In an article published by Digital Book World Newsletter on September 3, 2013, Beth Bacon notes that a lot of thinking about book marketing is about what was “traditionally used before the dawn of the internet.” She lists things like, “getting advance quotes from prominent authors and getting “Amazon.com [to give] the book a glowing review, [and select] it as a best book of the month, and landing “an exclusive review from a prominent author.”

She goes on to say, “What strikes me about this list is that it’s full of interactions between publishers and publishing professionals—industry people connecting with industry people. On this list, I wonder, where is the engagement with the audience? Where is the communication with the people who are actually going to buy the book?”

“Your best connections are connections with your readers. Not only are internet-based marketing techniques less expensive than many of the traditional book marketing methods, they do not rely on connections with influential people. In the internet-marketing world, it’s all about gaining connections with regular people. Real people. Your readers.” —Beth Bacon

Here are 13 Book Marketing Techniques to help Find and Engage Your Readers:

1. Author’s blog: Maintain a lively and interesting blog that gets your audience to come to your site.

2. Book Blogs: Generate attention among bloggers, provide the bloggers with content by guest blogging, offer free books, engage in Blog Tours.

3. Email: Communicate with your reader on topics interesting to them, not just sales messages.

4. Facebook: Interact with your audience on Facebook, especially if your genre is romance, children’s fiction, or science fiction/fantasy.

5. Goodreads: Get active in this community of readers. Goodreads offers contests that draw new readers to your books.

6. Give-Aways: Raffle Copter lets you organize giveaways. Book bloggers do contests and give-aways too.

7. Pinterest: Pull together great visuals that your audience finds intriguing and they may find your books intriguing, too. In July, 2013, Pinterest had 70 million users.

8. Promotional Events: Do price reduction promotions with email newsletters like Frugal EReader, Book Deal Hunter, Story Finds, and more.

9. Slideshare: If your book is nonfiction create some PowerPoints using your expertise. Professionals flock to SlideShare.

10. Snail-Mail Postcards: We get so little snail mail these days, when you send a post card, it gets noticed.

11. Twitter: Become an active Twitter member. You can provide valuable content for your audience—and keep a pulse on what they’re interested in, too.

12. Wattpad: Provide free chapters for readers to browse on Wattpad. If they like what they see, they’ll purchase the rest of your book.

13. YouTube: It’s the second biggest search engine after Google. If you’re not on YouTube, you’re missing out on a great way to engage with your readers.

Beth says, “With methodical internet-based book marketing, all books can be better sellers than they would without those activities. All books can be GOOD sellers, if not BEST sellers.”

About Beth Bacon: Beth Bacon runs the children’s digital publishing company Pixel Titles, writes for the website E-BooksAndKids.com, and creates e-books for marketing at Zoyo Branding.