I got an email the other day from the editor I hired to edit my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results. She was emailing me to let me know that her book had been published and she included a URL where I could purchase a copy of her book. I hadn’t heard from her in over a year and I didn’t know she was writing a book. I hate to admit it, but I didn’t jump on the URL and purchase the book immediately.  It’s almost as if I needed some “time” to digest the information.

I didn’t think much of the exchange until I saw the following blog postbBy Rohit Bhargava Johnny Bunko And The Anatomy Of A Great Business Book.  Seems Rohit was speaking and attending the SXSW convention last week and the author of the book, Daniel H. Pink was also speaking at the convention. Rohit reports:

In a brilliant move for pre-promotion of the book (which officially comes out in April), he gave a free copy to all the attendees of his early talk.

Hmm… not only is Daniel H. Pink out promoting his book before it’s publication, (read more about Creating Buzz around your book) but so is Rohit.  On Rohit’s blog is  a big plug offering the opportunity to pre-order HIS book “Personality Not Included“. Which brings me back to the subject of pre-publication publicity and promotion tools for authors and an impromptu analysis of these two authors and the methods they are using..

Daniel H. Pink is utilizing a static HTML page as part of his pre-publication publicity and promotion… then he’s building a mailing list of interested potential book buyers using a web 2.0 spreadsheet application. The site doesn’t have any Google PR or an Alexa ranking.. that’s not good.   That means the only pre-publication BUZZ Daniel is getting is through scattered mentions as a result of his speaking gig at SXSW and hopefully those bloggers who attended his speech will write about the book.   When you try to see if any sites are linking to his site, you get this screen (today, 3-17-08)

Ooops!!! Johnnybunko.com is still serving time in the Google Sandbox! (It’s probably best… collecting email addresses without a double opt in subscription process is RISKY business!!!)

Now, let’s see what happens when we look for incoming links to Rohit’s blog:

WHEE!!! Do you see this text in the blue part of the image above:

Results 1 – 10 of about 18,500 for link: http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com.

Rohit’s blog has 18,500 incoming links. His PR is 5 and his Alexa ranking is 134,895. That means, out of the 10,000,000 web sites out there, Rohit’s blog comes in the top 150,000.

Rohit has been blogging for 10 months and has built quite an impressive promotion machine with his blog. Remember, he was also a featured speaker at SXSW this year.

Now THAT is what I call EFFECTIVE pre-publication publicity and promotion.

If you read the page about his book on his blog, you’ll see that in addition to his blog acting as a powerful promotional took, it’s also allowed him to make vital connections with contributors for his book.

Pre-publication publicity and promotion is often overlooked by those who are self-publishing. I know I was tempted to overlook it. Fortunately, blogging is probably the easiest and most effective pre-publication publicity and promotion tool available to an author. When combined with an email newsletter interest sign up (using a service which specializes in creating such lists legally and in a Can Spam compliant manner such as Marketer’s Choice) it’s the most effect pre-publication publicity tool around. However, it’s important to note that this in NOT a process you begin 6 weeks before your book hits store shelves. Again, Rohit’s been blogging for almost a full year in preparation for the publication of his book Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back.