Writing the novel is now the easy part...lol.

Before you publish (e or print), you should develop a marketing plan with blog tour dates,  Goodreads giveaways, twitter trees, and Facebook giveaways (preferably around or just before the a holiday (4th of July, Boxing Day, Great Clam Hour, Christmas, Mom's Day).   

Look for tie ins.  If your book is on murder and knitting, try getting a knitting or yard site to link to your book for quid pro quo.  Same goes for bikes sites...or whatever your book can be connected with.

People need to see a link or ad for you book at least 7 times before they will buy. 

They giveaways are great because they raise your profile on Amazon.  The goal is to climb to the top 100 Kindle books...if you can get on those front pages, you will triple your sales.

Reviews, reviews, reviews---your book on Amazon needs reviews...I love it, I hate it, it was so-so.  You need a blend.  Too many perfect star reviews if there are less than 5 reviews seemed staged.

You need to be on Blog Talk Radio, you need to be talking about your book on blogs, you need to be talking your book up on social networks---and making sure that everyone you know is pimping your book as well.

Do you have an mailing/emailing list of contacts? 

If you do a print book, talk to local print bookstores about carrying your book or doing a signing.

You'll need a press kit including book marks, book postcards, business cards, book flyers...to send to bookstores to promote your print book.  The bookmarks are good even for ebooks.  Pass those on to everyone, give them away constantly.  You want people to see your book cover so much--they finally open it up.

Then it's up to the story to keep you going.

If you have a local paper, see if someone will write about a 'local author's journey'.

The traditional print industry seems to be dying

traditional books are decreasing

I often hear this. Yet if so how is it that more than twice as many titles were published by traditional means last year as compared to 2006 (that's excluding all POD, vanity and e-books)? That's titles, not books sold (which increased marginally, though what did fall, across all areas including ebooks, etc is revenue, by a small amount -- so books are becoming cheaper and lowering costs are reducing revenue for authors, sellers and publishers on a per title basis) . So if anything it shows that traditional publishers, and bear in mind that many small publishers operate on POD of one sort or another and so are excluded from these figures) are pushing a wider variety than ever, not merely relying on big names.

Certainly things will continue to change as Amazon tightens its python grip on all aspects of the book trade, but at the moment traditional publishing is in fact  essentially stable in terms of revenue and has been for several years now, and has grown enormously over the last ten years, not in terms of revenue or books sold but in terms of titles published (and that rise started well before ebooks became popular so has nowt to do with them).

Great tips, everyone! Thanks for sharing.