Besides blogging in character, and creating the parody law firm site, I’ve been playing around with some word of mouth marketing of my own — just trying to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. I set up pages on MySpace and Friendster and Facebook. I’ve been blogging on Amazon about the book. My publisher made anonymous lawyer pencils they’re going to give out to students tomorrow morning taking the bar exam. And I’ve sent about 300 advance copies of the book to bloggers across the blogosphere, hoping they’ll read and post about the book — there’s been about 30 reviews so far.

I know there are other authors sending books to bloggers, but I also let some blogs give away an extra copy of the book to their readers, mailed straight from my publisher, just as an incentive for them to have to blog about it and spread the word. I’m not sure that’s been done before.

Also to get readers involved with something interactive, I created a fake job application on the firm site, an e-card for bar exam takers, and an opportunity for readers to e-mail me their headshots and get listed on the site.

Finally, I went to a recording studio to do 6 short podcasts that are up on the site and also on iTunes, Podcast Alley and a whole bunch of other places.

I think that’s it. I’d love to hear any more ideas from the readers here, if anyone has any thoughts. I think it’s amazing, in a lot of cases, how little a lot of publishers are using the Internet to market books and get people talking — especially since the power of the technology to reach people and spread ideas via word of mouth is so enormous.