If you are an author, by now you probably know that the easiest part was writing your book, the hardest part is getting an agent or publisher to read it. It's up to you to do a lot of marketing to get the word out about your book. Everything is about marketing these days, and if you want to be successful building a blog for your book is an excellent idea - whether it's an eBook or one of those old-fashioned paper things!
The easiest part will be registering your domain name, it should be the name of your book, which is more than likely unique. If you are a published author you might also register the pen name you use too, that way you can link your book's sites to your main author site.
Writing a blog should not be a chore for a truly dedicated writer, the trick is knowing what to write about and when you start to get a trickle of readers, how to keep them engaged. The answer is to treat your book blog just like any other kind of blog or niche website.
If you are confident that your book will be published, the trick will be to post tantalizing pieces of the book, not verbatim, without giving the entire plot away. One of my friend recently wrote a historical novel, and he is going to be posting a lot of background information about the countries visited, the religions of the people involved in the story, and their beliefs and practices, what they ate and the clothing they wore at the time, and how they lived. There will be a description of the ships they traveled on and the people they met. Think outside of the dust jacket and get people interested! When you apply to publishers and agents, there is a chance they will click through to your website and get a much better idea of the background to your book - they don't know everything!
Saying that, and going back to treating your blog/website like any other, you will have to optimize your pages so they get found on Google. After all, publishers and agents wander around on the internet like the rest of us, therefore increase your chances by doing thorough keyword research for every article you write.
Post regularly and if you are a published author, have an opt-in box so you can give folks updates on how your sales are going, and perhaps other books within your genre that you recommend. On that note, you can also put those books on your site for sale, by becoming an Amazon affiliate.
Other authors will be interested in your site, especially unpublished authors, as they may want to see how you are progressing in marketing your book and getting an agent or publisher. Participate in forums and other blogs on the subject of writing and you will increase your readership. Obviously everything you write because you are an author will be scrutinized by all your budding author readers, so make sure everything you post is top quality, spell-checked and grammatically correct. Make your articles around the standard 500-600 words, leave more words for the next post and don't bore people.
Allow others to leave comments easily. If your book or ebook has been published, write about it in directories and create a landing page, with a strong call to action, for people to purchase your book. You can add a PayPal button and you will get 100% of the sale, minus PayPal's commission.
Google always looks for an "About Me" page, you need to give people a detailed background of who you are, what you write and why.
Add your blog to directories, under the appropriate heading.
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