I love Google Alerts and have been using this tool for a number of purposes. For those of you who don’t know, with Google Alerts, you enter a word or phrase, whether you want to track information from every source (“comprehensive”) or just blogs, news sites, video sites, etc., and you choose how often you would like to receive alerts by email, providing an email address.

I have many alerts set up, an alert for each of my blogs, for example, the phrase “ebook & book reviews and news”, and each day I receive an email showing any site on the web that happens to mention my blog. I also set up alerts for things that interest me, or for ideas to help me when I have a bit of “writer’s block” when it comes to what to post about on my blogs, or my website.  I don’t copy other’s information at all, but sometimes just reading what others have written will inspire a thought of my own.

How do I manage my many alerts?  Since I can’t read each of them every day, and they fill up my inbox quickly, I’ve set of folders for them and filters so that they sort into the folders rather than my main inbox.  All email programs have some type of sorting feature so that you can do this.

As an author, you may want to see who is talking about your book, article or a post you have done; you may want to track a your own name, you may want to track phrases from your book that you would not want to be plagiarized, you may want to track words that are important to your genre of writing to help you with ideas as you are writing a book, the possibilities are endless.

I do appreciate this helpful tool offered by Google and think that you will too.

Other Posts about Book Promotion:

Using Twitter to Promote Your Book

Using Craigslist to Promote Your Book or Event

Doing Virtual Book Tours or Author Tours

Publishing Tips and Myths