Whether you are the publisher or author of your book or whether you hire a publisher, the success of your book depends on the how well you market and promote the book. Yep, for all intents and purposes, YOU are responsible for promoting it. Publishers are usually too busy to make sure the necessary resources are in place to make it happen. Unless you are Tom Clancy, Steven King or other well-known author, the marketing falls on your side of the court.

One of many methods you really need to implement, but should also be high up on your list, is having a dedicated website for your book. By dedicating 1 book per website it will make your marketing and promotion of that specific book easier to manage. No distractions, no other products or books. Your marketing and promotion should be simple yet specific and therefore if a potential customer is looking for your genre of book, you don’t want to give them other genre choices or confuse them with other types of books on your website.

By having your own dedicated website it will also help with your credibility and give the appearance that you are serious and professional. A properly designed website will look and feel professional, it’ll communicate with individuals in your genre and as a result you’ll sell more books.

Spend some time and effort in choosing the title of your website. A website name that is as close to the title of your book would be extremely advantageous. First, it’ll be easy to remember. Second, it’ll help elevate your book in search engines (Google, Yahoo, Msn). If you can slip a keyword into your website url, that would also help get your book ranked higher in the search engines.

Here’s how I implemented the title of 1 of my books into my website url:

http://www.MasteringNicheMarketing.com (Title of my book is: “Mastering Niche Marketing”)

Now, do a search in any search engine (Google, Yahoo, Msn), using Mastering Niche Marketing in the search box. Notice how many results there are and how highly ranked they are? Quite alot, right?

So if you haven’t yet decided to create your own website you must consider it very seriously. If you don’t have the skills to build a site, then you should hire a designer and they don’t have to be expensive to design and create! A simple website will provide a platform for your ‘message’, and can be a very powerful medium of communicating to your readers.

If you aren’t sure what your webpage should look like, study how other authors in your genre have designed their webpages, that’ll give you a couple ideas on what to do with your site.