When marketing experts Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett self-published Get Content, Get Customers earlier this year, they banked on being able to exploit social media to make the most of the book's narrow niche audience—and they proved so effective at it, Pulizzi reports, that McGraw-Hill picked up the publication rights. In a recent blog post, Pulizzi reviewed their six most effective tactics to show how other authors can duplicate their success.

You may recognize some of this advice: Get your relationships in place before you have a book, for example, and maintain a consistent online presence. Consider giving away some of your content online—you might even get feedback that could make a later print edition better. And, Pulizzi points out, soliciting that kind of feedback is just one way to transform a potential reader from a passive consumer to an engaged fan... Obviously, this advice is a bit easier to apply to promoting certain types of prescriptive nonfiction, but writers who specialize in descriptive nonfiction and fiction can still draw upon the basic principles to build up their own audiences. After all, people want to be entertained by stories as much, if not more, as they want to learn how to do things...

(Full disclosure: Channel V Media, the publicists for Pulizzi's Junta42, also represent Beatrice.com, Ron Hogan's literary website.)