Nancy Christie's Blog, page 81

Out-of-the-box book marketing tips: Guest post from author Christine Benedict

When Christine and I met in person at the Indie Author Conference & Showcase hosted by Cuyahoga County Public Library, the first thing I noticed was the gold star label on her book, Anonymous.

She told me she did it herself using an embosser and blank gold labels, and then proceeded to share other strategies she has used to successfully sell her first novel. (Who says authors aren’t generous?)

I took notes like mad, and then begged her to write a guest post for The Writer’s Place because I kn...

Internet Book Piracy–What to do: Guest post from Gini Graham Scott, PhD

So it happened again. You had set up a Google Alert with your name and your book title, and one morning, an alert pops up in your inbox. Except when you click on the link, it takes you to a site where the book is available for free or someone else is claiming credit for it.

If this hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. Trust me.

Both my books—THE GIFTS OF CHANGE and TRAVELING LEFT OF CENTER AND OTHER STORIES—have fallen victim to book piracy, which is why reading this guest post by Gini Graha...

Celebrating Organize Your Home Office Day with guest post from Lisa Kanarek

Since today is National Organize Your Home Office Day, I thought it appropriate to ask Lisa Kanarek, who created the event, for some tips on how to make our home offices more inspiring and less, well, cluttered, cramped and darned right uncomfortable!

And this is definitely an area of expertise for Lisa. Her website, WorkingNaked.com, is chock full of ideas for making that home office work for you—not against you! In this guest post, she provides strategies for having the kind of home office t...

Literary Lifelines: Books that got me through

I started this post last November in a hospital room, while I was waiting for the discharge papers for my father. The good news was, as things go, it wasn’t so bad. Certainly, when I think back to other days and nights in other hospitals and ER waiting rooms, this one had been a piece of cake. A comparatively minor infection, a few days of IV antibiotics and my 92-year-old father was back with me.

But then a few more health setbacks and “surprises” (not the kind one wants, either!) occurred wi...

Loving writing when it doesn’t love me back

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about success and love and feelings of accomplishment, mostly because I have working on a number of guest posts on what makes me feel successful as a writer. (Check out my recent post on Sione Aeschliman’s blog on my personal definition of success.)

And of course loves factors into that because I love what I do. I love writing—the act of writing, the creation of something that hadn’t existed before, the putting down in concrete form what had hitherto existed only...

3 Must-Haves for your online “home”

It doesn’t matter whether you opt for a website or a blog to establish your online presence as a writer or author.

What matters is that it’s well-designed and well-written, easy to navigate and interesting to those people who come calling at your virtual “home.”

As Kiffer Brown of Chanticleer Book Reviews wrote in Hot Tips for Your Author Website (found on Shari Stauch’s Where Writers Win blog), “The average length of time that you have to make an impression on a website visitor is about 5 to 1...

Setting writing goals? Make them SMART—and flexible!

It wouldn’t be January if there wasn’t a surfeit of books, articles and blog posts about goals.

Figuring out what your goals are—or should be
Figuring out how you’re going to achieve them
Figuring out how you’re going to handle all distractions, disturbances and disasters that seek to undermine your plans and deflect you from your strategy

And I’ll confess that I’m right up there with the rest of them. I religiously set goals every January 1, and talk about goal-setting at the January meeting of...

Book Marketing—Ya Gotta Do It

More often than I have noted, I get a call from a newbie author and the conversation essentially goes like this:

Author: I wrote a book and I thought maybe you could give me some ideas how to sell it.

Me: What have you done so far?

Author: Well, I called a couple of bookstores but when they asked for my book marketing packet and I said I didn’t have one, they didn’t seem all that interested.

Me: Did you start working on putting one together?

Author: Nah. I don’t have time to do that. So how can I...

Planning ahead for 2015

For some of my corporate clients, I am in charge of not only writing blog posts but developing and maintaining the editorial calendar. Once I explained to them the benefits of having such an item in the marketing arsenal, they understood its value.

For one thing, it allowed them to take advantage of already scheduled events or special occasions (think World Fair Trade Day, National Literacy Action Week or Breast Cancer Awareness Month) and, if appropriate, tie it to whatever goods or services...

Five tips for creating a family memoir

The holidays are coming up fast, and many of us will be spending time with parents and siblings, cousins and grandparents—all those family members that we see far less often than we would like. And even those of us whose family tree has far-flung roots reach out for some kind of connection, exchanging letters and pictures, emails and texts, to experience at least a virtual visit if we can’t be there in person.

When I was planning the November topic for my Monday Night Writers group, I thought...