’s great if you’re looking to develop a local or regional list, but you don’t want to use it for a national mass mailing. The site has links to more than 10,000 radio station Web sites and 2,500 audio streams.

9. Site Explorer

This site also helps you determine which blogs and other sites to target with your virtual book tour. Learn how many sites link back to the site you’re checking out (the more the sites linking to it, the more popular it is) with this Yahoo tool (requires a free Yahoo account). Type in the URL at the top, select “explore URL,” and then select “Inlinks” in the small tab at the top of the list of Web pages. In the tab next to “Inlinks,” select “Entire site.”

10. YouSendIt

If you’ve ever tried to e-mail your book trailer to a friend to critique before you post it on a site for the world to see, you undertand the need for YouSendIt. This site lets you e-mail large files (audio, video, photos, book manuscripts with lots of graphics) quickly, easily, and efficiently. It’s a “can’t live without it” resource for me. 

What other free book marketing tools do you use, like, and recommend, and how do you use them?