Tag: promoting

10 Tips For Doing Your (Aaaaauuuugh) Author Interviews | Dan Alatorre – AUTHOR

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Reblog and featuring

Friend and author Dan Alatorre is a diverse writer who runs a most interesting and entertaining blog. Dan’s blog is full of tips for writers, and he makes up some really neat writing challenges to throw in the mix.

 

Dan incorporates his natural sense of humour in all his posts, no matter how serious and informative the post is, that’s just Dan.

 

Today I’m reposting Dan’s 10 tips on doing author interviews.

 

“I can hear your collective groans from here. Stop it.

 

As an author, you will occasionally get to do interviews. As the shy, retiring type that most of you writers are, you won’t want to do them. As a marketer, you do want to do them! Interviews raise awareness of your product – the book you want to sell – but don’t be fooled. The TV stars you see being amazing in interviews on late night TV or the Ellen show didn’t just fall out of bed and hit a home run, being all charming and spontaneous and witty.

 

Luckily, most of the interviews you get to do will be by email or some other written version. (For some sample interview questions I put together, click HERE. Many are the typical stuff you’ll be asked; some are just me.)

 

Why is that lucky? Because radio and TV interviews are hard.

 

First, you will probably have to contact people to do an interview regardless of the medium; they don’t come out of the woodwork to track you down just cos you published a book. According to some radio people I spoke with, authors are alwaystrying to get interviewed – and trust me, doing radio is tough. Quiet spaces while you think of an answer seem like HOURS, and you react by trying to answer quickly – and usually too fast – so it isn’t your best answer and you aren’t happy with the result. The nervousness is noticeable in your voice. You sound like a gerbil.

 

TV is the same except they get to SEE you becoming a gerbil. That’s just… painful. . . “

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Source: 10 Tips For Doing Your (Aaaaauuuugh) Author Interviews | Dan Alatorre – AUTHOR

Reblogging is flattery

From manuscript to self-published book – what does it take? | Heather Wardell

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reblogging

 

As authors, we all have our own approach to how we write and the usual steps we take after writing first draft to self publishing, but I find it’s always interesting to learn about different author’s perspectives on the journey. Heather Wardell offers some great tips on her blog post on self publishing in the link below.

 

From manuscript to self-published book – what does it take? | Heather Wardell.

Reblogging is flattery

The 10 Biggest Mistakes New Authors Make | Nicholas C. Rossis

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WRITING TIPS

Today I’m sharing a very informative post I came across on my friend and author Nicholas Rossis’ blog. He reposted this post from Cindy Bates’ website. Cindy is a freelance writer and blogger who has written this post identifying issues new writers might come across. She covers the top ten mistakes writers make from writing, to proofreading to publishing.

 

The 10 Biggest Mistakes New Authors Make | Nicholas C. Rossis.

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SHOUT OUTS and Social Sharing

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Shout Outs and Sharing

share me

I’ve been thinking about the share buttons on our blogs. When I first started blogging I wasn’t aware of the importance of these buttons—other than the fact that most of us have them at the bottom of our posts, I felt like they are there merely  for someone to click if they wanted to ‘like’ what they had read.

like me

 

In my earlier blogging days, if I enjoyed a post I always felt that I was letting the writer know so by hitting ‘like’. I didn’t realize the importance of the other ‘share’ buttons until I became a published author. Now, I’m not saying we have to be published authors in order to have our writing appreciated and shared, but this was when I learned to understand the concept of social sharing and the importance of using these buttons.

When writers spend the time writing articles and posting helpful information that can benefit others, isn’t that worth sharing? It’s  especially nice for the newcomers to blogging who are always eager to learn new things about their trade. On the same token, those buttons are very precious to help promote the writer’s website. After all, if we didn’t share things, many writers miss out on the chance of having their writing exposed to more readers and followers, not to mention, potential sales for their books.

 

These buttons offer a chance for someone else to discover the writer’s page, and by sharing on all the various sites, it creates a chain reaction of other readers to enjoy the posts and continue to have these posts ‘shared’ again from the new pages and blogs the original shares are posted in. It’s essentially cyber advertising, FREE advertising.

When I realized how important all the sharing was, I made it a part of my blogging to hit ‘like’ if I enjoyed a post and click share on all the other social media buttons that I have accounts with if I felt a post was newsworthy and especially if I read about a promotion a fellow author was offering at the time to help spread the word for them. It doesn’t cost me anything to do those things and gives my followers who read my tweets, google page, linkedin or facebook, a chance to read something they may not have discovered or a book they may be interested in.

share

I think there may be a lot of bloggers who may be prolific writers but not so well-versed in the techniques of social media; I know I sure was at the beginning of my writing journey. I didn’t realize that when we click on share with twitter etc., that the post I had just read gets posted to my own accounts for others to view, enjoy and pass along. And so I wanted to share what I have learned along this path and perhaps make others aware of the importance of using the social share buttons at the end of our posts.

Now, don’t forget to share! 🙂

 

Conflicted Hearts, D.G. Kaye

Announcing My First ‘Free’ Day

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I wanted to write a little post here about my first two weeks as an accomplished self-published author. First I will start by saying the feeling of accomplishment after working diligently to get my book out into the world in the past six months is exhilarating. Secondly, I will openly state that writing the book was the most fun part and if you think editing and revisions and book covers and formatting isn’t a small feat compared to writing, it doesn’t end there.

As writers we are constantly working our brains and are seldom found without a pen in hand for a fleeting thought that may cross our minds when we are perhaps doing something completely off topic, yet we must be prepared to grasp the moments when those juicy morsels of thought come our way. For me, when I am absorbed in some of life’s daily matters, the ideas and thoughts about my new book(s) I am writing and ideas are always on the backburner in my brain, anticipating when whatever it is I have to do at the moment can be done so I can get back to writing.

But writing a new book cannot have all your attention because we also have to keep up with the babysitting of our first book. Our work is never done. If we are adamant about our book being shared in the world, it is also our job to work on exposure for that book, thus marketing and promotions. These are all time consuming parts of the business that we must learn and adapt to and keep up with the trends so we can direct our energies to what methods are a best fit for our works and genre. And so, the life of a writer is a constant. If we are serious about our work there are no vacations, okay we can take vacations but I know when I had two little getaways this past year, my laptop came with me as well as my kindle full of ‘must read’ material. But I do believe everybody needs a break sometime, so if we can prioritize our time wisely and still find some time to have fun, we can rejuvenate ourselves and also being on vacation can open up a new part of the brain to some new experiences which every writer knows is a dream come true.

Everyone tends to form their own schedules what works best for them but for me, I find I can’t stay away from writing too long because I’m afraid it will either make me lazy or I get overwhelmed with the amount of work I’ll have to catch up on if I leave it too many days. So I strive to get something done everyday so I don’t get backlogged. My social life has shrunk exponentially this past year as my days are spent attending to life matters and writing and by night I trade up for my social media and marketing hats. Life of a writer….I love it, thrive in it and I am driven to learn this business and succeed!

FREE

On another note, I am over the moon with the reviews my book has been receiving, especially since it has only been two weeks and I am pretty much an unknown author to the cyber world. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank so many of you out there for supporting my efforts and getting my book and giving me inspiring feedback. For those of you who haven’t had a chance or perhaps were hesitant on taking a chance on reading my book, I’d like to let you all know in advance here that my book Conflicted Hearts will be making its first ‘FREE’ debut on Amazon this Friday January 10th! Yup, you are getting the scoop here first! So for those of you who have been sitting on the fence, please don’t hesitate to take advantage of this ‘One Free Day’ on Friday and if you like the book please don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon and feel free to drop by here and comment to me.

Thanks for your kind support!

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