Writer's Fun Zone by Beth Barany
Many authors think getting their work published in an anthology is great for visibility. They’re right. But not for the reason they think. If you self-publish, you then tell all your friends and family about the book. But with an anthology, you now have all the contributing authors tell all their friends and all their families about the book. The amount of people who hear about the anthology and see your published name can be ten times as many!
Welcome guest columnist, Karma Bennett, Publicist, Social Media Consultant and Writer. When I met Karma recently at a meeting for book publicists and those interested in book publicity (like me!) I was struck by...
Is Tumblr Right For Your Book? Tumblr is the original microblog. It’s a fantastic resource for authors, and much easier to use than other blogging platforms like Wordpress and Blogger.
Kickstarter is the entrepreneurial artist’s equivalent of venture capitalists, only better. Their tagline, “A new way to fund & follow creativity,” describes crowd-sourcing money and encouragement through “a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.”
Some people think book trailers are a great way to make more book sales, while others think book trailers don’t truly increase book sales much at all. The truth is that book trailers can increase your book sales if your video becomes viral. So how do you make a video go viral?
I thought that if I made my ebook have a layout exactly like my print book, that would be enough to make my ebook sell well. The truth is, by going from print to ebook, I made the layout identical and that was a mistake. I missed out on making news of the release of my ebook spread like wildfire, and I missed out on making sure I got plenty of good reviews from my ebook sales. If I had just added a few extra components to my ebook layout, I could have made more sales and received more reviews.
Everybody knows what plot is, right? It’s action. Action drives stories. Without action, without plot, you’ve got no story. Simple. But not all actions are equal. For actions to be plot, they must have consequences. Actions without consequences are setting or description.
How to write and get great reviews, with examples of a book review. A lot of authors think that getting many five-star ecstatic reviews will help make more book sales, so they get their family and friends to post rave reviews. The problem is that browsing readers can detect false praise a mile away, so if you just help guide the reviewer on how to sound authentic, your reviews will in fact help you make more sales of your books.
The problem with writing erotica is trying to come up with a compelling plot. I’m not talking about erotic romance or erotic suspense or any sub genre of erotica, I’m talking purely about straight erotica. When writing erotica, sex must be the integral part of the storyline. Sex is what tells the tale, what makes our characters evolve, and what delivers the…ahem…climax at the end.
Those who have the most powerful visions for their work, passion, persistence, determination, resilience and focus are the ones who bring it about. Decide who you want to become. Here are three ways to focus your time and energy so that you are not sitting around waiting for the book sales to come in.
On Facebook, I’ve seen a lot of authors (myself included) asking for tags and likes on their Amazon sales page.
Waste of time.
Though it’s seductively simple to ask friends and followers to tag and like your Amazon page, there are better marketing methods to request from your friends and followers that are just as simple and take just as much time.
Many entrepreneurs think any testimonial a client writes is a good testimonial. The truth is that many testimonials sound so much like fluff, prospective clients will ignore them. And if you just give guidelines to your clients or sample testimonials to choose from, your testimonials will be priceless!
When it comes to reading aloud, many authors believe their writing will speak for itself. Actually, at live reading events, your readers will base their decision to buy your book based off of how you read aloud, not how well you write. And if you just follow these few simple steps, you’ll get a lot more people interested in your novel.
I’ve been asked several times to help someone register his or her copyright. At the risk of inciting the wrath of my fellow copyright attorneys, I’ll put in print what I’ve told these people: while I’m happy to do so, you don’t need an attorney to file a copyright.
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