The past three days have been very interesting ones for yours truly. My latest book -- Writing Fiction For Dummies -- was just released, and my coauthor Randy Ingermanson and I are wrapping up a three-day book rush, hoping to drive initial sales of the book. While we're still tabulating the results, early indications are that our efforts paid off in a very big way. As I write this, our book is ranked #368 on Amazon.com -- that is, Writing Fiction For Dummies is the 368th best-selling book on Amazon.com. Not bad considering there are millions of books available on the Amazon website.

So how did we manage to drive sales to this high level? And what lessons can be learned by anyone who hopes to use social networking to market their products or services?

That's what this post is all about.

Months ago, Randy and I started making plans to do a "book rush," that is, a specific period of time at the launch of Writing Fiction For Dummies when we would offer buyers of the book a special bonus package of freebies. Unlike mega-bestselling books like Harry Potter -- where people line up in front of bookstores hours or even days in advance of a midnight book launch -- Dummies books do not have a specific launch date. This meant that we had to create one. Why? To focus our own selling efforts, and to focus the attention of potential buyers. We consulted with our publisher and with Amazon, and determined that they would definitely be stocked up with books by December 4th. At first we decided to conduct our book rush on December 7th, but Randy thought it would be better to extend the rush period over three days -- from December 7-9. This would help ensure that our potential buyers would have a chance to open and read the email they received announcing the book rush.

Randy has built a huge following of aspiring fiction writers on his Advanced Fiction Writing website over the years. At midnight on December 6th, Randy sent out an email blast to the 18,000+ members of his opt-in email list, inviting them to buy the book before midnight December 9th, and receive our bonus package of free goodies. This announcement was picked up by many other fiction writing bloggers, which quickly amplified the message. I also announced the event on my Twitter and Facebook pages.

So we got out the message, but what about the bonus package of free goodies? The idea was to present potential buyers with a bonus package that was worth far more than the $13.59 they would pay for the book on Amazon.com. Here's what we offered everyone who bought the book before midnight on December 9th:

• A 50% discount on all electronic downloadable products in Randy's online store. (Including his new Snowflake Pro software and popular lecture series Fiction 101 and Fiction 201.)
• A brand-new lecture on Strategic Self-Editing that Randy created specifically for this book rush. It’s an 80-minute talk designed to teach you strategic principles of editing your novel, so that you can edit your work better and faster.
• A 20-minute audio talk on Time Management for Writers by Peter Economy, also created specifically for the book rush.
• A 25-page excerpt from James Scott Bell’s new book, The Art of War for Writers.
• A 16-page excerpt from Brandilyn Collins’ excellent book, Getting Into Character.
• A 55-minute audio talk on Characters, Emotions, and the Senses, by award-winning novelist Gail Gaymer Martin, whose books have sold over 3 million copies.
• A tip sheet for romance writers by Leslie Wainger, author of Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies.
• A tip sheet and 20-minute audio talk on selling eBooks by Paul and Sarah Edwards, authors of Marketing for Introverts.
• A 7-minute introductory video on proofreading techniques and a pack of sample proofreading files by Sue Gilad, author of Copyediting and Proofreading for Dummies.

Each of these bonus goodies was contributed by their authors for no charge.

This strategy (99.9 percent of which was developed and put into place by Randy) turned out to be brilliant. Sales of Writing Fiction For Dummies -- which had been sitting at an Amazon ranking of about 27,000 for the entire week before our book rush -- started to skyrocket Monday morning, reaching a ranking of 819 on Amazon at about 2pm. The ranking began to slide Monday evening, and slid some more -- to about 1,400 on Tuesday. On Tuesday night, however, Randy sent out a "24 hours left to go" message to his mailing list (and I Twittered and Facebooked the message too) and sales surged again Wednesday morning. By 11am we were ranked 362 on Amazon, a very good showing. We remained under 400 the rest of the day.

I learned a lot about the power of using social networking tools to sell products as a direct result of this book rush event. I learned that your best friend is a loyal community of fans -- people who want to hear your marketing messages. I learned that when you give people a compelling value proposition -- in this case, a FREE bonus package worth far more than the price of the product -- they will respond by buying your product. And I learned that you've got to set a definite selling period -- with a clear start and end date -- to motivate people to make a purchase NOW rather than later.

Oh. And one more thing. I learned just how good it feels to have a book that is ranked in Amazon's top-400 books. It feels VERY good.