THE Group for Authors! discussion

I interviewed indie author ML Banner, who reached #1 on the Amazon bestseller list in his category (dystopian)… with his first book!
Here's a cool piece of advice I thought would be worth sharing:

"I had a character in the book who was a scientist and I thought: it’d be really cool if he had this research institute. So I created a persona for him online: a G+ profile, a Twitter account, and a website for the CMER Institute. The key was really to think from my character’s standpoint and see what I would do, in his place, to get the word out about this phenomenon [solar flares] that endangers the world.
The beautiful thing about eBooks is the connectivity: you can embed hyperlinks. So I linked to this CMERI website where my character actually offered a free ebook called “The Apocalypse Survival Guide”. And I actually got over 1,200 downloads of that book. Some people even seem to believe that the CMERI is real, as I got a couple of media inquiries!"

Speaking of GOOGLE + , I seem to be the only writer posting e-books on that site. I have asked on FB sites about it but no one seems to have an answer. The site used to favor look poetry and religious images (including animated one) but a young lady from India. Sentiment respected, but boy could she dominate a site. Now we are seeing the opposite -- a lot of models with skimpy swimming and tremendous boobs.

Another ebook connectivity idea I recently came across. Pat Conroy has embedded videos into the back matter of The Water is Wide. They're one-minute interview snippets that supplement his bio. I'm definitely doing that in my next ebook!