As November eases into December, and NaNoWriMo ends in delivery or defeat, there’s a new seasonal online writing event to act as a mini come-down from the demands of bashing out a novel in a month. And you don’t need to write 50,000 words: you only need 140 characters. Read more
Are you on Pinterest yet? The latest social media phenomenon has crept up on many of us – yet the statistics show that pinning is winning. Pinterest is already the third most popular social network after Facebook and Twitter, according to a 2012 report by Experian. It has an estimated 13 million users. It is the fastest site ever to break through the 10 million unique US visitors mark according to comScore. And it now drives more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, according to a Shareaholic study in January 2012. All of which is reason enough to take an interest in Pinterest. But what is it – and how can you use it as a publisher or an author? Read more
01 Why WordPress? Other blogging platforms are available – but WordPress is the one I always recommend: it is powerful, intuitive, extendable – and free. There are two versions: WordPress.org and WordPress.com. You need to be a bit techy to … Read more
What are your biggest blogging questions? Do you have technical questions about setting up a blog? Do you want to know what to write about? How often to blog? What style you should write in? How to promote your blog? How to use widgets and plugins?
You get the idea. Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll try to answer as many as possible in The Publishing Talk Guide to Blogging. Read more
One of the best ways to use Twitter is as a way to promote your blog – which in turn promotes your book, your writing, or your publishing business. Twitter is by far the biggest driver of traffic to my blogs because an automatic tweet is posted whenever I publish a blog post – without even having to log in to Twitter. This tutorial will show you how it’s done, using Twitterfeed. Read more
How do we organize our bi-monthly BookMachine tweetups alongside full time jobs? Well, doing this has only become possible in the last few years, and all thanks to social media. We spend just 2 – 3 hours a week on promoting our events, here are the top five free tools that help us out. Read more
Today is #WriterWednesday and also the second anniversary of #amwriting – which has got me thinking about hashtags. There are now many Twitter hashtags out there that are useful to help writers promote their work, connect with other writers, and – well – write. How do you use them, and which should you use? Read more
Looking for a job in publishing? As with all social networking, when it comes to job searching there are some big ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. Twitter on its own is unlikely to find you a job: you may see jobs advertised (and you’ll need to respond quickly if you do), but it should be used as the means to finding a job, and your personal marketing tool.
Suzanne Collier of www.bookcareers.com shares her top ten tips for using Twitter for your job search. Read more
By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in The Wall Street Journal: In a feat that even the best-selling writers might envy, young-adult author John Green’s latest novel is No. 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com even though he’s still working on … Read more
Today, authors have an amazing advantage. Not only are there millions of bloggers whose collective audience is larger and more engaged than that of the traditional press, there are also millions of consumers who are one click away from sharing your work with their friends on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Power to the people!
If you can make it easy for people to share and get excited about your book, you won’t need to spend big bucks or hope you make the list of some old newspaper that no-one really reads anymore. Read more
