Market My Novel

Today someone sent me the link to fReado, a site that allows authors to upload excerpts of their books and creates a Read It widget, called BookBuzzr, that works on more than 60 social networks.

Immediately, I was intrigued. I really love the HarperCollins Browse Inside widgets. They are the perfect compliment to author interviews at Pop Syndicate.

Under the FAQ, fReado founder Vikram Narayan says that copyright stays with the authors. That is a major concern when you use a third-party vendor. Also a major concern is who ELSE is sharing your information. Romance Writers of America is tracking at least a dozen sites that allow shared content, including Scribd.com, where author works were put up in full by fans. Could readers share YOUR content via this site?

I decided to check out fReado and see how it worked. I used a two-page, Market My Novel Quickguides, "How to Hire the Right Publicist," to test the ease of the system.

Uploading the content wasn't difficult. I skipped over some sections for book sales, since this is a free Quickguide. The final page was a list of "book marketing strategies" – basically just a page telling you to use the widget on social networks and blogs like Facebook and Blogger. It does not offer a comprehensive marketing strategy, though a fun Look Inside widget could be a component of design.

One I clicked through this page, I came to my widget, which looks like this:

At the bottom, I clicked the SHARE button and icons for social networks and blogs popped up. I decided to copy some code and put into this blog post to see how it looked. I viewed it in full, but it took forever to load on my computer. It also only loads one page at a time, so you have to constantly go back to the widget and turn the virtual page to view it full screen.

My take: The fReado widget has a weird name and is a bit clunky to use. It is a great idea that needs a little better execution and more detail on just how fReado plans to make money off of these "free" widgets. Also, anyone can share anything on fReado, so authors should be wary of their work being shared by unauthorized people.

I'm always leery of third-party applications. I'm also concerned when a company says the service is free, but it will make money via ads, subscriptions and author promotional services. How will these ads impact the look and feel of your Look Inside widget?

These widgets are fantastic and every publishing house should offer them to their authors – including self publishing houses. It doesn't take much to create the code and it would be a better way to control an author's work. For example, if you ONLY use a widget by your publishing house, then you can easily tell when someone has uploaded your content to another server and is sharing it while violating your copyright. You can ask fans to report violators on your Web site – and many will. 

HOT TIP: If your publisher doesn't offer a Look Inside widget, or your are self published, consider asking students at your local college to develop a widget just for you. Professors are always searching for projects, and a class could create an open source project that is available to authors everywhere.