Sally Murphy's Blog, page 42

Wandering Words #2

Five Minute Promo: Day 23

Yesterday I had you Tweeting about the weather. Today’s task should be just as easy, and I’m going to get straight to the point:

5 Min Promo #23

A cute dog picture can appeal to lots of people.

Take a photo of something cute, then open your Instgram app and post it. Make sure you say a little something and use some hashtags.

Got nothing cute to photograph? What about one of those cats and dogs that fell down in yesterday’s rain? Or any of your longer-lasting pets. Maybe it’s an ornament or toy you own. Or your child/grandchild.

Why cute? Because it’s human nature that many people love cute photos – they see that fluffy duckling, or that furry lamb and they say awwwwww. And that’s engagement. They wonder what else you’ve posted, and this leads them to see images of your book in your other posts.

Five Minute Promo Day 23

Yesterday I had you Tweeting about the weather. Today’s task should be just as easy, and I’m going to get straight to the point:

5 Min Promo #23

Here’s something cute I photographed in Adelaide last week.

Take a photo of something cute, then open your Instgram app and post it. Make sure you say a little something and use some hashtags.

Got nothing cute to photograph? What about one of those cats and dogs that fell down in yesterday’s rain? Or any of your longer-lasting pets. Maybe it’s an ornament or toy you own. Or your child/grandchild.

Why cute? Because it’s human nature that many people love cute photos – they see that fluffy duckling, or that furry lamb and they say awwwwww. And that’s engagement. They wonder what else you’ve posted, and this leads them to see images of your book in your other posts.

5 minutes is what it takes. Go to it.

And see you tomorrow.

Five Minute Promo: Day 22

It’s July 22 which means it’s also Day 22 of the Five Minute Promo challenge. Before you get to today’s task, stop what you’re doing, head to the nearest window, and take a look outside (unless, of course, you already are outside, or have just been for a lovely morning walk before attending to your social media for the day).

You’re back? Good. Here’s the task.

5 Min Promo #22

Clouds building on my favourite beach: a good topic for a tweet.

Go to your Twitter account and compose and post a Tweet about the weather. You can be serious: Just looked out my window and it is raining.

Or Whiny:

Just looked outside and can’t believe it is raining. Again.

Or excited:

OMG!!! Can’t believe it’s actually raining.

Or just plain silly:

It’s raining cats and dogs. No wonder the mouse is hiding.

(Okay that wasn’t all that funny – am sure you can come up with something better).

Don’t forget to use a hashtag or two, and then you’re done.

How does talking about the weather promote your book? It doesn’t, directly (unless of course you’ve written a book about the weather), but it engages your followers, especially those who strongly agree or disagree with you, or who match your sense of humour. Talking about the weather is just as engaging online as it is off.

Go to it – five minutes to tweet, perhaps check what everyone else is tweeting about, and then head outside and enjoy that beautiful sunshine. Oh – I forgot: it’s raining.

See you tomorrow.

Poetry Friday: Yum!

It’s Poetry Friday and I have just a quick post today, as I’m having a really busy week.

Last week while I was in Adelaide I bought myself two magnet sets, including boards and magnets, to add to my collection of magnetic words for inspiring and creating poetry. Earlier this week I posted the first poem I created using the sets. If you missed it, here it is:

When I got the set out today, I was attracted to the picture magnets and wondered if I could use some of them to inspire a rhyme. Here’s my effort, written in whiteboard marker:

And, when I looked back through my poems I came across this one written on my old, more staid whiteboard with some of my many other magnet words:

I look forward to creating lots more poems – simple and more complex – with my new toys.

 

Have a great Poetry Friday. This week’s roundup is hosted by Books 4 Learning. Head there to see links to more poetry goodness.

Wandering Words #1

Five Minute Promo: Day 21

Welcome to Day 21 of Five Minute Promo. It’s truly lovely to have you come back. Today’s task is another nice easy one, and I’m going to get right to it – after I’ve reminded you that I would love it if you left me a comment to let me know how you are finding these daily tasks. Are you doing them? Are you noticing more engagement with your followers?

Anyway, over to today’s task.

5 Min Promo #21

Head over to Pinterest and  pin five new images (and their links) to your board/s. If you haven’t already, I really recommend you add the Pinterest tool to your browser bar, so you can pin things you find more quickly and easily. Don’t know what to pin?  Check those Google results for your book and pin those. Or, if you have a board on another topic, pin something to that. You can even repin other people’s pins – this is a wonderful element of Pinterest. The image to the right is an image I have pinned before, and might pin again to a different board today.

See you back here tomorrow for another easy peasy five minute tip.

Five Minute Promo: Day 20

Phew. This is my twentieth post for the month about quick promotional tasks you can complete to get word of your book out to the wider world. If you’ve just joined me, feel free to scroll back through the other nineteen posts (and extra posts in between).

Not THAT kind of layout.

What possessed me to undertake a month of daily posts about promotion? My new book, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, which came out on July 1, leading me to wonder what things I could do to promote the book that weren’t so time-consuming that I didn’t have time to work on the fourth book in the series (which has now winged its way off to the publisher), work on my Doctoral project, travel to two conferences, and myriad other things.

So, over to today’s task.

Five Minute Promo #20

Write a blog post about design and layout. What you focus on will depend on your particular book and your unique knowledge. I’ve chosen, for example, to focus on the cover design and, more broadly, on the role other people played in my finished book. You might talk about how illustrations and text are placed, or which font was used, or why the index is in a different font than the rest of your book, or anything else you can think of.

Remember, it’s a quick post – though of course you can take as long as you like. Clock’s ticking, so off you go, and I’ll see back here tomorrow. In the meantime, leave me a comment, if you have time, and let me know how you’re getting on with all this promo.

All About the Cover

Have a look at this cover:

Believe it or not, this beautiful front cover wasn’t the original planned cover for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. In fact, you can even find the original cover online, through a Google search. However, to save you heading off to look for it, here is the original cover:

Which do you prefer? Hopefully, like me, you prefer the final cover. I love the colours, the brightness, and the appearance of Sage, the hero of the series. Every time I look at this cover I smile.

But, I must confess, that when I saw the other cover, which was the first I saw, I was also happy. And if the new cover hadn’t been decided on at the publishing house, I would have not only been content, but also not known that something else had been considered.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post. An author is rarely (if ever) the best qualified person to make decisions on every aspect of the final book. Few people have the complete skill set to write, illustrate, design, typeset, edit, copyedit, proofread, market, distribute and hand sell a book.

In my case, because Sweet Escape (and, of course, the whole Sage Cookson series) is traditionally published, my chief role is to write the book. Of course I also work with editors and have some input into illustrations and covers, but really once I’ve written the book I have to relinquish a great deal of control to the publisher – not only because they are funding the book’s production, but also because they have, either on their staff, or through the use of freelancers – staff with those varied skill sets. Together we bring the final book to life. If I was self-published I would become the publisher, but I would still need to consider either obtaining those many and varied skills or using other people to help me get the book out there into the world.

Back to the cover. The chief reason for the change was a marketing one, and with Sweet Escape selling well, I think it was a good decision. So I’m glad that my publisher, New Frontier, went with the cover they did.

What do you think?

How to Make Easy-Peasy Chocolate Fondant

In the back of each book in the Sage Cookson series there is a recipe, which you can make at home. The recipe at the back of Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape is for Cheat’s Chocolate Fondant. Today I am super-excited because my publisher has produced a video showing you just how easy this recipe is to make.

Enjoy!