It’s amazing how much help there is out there for writers when it comes to promoting their work and raising their profile.

Like anything in life, there are a few sharks out there who want you to give them your money in return for not very much at all.

There are also some great websites and services that offer great services and publicity without costing your life savings and a ransom worthy of your first-born.

Goodreads is a two-way service for both readers and authors. Readers can rate and review books, update their friends on what they are reading, and engage in different reading challenges. It links very conveniently to Facebook and blogs. Authors can set up a profile and blog that are aimed at increasing readers’ awareness of their works, and giving their books publicity and promotion.  It’s easy to do, and I’m very happy with my profile. Goodreads gives regular updates on Twitter, promoting authors, books, and reading in general.

Quotesrain is a thriving literary community that presents authors and quotations from both famous people and the authors themselves. It’s visually rather lovely, too, so it’s quite relaxing to browse around. Quotesrain is also on Twitter.

Also on Twitter is All Author, a service of Quotesrain that will promote my book via social media for a year for just $24. There’s another level of promotion I could sign up for, but I’ll see how this goes first. I  only signed up yesterday, and they’ve already tweeted  both my books at least once. I’m pretty happy with that!

Finally, there’s the Indie Writers’ Cooperative on Facebook, where authors are encouraged to share the links to their works, promote their events, and to help each other out by sharing one another’s links, works and events. It’s a positive and encouraging environment where writers can meet and help each other out with a little healthy cross-promotion.

All in all, it’s been a productive and quite enjoyable exercise.

A promotional quote for ‘Leaf’ made at Quotesrain.