I was honoured to speak on day one of Edge of the Web 2009. My presentation, You Too Can be a Successful Freelancer, contained both personal stories of my freelancing years, as well as some of the material from my book, The Principles of Successful Freelancing.

I had a great time preparing it, and then delivering it to a enthusiastic audience (a huge thanks to you if you were there!), and have uploaded the slides to my SlideShare account. You can see them embedded below. The slides were featured on the SlideShare front page the day after I uploaded them – thanks SlideShare!

You can see a number of the presentations given at Edge of the Web 2009 on SlideShare here.

Image: Photo by Richard Giles. Original photo here.

I’ve been thinking alot recently, about the best way for an author to get attention for their book on the web. In particular, my own book, of course, but it is very interesting research about the power of the web in general.

In pre-Internet days, all you did was a book launch and then maybe some readings at book stores. I still recall being at my fathers book launches, for each of his books. Times have changed drastically for publishers and Authors now, and they are quickly grasping the web as a tool for promotion.

Luckily, my publisher SitePoint is all about the web, so we’ve got the advantage over some of the old school publishing houses that may be stuck in last century. This means, that when the book officially launches, they’ll promote it via their various online properties.

Before you read any more though, you have to watch this YouTube video by Author, Dennis Cass.

Book Launch 2.0

This is a great example of what an Author can do themselves, delivered by Dennis in a very amusing way.

So what are some of the things an Author can do to promote their book, online? There’s the obvious ones;

• Create a book-specific blog
• Create a Facebook page
• Get on Twitter
• Make a video intro for the book
• Join Amazon Connect, to control your book’s Amazon page
• Email all of your contacts
• Look for opportunities to get excerpts and interviews on other sites

Then there are other examples, such as having a ‘virtual launch’ on Second Life, creating a MySpace page, advertising the book using contextual advertising networks, sending review copies to high profile bloggers, and the like.

The trick here is be authentic – don’t just sign up to lots of social networking or social media services, looking to pimp your book – you need to be engaged with your readers and prospective readers, to get value.

Have any other online promotion ideas, yourself? I’d be keen to hear them – please post a comment below!

Image: First box of copies of my book to arrive!