As more and more people are self-publishing books, apps, and e-books, they also need to figure out how to sell their work. Apple, Amazon, Smashwords, and others are doing their part to distribute the work, but how does one go about marketing oneself? Well it's not easy. It has to be a consistent, well-planned out plan that has to be done every day, and every hour after your book has been published. I even recommend you pre-market your app at least 60-90 prior to it being published as well.

When I set out to market our first children's book, I spent a month blogging, writing articles, tweeting, telling people on my facebook pages, and sending articles to Digg. I created a movie-trailer for our app using software from Apple and posted photos of some of the drawings. I did notice a substantial increase in traffic the few weeks before the announcement and for around one week on and around the release. I believe the pre-marketing helped. Looking back though, there was and still is so much more I can do. Small publishers usually have small budgets and little time; so what can be done. In addition to the places I mentioned before, here is a partial list of some of the things you can do at little to no expense to you.

1. Go to Kickstarter.com and start a new project to raise money. Kickstarter allows pretty much anyone who has a creative talent and needs to raise funds. I have seen amounts raised from as little as $250 to hundreds of thousands of dollars. One such fellow is Joe Murray, a professional animator that lives in California. He created two very popular cartoons (Rocko's Modern World, and Camp Lazlo). His idea for a project was to raise funds to create three cartoon shorts of his new animation, Frog in a Suit, and to build a web site that showcases independent animators. The idea is to give more creative control to the creators and not the studios. Fox, Cartoon Network, and NICK are three studios that buy properties from their creators. They retain all copyrights and in turn they pay out a royalty or percentage of sales to the creator from what they get. Depending on the licensing contract, this can also include licensing deals like (mugs, teeshirts, stationery). Joe raised more than $20,000 to fund his project. The great thing about Kickstarter is that not only can your friends donate, but so can anyone in the world. In turn, you provide them with gifts for their help. All the info is on their site. It's a win-win for everyone involved because you're raising money, while raising awareness of your company and building a following of fans that are invested in you.

2. Another great idea is to create a group on LinkedIn.com. It's free and you can create one on your craft, or your message and build people who are excited about the same things you are.

3. Meetup.com is another way to get people excited about what you are doing. They do charge a fee, but it can be offset with advertising that you sell.

4. Try writing for Examiner.com, Helium.com, or Yelp.com. These are three social networking sites that have national audiences that will read your articles. The first two will actually pay you but more importantly, they will give you a national voice. I almost got a book deal from a very popular publisher from an article I wrote on Examiner.com

5.Tweet at least 10-15 tweets a day, but don't use the forum for spamming. That's when you send out the same tweet over and over again. Spamming if frowned upon.

6. Set up a page just for your book, imprint, or app on Facebook. Then send out blasts to all your email contacts and encourage people to "Like" your page.

7. Also in Facebook, post your Youtube videos on your site to give your friends and the public ways to see your movie trailers or sample chapters

8. Make a Movie Trailer on Youtube.com. It costs nothing and if you get a lot of hits, you can ask Youtube to monetize your video.

9. Send out composite drawings of your characters and tag you and your friends on them and send them out to your friends and fans.

10. Blog, blog, and blog as much as you can. And then send out your blog in your tweets, on facebook, on linkedin, digg, and examiner. Also don't forget to send tweets to those people and companies that you talked about.

This is a full time job, so until you can hire out an agency to do this for you, try these helpful tips and watch your web site traffic and hopefully your sales sky rocket! If you have additional ideas, please let me know. Every little bit helps!

Thanks for reading! –Nick Nebelsky, www.intensemedia.com