Have a book you want to promote? A tool from author Jenny Blake just might be your new best friend.

Here’s how Blake describes it:

When I was getting ready to launch my own book, Life After College, I knew I needed a way to track the hundreds of book promotion action items and ideas floating around in my head — everything from website development to book tour planning to advance copy recipient lists, so I created a 15-tab master spreadsheet as a way of organizing the hundreds of things an author thinks about on the road to book launch.

This is one amazing resource — and it’s free. You can download a copy of the Book Marketing Spreadsheet from Blake’s website.

Yen Cheong over at the Book Publicity Blog recently posted a helpful list of firms and freelancers that do book publicity. Each listing indicates the type of books that firm or person deals in, so you can quickly find the ones who handle non-fiction.

You’ll find that most of the publicists are based in the US, though I did see one firm from Germany and there may be other international firms tucked away on the list.

Regardless of how it was published, just because a book exists, does not mean readers will buy it. For sales to happen, you have to find innovative and cost-effective ways to let your intended audiences know about your book.

Many authors have already developed a potential readership through their blogs or their interactions on other Internet-based communities. If you haven’t, finding these communities of interest and participating in them is not difficult. One of the easiest ways to make your product known to them is to sponsor or participate in a contest.

Let’s look at two examples of blogging/interest community contests.

Example #1:

The blog badge pictured above is part of a publicity campaign surrounding the release of Cell Hell: 55 Cell Phone Users You’d Like to Silence by Dr. Mike O’Malley. Bloggers can grab the badge at the publisher’s site when they enter the blogging competition. It’s certainly a great way to engage a larger audience in thinking about the author’s topic. At last count, the site had gathered 46 entries. That’s 46 different bloggers writing about cell phone etiquette (and 46 different blog-reading audiences hearing about the topic) in competition for $1,000 in prize money donated by the author.

There are only two problems: First, the prizes are awarded randomly in the end. There is no reward for blogging skill, for depth of engagement in the topic, or for audience discussion in which the author could participate. Second, contest entrants are obligated to link back to the contest announcement on the blog of origin. They aren’t obligated to link back to, or even mention, the author’s book sales site or the book itself.

Example #2:

Once Written is an eclectic site offering a variety of features and information for both writers and readers. The mix of audiences does make for a slightly strange editorial mission, but both readers and writers are part of one larger group: bibliophiles, or people who love books.

Each month, the site hosts a number of book giveaways. This contest, like the rest of the site, features an eclectic mix too. There is literary fiction, popular fiction, non-fiction, and sometimes poetry or children’s books.

According to information on the site, authors can participate in the giveaways for $75 plus the cost of the books and shipping. While this is definitely a bargain promotions package, there are still no links to book sales or publishers’ sites.

The Take Away?
Obviously, you can spend as much or as little on book promotion as you like. Analyzing these two examples is a great place to start identifying promotional channels. What do you think — in these two examples, does the pay-off match the expense of sponsorship or participation?