Aloha From Karen

The new ipad is out and there's a buzz going about how much fun it is.. Some friends have asked how they can use it to help with their book promotion, and that's the topic for today.

Over 450,000 ipads were sold a month before their release.

When a friend showed me his great photos of a recent trip to China I was amazed at the quality and size to see on the ipad-full screen size. That got me thinking about how the ipad is also audio. It can play utube video clips and show power point presentations, with full audio. Consider making a clip about your book(s) to show at your book table when speaking. And show the book trailers or utube clips too.

You can let friends interact byopening up your blog or facebook and letting them type in a comment or endorsement.

You can keep a book excerpt on your ipad to show friends and anyone interested in knowing more about your book. You could incorporate sample pages, a book trailer, endorsements and testimonials, and selling points about the book.

A stop at a local bookstore could include showing those selling points about the book and the book trailer, too.

The ipad may help you blog on the go. There's an application, Dragon Dictation, that translates your speech to text. Later, copy the text into your blog. Another ap, echofon, sends messages to your twitter and facebook accounts, and that's a quick way to share links to your posts.

And an ipad with a presentation about a book idea could be a great asset at write conferences when meeting with editors.

If you have another idea for using the ipad to promote books, share it with us!