Google Alerts for Authors

Stephanie Chandler from Authority Publishing has some great tips for authors in the use of Google alerts.

I think it worth highlighting a few here that I have found particularly useful.

For those unfamiliar with Google Alerts, it is a free service from Google that allows you to recieve tailored search results to your email account or RSS feed. If you look at the image above, you will see that you have options about what you can search for (e.g. News, blogs, books, everything etc.). My advice is to choose 'everything'. You can then set the level of frequency and quality of those results and where you want those results delivered - either email address or 'feed'.

If you set up multiple alerts of different search terms and don't want to clog up your inbox with lots of random search results, then receiving a feed is probably the best way to go. To view your Google alerts feed, you need to set up a free Google account (if you don't already have one) and you can receive your feeds at www.google.com/reader . This will act as a dedicated webpage where all your search results will be delivered (rather than your email inbox).

What authors should search for:

1. Personal Name - Find out where you are mentioned online. This may help in generating leads, contacts and opportunities.
2. Website/blog name - Track where your website or blog is mentioned by creating an alert for your domain. Leave off the "www" and instead just specifiy the domain e.g. bwmbooks.com
3. Book/article titles - Create an alert for your specific book title e.g. "Courting Samira" or particular blog title to see where it is mentioned.
4. Subject of book - If you have written a non-fiction work then creating an alert of the particular subject matter of the book (if it is narrow enough) or an incident or person in the book may reveal additional research, similar works and other interesting material. For example, "battle of Brisbane", "George Ernest Morrison", "sniper". This may also reveal competitors in your field.
5. Finding reviews  - There may be reviews of your book that you don't know about. In your search term put "book title review" e.g. "Courting Samira review".
6. Finding potential reviewers - If you are looking for additional reviews of your book then there are many websites and blogs offering to review works for free. But how to find the right reviewer? To search for book reviews in your genre put in the search term "book review" [subject of book]. So for example, if your book was about the secrets to the perfect marriage you would put in '"book review" marriage' in the search box. Or if you have written a book about Australian military history you would put in '"book review" Australian military' (or something similar). You will then receive search results of blogs and reviewers who you can potentially contact to ask them to review your book.

One tip

Start with only a couple of alerts initally so you get a sense of what results you are receiving and whether you can cope with the volume of information that gets delivered. Refine your search terms if you are not getting useful results.