Growing your readership with Bublish

Are you a writer looking for a free, easy and fun way to gain exposure in this ever-crowded world of published authors? These days when it seems everyone is writing and publishing, it has become increasingly difficult for new authors to reach readers. Serendipite Studios launched the live beta of Bublish at Book Expo America in June 2012, to connect readers with writers and their books.

Bublish is a social book discovery platform used by many authors in a variety of genres. With some practice, you’ll be Bublishing in no time. To get started, go to www.bublish.com and set up Your Profile. Be sure your email and bio information is spelled correctly and add a great headshot. Now, you’ll need to upload an EPUB version of your book. Click on Add a Book and submit the file. Add your website and the all-important tags that help identify your book and genre among the others. Best practice advice: include a linked table of contents in your EPUB too; it will make it easier for you to access relevant sections you’d like to post as book bubbles.

Once you’ve saved the title, now it’s time to create your first book bubble. Scroll to the relevant section of the text and click with your mouse where you would like to begin capturing text. Scroll down until you find the end of the section. Press your Shift key and click where you want to stop. Best practice advice: select a section that is clear and meaningful. You want to highlight your best work, a portion of the text that will intrigue would-be readers. 

Once you’ve clicked on Submit Excerpt, it’s time to provide Insight into your book bubble. Why did you choose this particular piece? What themes or message do you touch on in the scene? Is your writing funny, sad or thought provoking? What is it about the piece that you think will resonate? Best practice advice: keep it short and to the point. The insight you provide is limited to 200 words.
  

When you’re done, Publish your book bubble via Twitter or Facebook; I rely exclusively on tweets for my book bubbles. Bublish generates a pre-formatted tweet, which you can modify with one caveat: don’t change the shortened URL that is automatically added to your tweet. If you’re using Twitter too, be sure to include hashtags, e.g. #historicalfiction, keywords to help other Twitter users organize and follow your content that is relevant to their interests. 

Promoting my work through Bublish has been a great learning opportunity and a chance to grow my personal website hits and reach new readers. With each book bubble, I’ve discovered how to focus on aspects of the stories that touch individual readers and make them want to know more. In particular, Kathy Meis at Bublish deserves kudos for her time and talent in working with me at each step to navigate all the features the platform has to offer. 

Some of your fellow authors are already using Bublish:

Author Colin Falconer

Author Lorna Suzuki

Author Melissa McPhail

Buy links, the synopsis / blurb of your title and your author website are included with each book bubble. This fall, Bublish debuted a new set of features for both writers and readers. Writers can now add up to 30 book to one author account as well as change their cover art. Readers (and writers exploring Bublish in reader mode) can now filter the bubble stream by genre, and when they discover an author they like see more by that author. Best of all, Bublish is free to all readers and writers!

Need another incentive to start making your connections with readers? Bublish offers a unique opportunity for bublishers only through its Twitter chats, which always occur on Thursdays at 3pm Eastern. The first with Lorna Suzuki is available here through Storify. I’m also scheduled to participate in my first Twitter chat via Bublish today at 3pm Eastern / 2pm Central / 1pm Mountain / 12pm Pacific. Hope you’ll join the discussion.

Want to schedule for your own live Twitter chat with Bublish? Email info@bublish.com. Happy Bublishing!