*The succeeding article is about marketing self published books, Internet Marketing Promotion, Book Marketing Services, and many other useful tips about online book marketing.

With hundreds of thousands of books getting published everyday, the competition level of the book-selling industry is currently at an all-time high. Consider this: In 2008, over 200,000 books were published last year in the United States alone, 80 percent of which are self-published and, not surprisingly, a large chunk of these books are for sale. What’s more, the number is expected to experience a significant rise this year.

With this kind of competition, an upstart author with limited financial resources (and can’t afford a book publicist) and limited time (and can’t go on a nationwide book-marketing tour) would do well by marketing a self-published work through the Internet. But just how does a published author wage a low-cost, yet efficient book marketing campaign in the Internet?

One of the sure-fire ways to do just that is through the opt-in email advertisement campaign, a unique book marketing method that reaches a massive, yet viable, target audience through electronic mail (email) advertisements.

An email advertisement campaign, essentially, is a massive email broadcast of "book ads" sent to hundreds of thousands—and even millions—of "profiled" email subscribers. An "email book ad" consists of a visually appealing and enticing graphic advertisement of a book, replete with the book description, the book details, and if any, the positive reviews of the book. These "book ads" also come with a unique Web address or URL (uniform resource locator) links that direct the "clicker" to the book author’s official Website or online bookstore, or even both, where the consumer can read more about the book and learn how to purchase it.

As previously stated, these ads are specifically designed to hit e-mail subscribers who have "opted" to receive commercial marketing messages, according to their specific areas of interest. For instance, an email book marketing ad for a book about, say, French cinema will be delivered to a customized mailing list of e-mail subscribers who have indicated their interest for "movies", "books," or "literature" in their email profiles.

Opt-in email book marketing advertisements reach a vast, specific target market, making it a favorite marketing tool for authors for its precise demographic targeting, massive reach, and reasonable cost. But perhaps the best thing about this program is its traceability: email marketing service providers routinely furnish clients with detailed reports of the email advertisement’s "open" and "click" rates. An "open" rate is the statistical data of the number of ads that are "opened" by a target email subscriber, while the "click" rate is a statistical tracker of the number of times the ad is "clicked" by a target email subscriber.

As such, opt-in email marketing ads not only boost the marketing punch of a book but it also serves as a terrific reference guide for future marketing campaigns, making it a highly effective, multi-dimensional book marketing tool in today’s competitive book-selling landscape.