At minimum, you as the author have received the advice from your publisher, publicists and friends: contact book clubs. Not only do clubs buy in bulk, the word-of-mouth generated by book clubs is unmatched in content and effectiveness.
The truth is, book clubs -- at least the ones of some stablilty and open membership -- are swamped by review requests like elephants to a pumpkin feast. Tapping the cane, Mr. Obie Joe asks you to open your eyes to other ways to promote your book in ways similar to a book club.
Susan Larson the inestimable book editor for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, compiled a list of sites where you and your friends can go into depth why your book is everything.
(Excerpt from 8/12/09 Times-Picayune)
GoodReads.com
This site is a great place to recommend books you've read and see what books others are reading.
It's easy to sign up, and one way to build your virtual bookshelf quickly is to rate the books you've read, from such classics as "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee to contemporary favorites such as "The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime" by Mark Haddon. In no time at all, I had a virtual shelf of 90 books. There are also categories for books you're reading now, and a place to list books you want to read.
This is also a good place to post quotes, your own writing, or publicize literary events. GoodReads also sends out a monthly newsletter, and there's a group for almost every taste.
The top five "must read" books on Good Reads this week are "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz; "The Host, by Stephenie Meyer; "Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse No. 2)," by Charlaine Harris; "Olive Kitteridge," by Elizabeth Strout; and "Outliers," by Malcolm Gladwell." GoodReads also runs an ongoing, fun-to-follow poll of the best and worst books of all time; Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire novel, "Twilight," appears on both lists.
Librarything.com
I became aware of this personal book collection cataloging site during a visit from my old college roommate, who, like me, has too many books. Just type in the title, author or the ISBN number on the back of the book and the description will appear. Users can enter 200 books for free or as many as you like for $10 a year or $25 for life.
Currently, the site has more than 700,000 users with more than 40 million book listings. One user has more than 30,000 books listed. The top five authors on Librarything are J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Neil Gaiman.
Shelfari.com
This Seattle site, founded in 2006, became so successful that it was purchased by Amazon.com in 2008 (so naturally, every entry features a "buy from Amazon" link).
Another virtual shelf-building site, it offers readers a variety of groups. Top postings on the current Shelfari blog are entries about children's summer reading, hilarious parodies of children's literature in "The Runaway Mummy" and "Where the Mild Things Are," by Maurice Sendup, and fond reminiscences of Frank McCourt and Walter Cronkite.
Bookcrossing.com
This site is for the booklover with a generous streak who wonders what to do with books that they have no room for in a permanent collection. "Help make the whole world a library" with more than 700,000 members in more than 130 countries.
Here's how it works: Take a book from your collection, put a note inside the cover about Bookcrossing.com, register the book on the Web site, and release it "into the wild" -- leaving it behind in a hotel room, airport waiting area, restaurant booth, park bench, wherever. Whenever I travel, I take books I can leave behind, and so far I've released books in Louisiana, Maine, Georgia, Florida and Texas. Happy reading, you lucky people who found those books.
You can also find out where books have been released in your geographical area if you want to go book-hunting. Currently there are 18 books "in the wild in Louisiana," 2 in New Orleans, and 8 in Pineville..
My Space and Facebook and Twitter
Those social networking megasites are also must-stops for booklovers. Many authors have their own pages now, and local bookstores such as Garden District, Maple Street Book Shop, and Octavia Books have online presences. It's fun to check out the stats of such best-selling writers as Anne Rice, who has more than 30,000 fans, and Rebecca Wells and Michael Lewis, who each have more than 400.
"Facebook is a networking tool, but it is not a substitute for the face-to-face communication with our customers which we value above all else," said Tom Lowenburg of Octavia Books, which also posts YouTube clips of author visits.
Twitter recently came in handy when Maple Street Book Shop only had a day's notice for a visit by best-seeling author Dave Eggers. "About 150 people follow us on Twitter," said owner Donna Allen. "We had a great turn-out."
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