Writing for the web is much different than writing a book manuscript. When you write for the web, the object of the game is three-fold. You want to write valuable content that give your readers deeper insight into your book, you as an author, or the genre. As a writer and blogger, you want to...
I think most of us have a tendency to be incredibly protective of our writing and sensitive towards any response to it. I know I am. I don’t want anyone to read short stories, essays, poems or even blog posts I’ve written until I feel like they’re perfect. Maybe the rest of you aren’t quite...
I am the girl who got to the end of the lunch line in 3rd grade and looked up from my book to the cafeteria lady’s “ahem”, completely oblivious to the fact that I’d gone the whole way through the line without picking up a single item of food. I am the girl who appeared...
When my friend Audrey asked me to give her my professional advice about promoting herself on online to help her get a teaching job, I’ll admit that I was out of my comfort zone. Being public relations professional, I don’t know much about the ins and outs of securing a teaching job. What I did...
Your book is finished and printed, and you are as proud as a first-time mom holding her newborn. Like that new mom, your part in this project is far from over. You are instrumental in several more aspects of your book, including: Getting people to talk about the book. Determining how people talk about it....
I recently had a conversation with a good blogger friend (she blogs at Musely, among other places). Being as active with social media as she is, she’s encountered some interesting dilemmas as to what to post, where and when. I’m often asked this by authors who are new to social media. What’s appropriate to post,...Set Godin wrote a great blog post that my colleague @rainbowtooPR shared with me today. It’s about fear, scarcity and value. Many of our authors know how to write tomes of fiction and non-fiction, but when we help them learn social media, fear sometimes paralyzes them with fear. Just the other day, one author told me,...
It goes without saying that there is a lot happening online. We’re overloaded with more information than we set out to find in every avenue – from checking the weather, email and news to shopping and banking. And of course, reading our favorite blogs. Many sites use every square inch of screen space for ads,...
Do you suffer from a dull, lackluster blog? Do readers click on your posts only to quickly close the window in disgusted boredom? I have a remedy for that. Just like your 8th grade boyfriend said when he dumped you at your locker before the start of summer vacation because he secretly wanted to date...You are likely familiar with this Twitter format; with its renovation, Twitter is changing its format to look like this instead: Everything that you could do before is still available to you; however, some things have been moved around. For instance, the main menu used to show: Now, it shows: Home is still the same....
As literary publicists, my coworkers and I are always telling authors to make themselves a valuable source of information. Whatever the author’s subject matter expertise, we coach them to create and share both their own content and that from others. At some point, the issue becomes how to supply never-ending content. Everybody runs out of...
What J.K. Rowling and Stephen King Know that You Don’t
May 11, 2012
Five Things to Keep in Mind when Marketing Your Book
May 4, 2012
Does Publicity help Garner Sales? – the Mousetrap Analogy
Apr 30, 2012
The 2012 LA Times Festival of Books
Apr 27, 2012
