This article combines the opinions of Pierre Lapointe for the business part and Marcus Riedner for the technical part. We defer to our authors when it comes to writing and illustrating a book but we hope our combined experience can help you build your own brand with our recommendations on using online tools.

We have launched our first contest recently and we want to help our authors to maximize their traffic and chances to win. We will hold more contests in the future so we hope this information will help you even if you did not publish on Sharing-Books yet.

Why build your brand?

1. You have worked hard on your book. You have have made an emotional investment in your book in addition to all the time you spent writing and/or illustrating it. Your work is worth investing a little effort to give it the visibility it deserves.
2. People buy from people. People will buy more books from you if they feel they know you. You have to open up and let your fans connect with you. That's the only way they can become loyal to you, recommend you and anticipate your next book with excitement.
   
3. It is your responsibility. Until you are a rich star and can afford to have a PR and Marketing agency handle your brand, it is a do-it-yourself world.
4. It is not difficult. You may have to learn a few things but the potential rewards are huge relative to the effort. Most of your brand building can be free at this stage and done with sweat equity.
5. You can now reach the world. In the past your paper books would usually only reach the local market. You might miss a market that would really love your work simply because of the distance. Today, the internet takes your books and your brand everywhere instantly.
6. You need the money. Yes we love to create, but to have more time to create we need money. Remember Time = Money. An equation works both ways, so Money = Time. Being smart about your brand will help you earn more income and move your writing activities from the hobby level to the career level. Most people are too shy about asking for money. A good brand communicates value and makes it a lot easier to ask for the money.
   

1. Participate, Participate, Participate! Getting the most out of JacketFlap is a lot like gardening, you have to be out there every day watering, weeding, and planting. On JacketFlap it is all about commenting on people's work, cultivating friends and partnerships, and offering your help without strings attached. The more you do on JacketFlap, the more response you get.
   
2. Cross-link with your other efforts. JacketFlap is great for cross-linking to your other efforts. You can link to your website, to multiple blogs, to blogs you read, to your friends blogs, to other web communities you participate in. The more you cross link, the easier it is for people to find you on the web. Take advantage of these networking and connecting features on JacketFlap.
3. Be open, honest, and respectful. JacketFlap has a wide variety of people in their community, ranging from industry veterans to hobbiests. There are people from all levels of the publishing industry floating around on JacketFlap, and they read and watch what you say and do. In an open environment like that people really get an idea of what your hidden agendas are very quickly, so do not bother hiding them. JacketFlapers are open to you talking about what you do, to promoting yourself and your work, but only if you are honest and open about it. At all times be respectful, a JacketFlap page is akin to someone's home, so be aware that if you go to their page and post advertising links to your work you could be alienating someone. Nobody likes junk mail or spam.
   
4. Find the ultraconnected. Not everyone is a connector. Most people on JacketFlap are either too busy to build an extended network, or they do not have a personality type that is geared to connecting to large numbers of people. If you are not a connector, connect to someone who is, and leverage their network. If they have over 100 friends, they are ultraconnectors on JacketFlap. Try to find one of these ultraconnectors that fits with your goals, and make friends with them, and keep an eye on the things they are doing. They will get you a steady stream of information that is useful to building out your brand and where to do it.
5. Do not ask others to do your work for you. This is really important. Just about everyone on JacketFlap has something on the go. People who are ultraconnected on JacketFlap usually have a few dozen major and minor projects on the go at any given time. Everyone is more then happy to connect with you, and more then happy to give advice or occasional help, but the get frustrated when they are asked to do your work for you. If you need help, ask how questions. 'How do I add my blog to JacketFlap?' will get you a much warmer response than 'Can you add my blog to JacketFlap?'
6. Make use of the email features. Let people in your JacketFlap network know what you are doing when you have a major milestone event, such as you've published your book or added new work on to your illustration galleries. The key here is to do this at major milestone points, not constantly.
   

1. Find and join Children's literature Facebook Groups. There are well over 100 children's literature groups on Facebook, they range from small ( under 50 members ) to huge ( over 2000 members ). Find some groups that fit with your personality and branding goals, join them, and start participating.
2. Build a Facebook Page for your brand. You can build a Facebook page for anything, a book, yourself, a company. Build one for your brand, and get your friends and family to become fans of you. If you have a book you really want to promote, build a Facebook page for it. Link these pages together, and link them to your blogs, so you have a constant stream of new information on them.
3. Build a Facebook Group for your brand. Build a place for people to come and talk, track, and find your work. Building a group on Facebook is fairly simple and painless, and you can use it to drive people to your brand, websites, books.
4. Watch what other people are doing, and copy them. If you are a book creator, and you are focused on writing and illustrating your books, you probably want to spend most of your time doing that. Do not worry about figuring out new and innovative ways to use Facebook. Just watch what others do, and follow suit. There are hundreds of people who use Facebook as a marketing tool, do what they do.
5. If it costs money, avoid it in the early stages. Facebook lets you pay for adverts to promote your groups and pages. You can put advertising for your website on Facebook. Avoid doing this if it is going to cost you money in the early stages of building your brand. You will be wasting your time and money on paid web advertising in the early stages of your brand building. Word of mouth is going to get you far more effective results.
6. Participate! Participate! Participate! "If you build it, they will come" is a false hope. You have to go and participate in all of the above. The more time you spend in other groups, running around talking about issues you are facing in children's literature, and communicating with your fans and group members the better. Building your brand is a lot of work, and it is work you have to keep doing regularly.

1. Send an announcement email to all your contacts. Include the url that takes them directly to your book page. And ask them to forward your announcement to everyone they know who likes children book.
2. Announce your new book on your profiles at JacketFlap and facebook and send a notice to your friends. Ask them to forward the announcement to their friends interested in children books.
3. Post a link to your book(s) on Sharing-Books and JacketFlap so that future friends can find your book(s) easily.