Author participation in a book's marketing campaign has always been essential to its success. Publishers have traditionally relied on authors to promote their books through public appearances and media interviews. Today, with the Internet, publishers have come to depend on authors to be online marketing engines for their books. Online marketing is now the single most effective way (short of an Oprah endorsement) of getting the word out about a published work. Below are the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) from authors and editors about getting started with online marketing.

A blog, also known as a weblog, is a website where you can post text, audio, and video. A blog contains short (ideally 100 - 500 words ), frequent posts. It can be as designed or as simple as you wish—a blog is visited for its content and community, not for its bells and whistles.

Blogs are considered social media and are part of Web 2.0 technology. Blogging creates a community with your readers and the blogosphere (you and other bloggers). Readers are encouraged to comment on your posts, and the expectation is that you will respond to their comments.

Below is a list of the top 10 blogs in the world in 2008, as ranked by the Guardian (UK, March 2008):

1. The Huffington Post
2. Boing Boing
3. Techcrunch
4. Kottke
5. Dooce
6. Perez Hilton
7. Talking Points Memo
8. Icanhascheezburger
9. Beppe Grillo
10. Gawker

A blog is a website, but a website is not necessarily a blog. A blog by definition is a site that contains many short, frequent posts with user comments. A website is any multiple-page object accessible through a web browser. It is possible to have a blog as part of a larger website.

While we encourage you to maintain a blog or website of your own and will provide a link to it from your book's page on ucpress.edu, we are unable to build or host it ourselves. This is primarily for legal reasons. We also do not have the resources to create, maintain, and host blogs for all authors. It is better to have no blog or website at all than to have an out-of-date or poorly maintained site.

Your decision should be based on your budget, time, and goals. UC Press enthusiastically encourages you to create a website or blog to help in the marketing of your book. Author websites have proven to be one of the most effective ways to increase online sales of book titles. If you aren't able to create a website or blog, we encourage you to become an active participant in other social media outlets.

If you'd like to have an ongoing casual conversation with your readers, then a blog is the way to go. If you'd like to have a formal and designed site with structured information and longer articles, then a website is the way to go. If both of these are appealing, then creating a website with a blog as part of the website is the best option.

Here is some information to help you decide which to create:

Website Pros:

• Websites can contain detailed information about a subject and are more formal than blogs.
• Websites can be updated often, but they do not need to be updated as frequently as blogs. They require less ongoing creation of original content.
• Websites can be used to represent your brand and to keep branding consistent.
• You can implement a blog on your website.

Website Cons:

• Websites are more time consuming and expensive initially. It is harder to design and code a website than a blog.
• Websites take more work to maintain and update with new content.
• Websites are a one-way conversation—you provide your users with content.

Blog Pros:

• Blogs are easy and inexpensive (often free) to get up on the web.
• They are a good way to build community and interact with your readers.
• Blogs give you an outlet for frequent short posts about yourself, your research, and updates to your book.
• Blogs make it easy to upload audio and video.

Blog Cons:

• Blogs are not very formal.
• Your posts must be short.
• Blogs require time for frequent posts and interaction with readers in an ongoing conversation.

Blog platforms for beginners:

1. Blogger (Free)
2. WordPress.com (Free)
3. TypePad (Basic $5/month)
4. LiveJournal (Free)

Blog platforms for experts (allow tremendous flexibility, but require programmer-level skills):

1. Moveable Type
2. WordPress.org

If you have the design and programming skills to create your own website, chances are you are not the one asking this question. Start building!

Author's Guild offers an inexpensive and simple site-building software if you sign up to become a member.

If you don't have the skills or time to build and maintain your own website, the best way to create a website is to hire a company or a web designer or to find someone who will give (or trade) you some time to create your website. When creating a website, consider ongoing maintenance. You need not only someone to build the site but also someone to make changes for you once the site is built.

The best way to find a web designer is to ask your friends and colleagues if they had a positive experience with hiring a web designer. You can also go to google.com and search for local web designers. If their websites, portfolios, and rates look good, ask if they are accepting work. Confirm that they will be able to handle both the visual design of your site (with input from you) and the coding.

In addition to posting information about your book, your site should include autobiographical information, blurbs and endorsements for your book, links to reviews in the media, related websites, and contact information so that readers can reach you. If you have an email or mailing list, including a signup for it is a good idea.

Here are some examples of websites and blogs by UC Press authors:

Blogs:
Adrian Burgos—Playing America's Game
Gary Fine—Kitchens
Adam Frank —Constant Fire
Gayle Greene—Insomniac
Roger Martin—Racing Odysseus
Ben Orlove—Darkening Peaks
Adrienne Pine—Working Hard, Drinking Hard
Russell and Cheryl Sharman—Nightshift NYC
Jacob Smith—Vocal Tracks
Dan Streible—Fight Pictures
Kristin Thompson—The Frodo Franchise

Websites:
Barbara Epstein—Minsk Ghetto
Adam Frank —Constant Fire
Aaron Glantz—War Comes Home
Neve Gordon—Israel's Occupation
Jennifer Heath—The Veil
Roger Martin—Racing Odysseus
Marion Nestle—Pet Food Politics
James Powell—Dead Pool
Jonah Raskin—Radical Jack London
Russell and Cheryl Sharman—Nightshift NYC
Pamela Stone—Opting Out?
Stephen Trimble—Bargaining for Eden

Websites with Integrated Blogs:
Tyler Coleman—Wine Politics
Emil Draitser—Shush!

It is recommended that you update your blog once a day. The time demands of work and life don't always allow for this, but a committment to posting at least once per week is wise. Frequent updates to your blog around the publication of your book are espcecially important. You do not need to be the sole author on your blog. You can have colleagues and other experts appear as guest authors.

If you think that you'll only be able to post once or twice a month, you are better off creating a website.

Most of the popular blogging platforms are free or inexpensive, but have data size limitations. If you are planning on uploading a lot of images, video, or audio, you may have to upgrade your account. Still, most of these blogging platforms offer unlimited data storage for under $200 a year.

You are free to post the table of contents, introduction, foreward, and one chapter of your book on your website or blog. In return, we ask that you then link through to your title's page on ucpress.edu.

We are working on getting more and more titles in Google Book Search and on creating an easy way for you to implement a widget or link that would give your website or blog Google Book Search functionality. This will enable visitors to your website or blog to browse through substantial portions of your book and then to purchase it from various online retailers.

Some examples of UC Press books in Google Book Search:
100 Myths About the Middle East
Babylonians
Beethoven after Napoleon

Bloggers tend to be very involved with their communities. If you see a blog post that you'd like to reproduce, just post a comment on the blog or send an email to the blogger to ask if it is okay to repost the blog post. Usually the blogger will give you permission with conditions, such as linking to the blog, citing the blogger's name, etc.

It is not a good idea to repost online content wholesale on your blog without explicit permission, in writing, from the source. It is better to describe the content in your blog post, with a couple of sentences quoted from the article, and then to link through to the full article.

It is becoming easier and easier to post audio and video to your blog or website.

Posting Video:
The easiest ways to post video to your website or blog is to get the embed code. You can get embed code by uploading your video to YouTube.com. You will then see a box with embed code in it. Simply copy this code and paste it where you'd like the video to appear on your site, and you are done.

Posting Audio:
All of the major blogging platforms above include instructions for posting audio files to your blog. Posting to a website may take a bit more technical knowledge, ask your web producer/programmer/webmaster for advice.

As soon as you can! The sooner you start working on your blog, the sooner you can launch it. With so many new blogs and websites created every day, it is hard to make yours stand out. One of the best ways to do so is to get it indexed by Google and other major search engines. The longer your blog or website has been up, the higher it will move up in Google search results. It is also desirable to have a robust blog or website by the time your book publishes.

This is your choice. If you are setting up a blog using one of the major blogging platforms, you'll be allowed to customize part of your URL. For example, if you use TypePad, the default URL will appear like this: authorname.typepad.com/authorname or booktitle.typepad.com/booktitle. We suggest using your name instead of the book title so that if you publish a second book, the website URL will still be relevant.

If you set up a website or would like to set up your own domain name for your blog (www.authorname.com or www.booktitle.com), you may do so, but this requires more web knowledge (or the desire to spend the time to learn how to do this) to register the domain and point web traffic to it. Some easy-to-use and inexpensive domain name registration services are listed below. (You can also host your website at any of these.)

GoDaddy
Network Solutions
Register.com
Yahoo! Small Business

eMarketer (May 2008)

• 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
• 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008)

• 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
• 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US
• 77% of active Internet users read blogs

The best way to market your blog or website are to contribute to it regularly, comment on blogs, include a link to the blog or website in your email signature and in any biographical information that you send out, and make mention of it whenever you can. You should also consider creating an accurate Wikipedia entry for yourself and your book. This entry should link through to your book page on ucpress.edu and to your blog or website.

We can also market your blog or website in the UC Press blog. If you'd like to contribute a piece to our UC Press blog, you can do so by submitting something to our publicity department, askpublicity@ucpress.edu. She can arrange to post it and make mention of your blog or website launch in that posting. It may be best to wait until you have a number of content postings before we announce the launch, but just let us know what works best for you.

For details about posting to the UC Press blog, please read our UC Press Blog Submission Guidelines.

We will also add a link to your website or blog on your book's web page on ucpress.edu. Please send your blog or website link to our publicity department at askpublicity@ucpress.edu.

There are many ways that you can help get the word out about your book. Here are some things to consider. All of these are free, and while they may take a bit of time to set up, they require very little time to maintain.

Wikipedia
www.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia is a nonprofit online encyclopedia project. Entries can be created and edited by anyone. You can post your author biography and link through to your book page on ucpress.edu.

From Wikipedia: "Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites, attracting at least 684 million visitors yearly by 2008. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages. As of today (12/19/08), there are 2,665,058 articles in English."

Facebook
www.facebook.com
Facebook is a social networking tool that allows you to reach out to a large number of contacts and "friends" in minutes. Currently, the largest growing group of Facebook users are people in the 35-57 age demographic. You'll be surprised how many people find you when you open an account. You can find UC Press on Facebook here.

Twitter
www.twitter.com and search.twitter.com
You can find UC Press on Twitter @ucpress or twitter.com/ucpress Twitter is a mini-blogging site that takes only minutes to set up. People then follow you and you follow other people on Twitter. It takes some time to build a community on Twitter, but it is a way to reach out to a large number of people very quickly. You can post online, through cell phone, or Blackberry.

LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com
LinkedIn is a professional networking site.

From LinkedIn: "Over 30 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities."

Our publicity department at askpublicity@ucpress.edu.