There's the old way of doing book marketing, and then there's the new way of marketing your book. Podcasting, of course, is one of the new ways. The old way is to rely on traditional book tours.

Savvy authors today are using the Internet to market their books. Sure, they're still doing the requisite book tours, but to be honest, that's not where most of their book sales come from.

Lulu Press, for example, publishes thousands of new books every month. These self-publishing entrepreneurs sell, on average, less than 50 books - total. That's 50 books for the lifetime of the book.

Harry Potter they aren't. And, yet, they can still rely on the magic of the Internet for book marketing. While there are many approaches to marketing a book on the Internet, this article will deal specifically with what is commonly called Podcasting.

What is a Podcast?

Podcasting was popularized through the sharing of music and other recordings through the world of the Apple iPod. Hence, the name Podcasting. But Podcasting is much broader and deeper, and not at all limited to the iPod, or any other portable device for that matter. Many podcasts never make it to a portable device (and aren't intended to be downloaded). Instead, they live their lives out on the Internet, and are played through the computer's speakers.

It's come to the point where a Podcast is pretty much any recorded message or music that is available on the Internet. Many of these aren't downloadable MP3 files, but are messages recorded and stored on a server in one of many formats, including some propietary formats that exclude download capability.

The point here is that a podcast can be any kind of recording that is stored - in any manner - on the internet.

What this means for the author

As an author, once you've written a book, your next major step is book marketing. If you can't market your book, you won't sell your book. Few self published authors can afford lengthy or expensive book tours or promotional campaigns. A typical promotional campaign for example, can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 and up, depending on your needs and desires. Book marketing publicists are great at what they do, but unless you've got the budget to pay their fees, you're left with other devices to market and sell your book.

Podcasting gives you the ability to more easily reach a larger audience for your book. While it is more commonly used for nonfiction books, podcasts can work for fiction books as well.

The trick to getting podcasting to work for book marketing is to:

1. Identify your target market. Who's going to be interested in your book? This is a step you should be employing regardless of your overall marketing approach. The more uniquely you identify your market, the better you'll be able to market your book.

2. Lay out their key concerns, issues, or interests. You may want to survey your target market to learn what they want. For example, here's the link to a survey we're having to help us understand the key concerns of self-published authors: Ask Database.

3. Invite people to hear you talk about the subject matter of your book, where you focus in on the identified concerns, issues, or interests.

4. Create a series of short (30-60 minute) recordings where you address their concerns, issues or interests. Ideally, you'll do this as a public broadcast, complete with "audience questions." (Be sure to mute the audience when not allowing questions) Try to do the recording as bullet points, creating short breaks between the segments. The idea is that you can record the entire broadcast and create a single Podcast, or break it up into a number of shorter podcasts.

5. Post the Podcast or podcasts on your web site (or on another server that can replay the podcasts (such as Audio Generator.

6. Post the shorter podcasts on as many podcasting sites as you can find (we'll provide a list for you in a future article).

If you do a great job, then the messages you have in your book will become much more widely distributed than you could ever do with flyers, posters, or postcards (and for a lot less money).

Whether you're publishing through one of the big Publishing houses (McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, the Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, and John Wiley & Sons), or through self-publishing companies like Lulu, BookSurge, Xlibris, iUniverse, Authorhouse, Llumina, etc) -- you still need to do your own book marketing!

And, what better way to market and sell a book than to create the big buzz through the Internet. You can save yourself thousands, while selling more books. While you're at it, be sure to read more of our articles about Podcasting - http://www.writeandpublishyourbook.com/alphacontent/