There are a lot of creative ways you can promote fiction at your website. You do have a website for your novel, don’t you? Here’s what I suggest:
• Have an attractive, appealing cover designed for your book so it looks good at your site and when you have it displayed at book festivals and so forth.
• Position the book front and center and make it clear that the book (or your series of books) is the focus of your website and that it is for sale.
• Set up a merchant account so you can make sales or at least a paypal account and an address where folks can mail checks.
• Make it easy for folks to contact you. You may notice that it is impossible or near impossible to locate a contact button at some websites. Never allow your potential customers to struggle in order to make a purchase or reach you with a question or concern. They may want to place a large order.
• Offer something for free to draw people to your site. For fiction, this might be trivia with regard to the theme of your book—the wild west, WWII, the 1950s, old movie stars, New Orleans jazz, gangsters, New York City, dog shows, horse racing, etc.
• Provide a trailer—a video commercial or preview representing the story.
• List resources pertaining to the theme of your novel or fiction-writing in order to attract a larger number of visitors.
• Keep adding or changing things at your site. One way to do this is to manage an active blog related to writing fiction or the theme of your book. We’ll talk about blogs in another post.
While changing and adding, always maintain the integrity of your home page where your book is displayed. When you add or change something at your site, do so by using additional pages that are well marked and easy to follow.
Would love to hear some of your ideas and those you’ve seen in your Internet travels.