At  Author Central, you have a bevy of ready-made tools designed by the bookselling and bookreading techno geeks at Amazon. All of these tools empower your to share information about yourself and your work with your readers — you can view and edit your bibliography, add a photo and biography to a personal profile, and use a blog to connect with readers.

Geez Louise, this makes me want to finish my book so I too can be front and Web-face forward on Author Central too!

Don’t miss out on the sample link to Neil Gaiman’s page. And take a moment to imagine him cast in a new part for the Twilight movies. I think he’s really trying to move that mojo with the picture he has up there.:>)

My fave is my client Bill Scheft’s page because Bill is really starting to dig all these new ways to connect with people. Bill is also proof that you can teach an amazing humor novelist and 18 year David Letterman show writer new Web tricks.

Bill will also be a keynote at the Erma Bombeck Writers Conference this year (Twitter: @ebww)  and he will be at the Texas Book Festival. (He writes a snappy blog too!)

I also notice at the Texas Book Fest that Buzz Aldrin will be speaking. I’m excited about this. I interviewed him years ago about his science fiction novel in Dallas, and he could not have been more gracious.

My favorite part of the interview was where I stupidly asked him (after weeks of watching old Apollo films for background) why they were doing different gaits across the moon.

“Mr. Aldrin,” I asked, “Did you all try those different gaits across the moon because you wanted to calculate differences between running, skipping, hopping?” (Oy vey, to be  a young dumb journalist again.)

And he said (without a smile), “For God-sakes no. Young lady, we were on the moon! We were skipping because we were on the moon!” (Duh!)

He also had a great perspective on being the second man on the moon.

Buzz at the time was also  in deep planning about his idea for a tourist service around space travel. I’m going to have to dig up the whole interview and post it as a PDF on the blog now.

Speaking of new frontiers, don’t forget to register on another fantastic author platform and one of my own personal faves – Filedby.com . If I was still a technology journalist my prediction would be that in two years from now, this is really the only author community you will need to be on.

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This is a real article written by Marion Maneker on how the Amazon bestseller list works. You should read it.

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If your book is due for release on September 1st  of this year, then outreach to bloggers should have started in June or at the very latest in July. Your publicist should be pitching you to the online world at least two to three months prior to the book’s official release.

Remember, if you have not hired an online publicist to help you or your publisher, or are only working in tandem with a traditional publicist, you can still reach out to bloggers. You’d be amazed at how responsive bloggers can be when pitched with care and respect.  And even if you’re starting now and your book is already out, then don’t lose heart, just find the right places to pitch your book.

Here are some good steps to follow:

1. Look up a comparative book title through Google Blog Search and see what bloggers have reviewed that book.

2. Go to Amazon and do the same there. Look up an actual book and see what reviewers from Amazon have reviewed the book and try to find their contact information online.

3. Build your pitch list from the bloggers on #1 and the Amazon Reviewers on #2.

4. Add in a reviewer from Blogcritics.org to pitch to, and one at TCM Reviews as well.

5. Register your author profile on Filedby.com and Shelfari.com.

6. If you’re really ambitious and on Twitter - then do some searches on “Book Reviewer” and “book reviews” and add some Twitter-pitches to your list too!

I love working on behalf of authors and pitching books to the online world for them, but it’s also very important to remember that you can do all this too!

The most important part of your book being successful online is to start much earlier than you might in traditional publicity. You can interview about your book way before it’s official release, you can drive reviews to your book on Amazon and even bloggers can help build that amazing Web-buzz two or three months prior to your book’s actual release date.

Now go on and pitch away!

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If you look through the list and take time to familiarize yourself with what these reviewers like to read, you might just find one or two that you can reach out to on your own.

Now let’s define “reach out to” – it doesn’t mean emailing these folks incessantly, pitching books to them that are not in the genre they normally review, and getting furious if they don’t respond to your pitches.

Be respectful of these reviewers, because they are true book lovers and not motivated by anything but the love of good books!

So a sample pitch to them (if you can find their email addresses) is:

Dear NAME:

I wanted to reach out to you and ask if you might consider reviewing my book for Amazon. I loved your review of “NAME OF BOOK” – (and put hyperlink to the actual book review)) .

The book is about…

I hope that you might let me send you my book and I thank you much in advance for considering the book.

Best,

YOUR NAME HERE

END 

 And now you’re asking how you find the email addresses, right? The secret to that will be found on my new Webinar titled, “How to find the email addresses of Amazon Reviewers.”

Ok, I’m kidding!

The secret way to find the emails is to simply put your fingers to the keyboard and look at what the Reviewer Profile provides as far as information, and if there is not an email address, then search for the person’s name on Google.

Yes, it actually involves some work, and YES you can do it!

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On the serious side, it’s a bit concerning that Amazon keeps buying up all these different companies with so much ongoing on the book side, Kindle side and meeting customers’ needs (or not).

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Bezos, according to the NYTimes said Amazon plans to offer e-books for the price of $9.99 on other devices beyond the Kindle.

Bezos also noted in the future the Kindle would read other e-book formats as well.

Check out this link to see the full information.

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Amazon is not-so-quietly building a wall between itself, its competitors, and open e-book formats. It’s time to show them that those of us who seek e-book readers without boundaries will not stand for their market monopolization and Soviet-style platform containment.Mr. Bezos, Tear Down This Wall, May 2009

You should read the whole article as it’s important in terms of Amazon and Kindle.

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Go and vote on the finalists! Voting is open until Thursday May 21^st at 11:59 PM EDT. It will be interesting to see who lands as the winner!

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Here’s an excerpt from the announcement, “AmazonEncore is a new program whereby Amazon will use information such as customer reviews on Amazon.com to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors with more potential than their sales may indicate. Amazon will then partner with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers. “

Here is the link for all the information from Amazon.

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