"Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway."
-Robert Henri
Emerald
Emerald
is an erotic fiction author whose short stories have been featured in
anthologies published by Cleis Press, Mischief, and Logical-Lust. She
serves as an assistant newsletter editor and Facebook group moderator
for Marketing for Romance Writers (MFRW), and she selects and posts the
monthly inspirational quote on the MFRW Marketing Blog. Find out more
about her at her website, The Green Light District.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Sunday, August 17, 2014
What Authors Should Blog About. #MFRWorg talks Blog Content.
So you have a blog but don't know how to fill your days. That seems to be the most difficult obstacle for most authors as they begin their blog. First, know that you do not have to blog every day. On average, writers blog three times a week. Second, remember to participate in memes - I mentioned these in one of my last Blogging Posts. And most importantly, keep your blog true to you and your brand. No two blogs should be the same.
This is just a short list. Help us make it longer... what do you blog about that might inspire other authors?
- Share updates on your books.
- Serialize your writing by putting out a few chapters of a "free read" monthly.
- Share interesting information on your research.
- Provide character summaries.
- Host your characters for guest posts.
- Share inspiring or funny observations.
- Create a personal column to give readers insight into you as a person. For example, I write "Queen of my Kingdom" monthly about my family.
- Announce personal appearance, book signings and conferences.
- Share books you've enjoyed reading... or movies, if you're a movie buff.
- Host other authors in your genre. Make these more than promos. Perhaps a theme authors can participate in. For example, I do BOOKSauthorsREAD and invite authors to be my guests.
- Partner with other authors for a group blog if you don't want to manage your own.
- Participate in memes.
This is just a short list. Help us make it longer... what do you blog about that might inspire other authors?
Paloma
Paloma Beck is a Romance Author living a life of contradiction... she's a happily married carpooling mom writing sexy romance. It's almost naughty! Paloma writes full-time and has three series in the works with others on the fringes. Her books span both the contemporary and paranormal romance genres.
Paloma serves as MFRW's Blog Director.
Friday, August 15, 2014
#MFRWorg Newbie's World: #SEO for Authors @AuthorErinMoore
SEO for Authors
What it is, and Why it matters
As Newbies, navigating the internet can be one of the
hardest things we have to tackle. And one thing that we can really use to our
advantage – without doing any (well, much) work at all – is Search Engine
Optimization. Put simply – we want people to come to us through Google.
Of course, there are the obvious searches – someone
searching for us under our name or pen name. And we definitely need to make
sure that the right “me” is being found. (See my other article
on blogging and Google + Authorship.)
But less obvious is how we come up in the organic results.
We want our names, and more importantly, our books, to come up first (or
second, or third – as long as it’s on that first page of results) when someone
searches for, say “shaman romances”.
So how do we best
set up our website for search engines?
First, we need it to be active. That means changing
something every so often, even if it’s just the “updates” or “news” page.
Blogs count. And, as we all know, we need to be producing
great content for those blogs. But did you know that you should consistently be
linking to other sites within your blogs? Or that you should be linking back to
other blogs you have written? And, of course, it’s even better if a
higher-rated site can site your blog. All of these things earn us higher
rankings in the might search engine. For more information, try this great
article on blogging for authors.
And, if you are writing blogs, make sure to name them
something catchy. There are a bunch of tools that you can use to research this.
Unfortunately, Google no longer lets you use its tool without an Adsense
sign-in, but here are some other
great tools for finding keywords.
Privacy Policy:
Here’s one that most of us don’t know about. You will have to drop in a little
bit of code onto your website. The way I did mine was to just add in a small
link to a hidden page on my home page.
There are a bunch of different (and free) sites out there
that will provide you with one. The one I used was: http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/free-privacy-policy-generator.php.
It’s probably a bit more in-depth than most of us need it to be, especially as
we are probably not actively selling anything on our website (processing credit
cards, for instance). Or, alternatively,
an easy one:
This blog does not share personal information with
third parties nor do we store any information about your visit to this blog
other than to analyze and optimize your content and reading experience through
the use of cookies.
You can turn off the use of cookies at anytime by
changing your specific browser settings.
We are not responsible for republished content from
this blog on other blogs or websites without our permission.
This privacy policy is subject to change without
notice and was last updated on Month, Day, Year. If you have any questions feel
free to contact me directly here: xxxx@xxxx.com.
[Source: http://john.do/privacy-policy/]
Disclaimers: These are yet another layer of trust for
Google. It can be something simple like: The
views and opinions on this website are solely those of the author. Any
advertising on this site should not be considered an endorsement.
[Disclaimer:
I’m not a lawyer, so don’t trust anything I write, either.]
Why does any of this
matter? Because when our website comes up first, and people land on our
page, then they have a higher likelihood of buying something – i.e., our books!
It’s just another way to find readers, and if we haven’t done these things
already, then it should only take about 20 minutes to implement them.
Let me know if you have any SEO best practices!
Posted by Erin
Erin writes paranormal romances as Erin Moore and contributes to the MFRW Marketing Blog with her monthly column, A Newbie's World. Her latest book is a sexy minotaur shifter story set in Crete.
She manages two monsters and one unruly husband in Atlanta in between writing and main-lining chocolate and tea. Look her up on www.AuthorErinMoore.com or, of course, on Twitter: @AuthorErinMoore.
She manages two monsters and one unruly husband in Atlanta in between writing and main-lining chocolate and tea. Look her up on www.AuthorErinMoore.com or, of course, on Twitter: @AuthorErinMoore.
Monday, August 11, 2014
How We Spent Our Summer Vacations: MFRW Young Adult Blog Hop #MFRWAuthor
Blog hop time is fast approaching, and this one will be particularly fun. The focus is Young Adult, and the theme is Summer Vacations. Who remembers that first essay we had to write once we were back together at school? "How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Didn't it seem like every other kid had a cooler summer than yours? Especially when too many summers were spent relocating when my father was transferred to a new Naval base.
Who remembers those long lazy summer days? When I first thought of this blog, a movie from my teen years came to mind:
Please don't check on when this movie came out so you can calculate how old I am. A gal's gotta keep some mystery going!
Those days are long past and now summer is the time when I have to figure out how to keep the weeds under control and wonder if we're going to get enough rain to be bothered to put in a garden. It's New Mexico, and rain is generally an issue. This year not so much, and fortunately I got that garden put together, sort of, just in time for the hail to take out most of my blossoms. Gotta love the high desert.
Unfortunately this hop is only for Young Adult authors. As much as I'd enjoy writing about summer vacations from the POV of one of my main characters, I can't participate, I'll only administer. I'm hearing rumors of a really cool prize so I strongly recommend you drop by when the hop goes live later this month. We have some remarkable YA authors ready to sign up, you won't be disappointed, win or lose.
Who remembers those long lazy summer days? When I first thought of this blog, a movie from my teen years came to mind:
Please don't check on when this movie came out so you can calculate how old I am. A gal's gotta keep some mystery going!
Those days are long past and now summer is the time when I have to figure out how to keep the weeds under control and wonder if we're going to get enough rain to be bothered to put in a garden. It's New Mexico, and rain is generally an issue. This year not so much, and fortunately I got that garden put together, sort of, just in time for the hail to take out most of my blossoms. Gotta love the high desert.
Unfortunately this hop is only for Young Adult authors. As much as I'd enjoy writing about summer vacations from the POV of one of my main characters, I can't participate, I'll only administer. I'm hearing rumors of a really cool prize so I strongly recommend you drop by when the hop goes live later this month. We have some remarkable YA authors ready to sign up, you won't be disappointed, win or lose.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Preparing Artwork for Newsletters (Or Blogs)
How do you put together
an award-winning newsletter? Well, you could use Word
and just write a lot, but that would be kind of boring. What sets one newsletter apart from another
is the use of artwork. There are a lot
of different programs out there that enable you to edit artwork. I like IrfanView. It’s free, and I find it easier than the
Microsoft or Adobe programs. Microsoft
wants to store everything in the Cloud and I don’t necessarily want to store
other people’s book covers in my Picasa account. As for Adobe, I seem to have a mind-block
when it comes to that program. Don’t
know why.
So, when I receive a
photo, I save it to a folder I keep for my newsletter artwork. If the author doesn’t send artwork, I go to
her/his publisher’s website or to Amazon and copy it from there. If I get it from Amazon, I’ll need to crop
the Amazon info from the artwork. To do
that, I open the file in IrfanView. I
then click on the magnifying glass icon with the + sign until the image is
large enough to work with. Place the
cursor at your favorite corner of the book, and outline the book. Then go to edit and scroll down to “Crop
selection,” and click. If you’ve done it
right, you should have just the artwork without the Amazon logo.
I like to keep all of
my artwork at a uniform size. I think
1.5 inches wide works best. Book covers
are usually about 1.5” wide by about 2.25” long. Author photos tend to be more square. And I think 150 dots per inch works fairly
well. So, go to Image, which is the
drop-down menu right next to Edit. Click
on Resize/Resample. You’ll see the boxes
where you can set the sizes for width and height. Make sure you click on inches or
pixels—whichever you’re most comfortable with.
I usually make sure the “Preserve Aspect Ratio” and “Apply Sharpen After
Resample” boxes are also checked. Finally, I set the DPI (Dots per Inch) box at
150 or 300, depending on how dense you want your artwork to be, and how large
you want your file to be. The MFRW
Newsletter is up to almost eight pages and will soon be over a hundred, so 150 DPI
are plenty for us.
Save your artwork in
its folder, and you’re good to go!
Now I’d like to
introduce you to Emerald. When our staff
splits and we have an editorial section and an Advertising Section, Em will
head the editorial side.
Emerald is an erotic fiction author and general advocate for human
sexuality as informed by her deep appreciation of the beauty, value, and
intrinsic nature of sexuality and its holistic relation to life. Her work has
been featured in anthologies published by Cleis Press, Mischief, and
Logical-Lust, and she serves as an assistant newsletter editor and Facebook
group moderator for Marketing for Romance Writers (MFRW). Read more about her
at her website, The Green Light
District.
Facebook Page https://facebook.com/EmeraldAuthor
Amazon Author Page http://amazon.com/author/emerald
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Writing Tip: Prioritizing a Task #MFRWauthor #amwriting @kayelleallen
How to Prioritize a Task |
Writers deal with shifting priorities all the time. If we
have children, we put their needs before just about anything else. A spouse
often comes before our needs. We face deadlines with books, with blog posts,
with friends' expectations... you name it. There are always things tugging at
us. Asking us to decide which is more important.
How do we decide? By putting them into a chart like the one
shown here. There are four quadrants: Important, Not Important, Urgent, Not
Urgent.
Important implies something that must be done, but perhaps
not this moment. Urgent means it's something that must be done now. Not
important means it can wait until a better time. Perhaps nothing bad will
happen if we don't do it at all, or at least the consequence is something we
can live with. Not urgent means it should be done, but can be put off.
What's the difference? An urgent task has a looming deadline
or one that has passed. It can have a significant impact on your life.
Important tasks don't have a deadline, but they have an impact anyway. Urgency
is associated with time and impact. Importance is associated more with impact.
So how do you decide what to do first? Consider whether the
task at hand has a deadline. Must it be done right now? Paying the light bill
by a certain date to keep the lights on is an urgent task. Changing a burned
out light bulb might be important if it means you can't see to pay the light
bill.
Think of the Urgent and Important tasks as putting out
fires. They are extremely important. Things could get worse if they are not
handled now.
Important but Not Urgent tasks are things we do to be
proactive. We can do them at a pace that allows us to spend "quality
time" on them, without rushing. But they must be done.
Urgent but Not Important tasks are things we have to do
right now (answering the phone) but that you might be able to shuffle a bit.
Not Urgent and Not Important tasks are things we do that
don't add to our goals, such as shopping, playing a game, even some driving.
These are more "time wasters" than productive items.
Tarthian Empire Companion |
Plug a few tasks into this chart and see how they fall. If
they are not urgent and not important, they can wait. The urgent and important
can not. Determine where your tasks fall in this chart and you will be well on
your way to prioritizing your next task.
---
Kayelle Allen is the founder of Marketing for Romance
Writers. She is a multi-published, award-winning
author, and the owner of The Author's Secret, an author support company. Her unstoppable
heroes and heroines include contemporary characters, futuristic immortals, covert agents, and warriors who purr.
Homeworld http://kayelleallen.com
Unstoppable Heroes Blog http://kayelleallen.com/blog
Twitter http://twitter.com/kayelleallen
The Author's Secret https://theauthorssecret.com
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