Permalink Habits

I nag the BBT students about this incessantly - every day of your tour, change the host blog link to the permalink of that unique post. Do it before the day is over and tomorrow's post supercedes it. This is a habit that many authors don't develop early on - but if you don't do it, you'll be sorry when someone asks for the link later, or you want to reference some magnificent quote that fell from your pen in the interview.  Here's what I'm talking about. Today's stop on the Your Fantastic Elastic Brain is here:

http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com

But the direct link to that post is here:

http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com/2011/01/creating-book.html

See how Blogger tacks on the date and post title?

I always go to bit.ly to create a shortened URL like this:

http://bit.ly/fqaloJ

I can use this shortened link more easily when promoting at various social networks where a long URL is a bad thing (like Twitter where you're limited to 140 characters), and often I even customize it, though bit.ly has been a bit cantankerous the past two days. I would have liked http://bit.ly/BBTHel to make the link more memorable, but no luck.

Now here's the complete tour schedule and you can see by clicking all the links over at the blog (not here), that each one goes to it's exact post, not just the blog host's main page. It's a good idea to have a separate tab on your blog that shows your tour schedules like this. Here's a snip from Little Pickle Press.

Make sense?

Don't forget the next blog book tours class starts February 1. Cost is $20 each for up to 50 students with special rates for publishers with more than ten authors. Sign-up is here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blogbooktours

You'll learn lots more than this from the resident drill sergeant - for one whole month of book camp. You can do it!