Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller & Yael K. Miller Whether you have physical books or eBooks, you want your books available to potential readers using their smartphones to surf and buy. According to a recent Pew Research survey, more than 1 in 3 of all U.S. adults owns a smartphone, and 23% use it to […]
Keyword Research Resources – How to Increase Blog Traffic Using Keywords
Guest Expert: Shelley Hitz Are you using keyword research resources to help your blog gain visibility in the search engines? If not, you could potentially be missing out on a lot of free traffic from the search engines. And if you have a blog, you are most likely looking for ways to increase blog traffic to […]
Authors: Why Guest Blogging Helps Market your Book
Guest Expert: Teresa Morrow You are an author. You need to market your book and are looking for more ways to spread the message of your book. Guest blogging could be just the answer for you. Guest blogging is where you provide a blog post to another blogger to share with his or her blog readers. […]
Q&A: How to Make your Author Blog Work for You
Our 18th May webinar on How to Make your Author Blog Work for You was interesting and packed with great info. Our panel consisted of Laurel Marshfield (professional writer, ghostwriter, and developmental editor at Blue Horizon Communications), Teresa Morrow (owner Key Book Promotions, keybookpromotions.com) and Joel Friedlander (proprietor of Marin Bookworks, TheBookDesigner.com blog). We faced […]
Marketing by Creating an Online Blog Community
Guest: Bethany Ramos Published and unpublished authors alike need to have one discernible skill to stand out in a sea of competition: the ability to market themselves. If you are a new author hoping to make a break into the publishing industry, you can take the first step in the right direction by creating a […]
Using Your Blog As A Virtual Hand Shake
Guest Expert: Tony Eldridge As authors, it’s not long before we realize that networking is an integral part of spreading the word about our book. In a workshop I did in Richardson, Texas last week, I told the attendees that no one will love your book as much as you do, so you need to be […]
Ten Reasons Why You Should be Blogging
Guest Expert: Penny C. Sansevieri With all the Tweeting, Facebook Liking, and LinkedIn connecting going on, it’s easy to forget about blogging and finding the time to do so. Blogging, however, can be extremely useful for more reasons than just populating your website with content (although that’s important too). Let’s look at some reasons why […]
Author Blogging and Reader Engagement
Guest Expert: Joel Friedlander The instructions to authors have been repeated up and down the publishing line over and over: blog, blog, blog. Last year, Simon & Schuster instructed all their authors to start blogging. Every author I’ve spoken to in the last year has told me they are either trying to get a blog […]
Can Blogging Really Be an Author’s Best Friend? :: The Writerly Art of “Pollination”
Guest Expert: Laurel Marshfield On Earth Day this year, Friday, April 22, I found myself reading a book about beekeeping, appropriately enough — given that bees pollinate flowers and, as a result, make the Earth fruitful. And so, that book (A Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell – pictured in her vintage bee-farming truck above, […]
The Right (and Wrong) Way to Comment on Blogs
Expert: Dana Lynn Smith Commenting on other people’s blogs is a great way to get visibility, build relationships with bloggers, subtly promote your book, and get links back to your site (if the site gives “do-follow” links). But you can hurt your credibility if you go about it the wrong way. Here are some tips […]
Twelve Big Blog Booboos
Or How to Make Your Blogging Efforts a Big Waste of Time Expert: Carolyn Howard-Johnson Blogging is easy. Blogging is fun. That’s both good and bad. The downside is that the ease and fun of it often obscure the need to take it seriously enough to make it worth an author’s time. I often coach […]