Ronda J. Del Boccio's Blog: Writing is pure Bliss, page 24

Writing Skills: What Flaws Does Your Character Have?

I once read a series called The Celtiad. It was good in many ways, but the hero was a superlative bard, an expert shot, and more. While everyone has great skills, flaws are essential for interesting characters.

Is your character overly sensitive? Easily offended? Protecting a secret? Here are some possible character flaws yours might possess. Be sure to remember this when writing to keep each scene realistic within its context.

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Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

Join Ronda's readers for free stories, sneak peeks at her next books and more at WriteOnPUrpose.com/read

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How to Participate in a Join.Me Web Conference

There are a number of web conferencing / webinar services such as GoToWebinar, Instant Teleseminar, and Join.Me.

I observe that the moment someone meets a new platform, they go into freeze mode, followed by whining and flailing of arms (perhaps metaphorically) "I don't know what to DO-OO-OO-OO!"

This very thing happened when I tried getting an author friend into a Join.Me webinar. Just because she hadn't seen it, all of a sudden, the perfectly normal activities of dialing a phone and clicking a link became foreign to her.

Yep, that's all it is.

If you can dial a phone and click a linbk, you can join a Join.Me web conference.

I use Join.Me because its affordable and it has a few tools, like being able to circle things onscreen.

Here's what to do.  Watch the video tutorial.

If you decide to use join.me, feel free to share this tutorial with your attendees.

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Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

Join Ronda's readers for free stories, sneak peeks at her next books and more at WriteOnPUrpose.com/read

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44 Ways to Reach Your Audience: Content Formats for Authors

As an author, sure you're going to write, but why not shake things up from the usual string of paragraphs? Here are 44 ways you can share "content" - share the good stuf your readers crave.

Some examples of content formats are:

Vlog - video blog
lists
"Day in the Life" posts
Giveaways
Reviews

See the rest in this infographic

I found a great article about developing a content marketing plan

"How to Build an Unbeatable Content Marketing Plan  by Justin McGill" The gist? Know your audience, create a plan you can manage and know your goals.

Read the whole article here.

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Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

Join Ronda's readers for free stories, sneak peeks at her next books and more at WriteOnPUrpose.com/read

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Book Review: The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick

Since every author needs social media and since I'm always reading articles and books to keep on top of things, I thought I'd share one of the excellent books about social media.

And it won't overwhelm you with hundreds of services you don't understand, either. Please take a close look at this book review and grab your copy of...

The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick

One thing I love about this book is that it won't overwhelm you. It gets right to the questions you probably have including:

How to optimize your profile
How to get more followers
How to respond to comments

Throughout the book are wonderful little gems like this one from chapter 1:

Most platforms enable you to add a tagline to your profile. Make this a mantra - two to four words that explain why you or your company exists.

Nike: authentic athletic performance

Canva: democratized design

Here's a peek at most of the table of contents:

I found myself highlighting and taking notes in certain places even though I've done a lot with social media. That mantra piece is fabulous!

And where I didn't actively take notes, I appreciated the advice. The authors admonish us to remain positive and agree to disagree in Chapter 5 about responding to comments. Good advice for everyone on social, business/author or not!

Another of the tips I don't see as many people using is from Chapter 5 about integrating social with blogging. It's tip 54 which shows you how to entice people to follow you.

Unlike Social Media Just for Writers by Frances Caballo, which I reviewed previously, The Art of Social Media will not overwhelm. I feel it gives a more actionable method for incorporating social media into your work. At the same time, both books have their place and are useful.

I like how Kawasaki and Fitzpatrick help you understand something powerfully helpful in each network without going into the weeds. You'll find out how to run Google Hangouts on Air, post to LinkedIn, share events, run a Twitter chat and more without wanting to scream.

Chapter 10 in Art of Social media will probably be a favorite of yours..."How to Avoid Looking Clueless." This could appear that you feel more at ease even if you don't feel at ease.

Get the book

The Art of Social Media

Connect with the authors
Guy Kawasaki

Amazon's Guy Kawasaki Page
Guy Kawasaki's blog
Twitter

Peg Fitzpatrick

Amazon's Peg Fitzpatrick Page
Peg Fitzpatrick's blog
Twitter

I hope this book helps you. I review a book for authors on the second and fourth Friday of the month, so be sure to come

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Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

Read More Book Reviews by Ronda Del Boccio

Looking for more book reviews? I share insights on books in most genres. See them all in the Book Review Category

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

Join Ronda's readers for free stories, sneak peeks at her next books and more at WriteOnPUrpose.com/read

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How Can Fiction Writing Techniques Amp Up Your Nonfiction? Video Tutorial

PoIf you're only or primarily a nonfiction writer, you may not have thought about blending good fiction writing skills into the mix.

Just like a good novel, your nonfiction, how-to or self help book will capture your reader's attention much better when you see the world through the eyes of a storyteller.

Watch this video tutorial to see how.

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Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

Join Ronda's readers for free stories, sneak peeks at her next books and more at WriteOnPUrpose.com/read

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Authors: 21 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

As an author, you know you need to be in social media. That's NOT a news flash, is it?

You can't just barf out links to buy your book and expect people to fall all over themselves rushing to buy your book. That's obvious, right? Yet, you'd be surprised how often I see link-barfers wondering why their sales are lagging.

Book marketing isn't about being pushy. It's about building relationships and getting people excited about your book.

Here are 21 rules for an effective social media marketing strategy. The golden nugget is to be a person of value and share other people's good stuff too. Here are the rules...

Thanks to Social Megtrics for this awesome graphic! See original source here.

Need help streamlining and planning your social media posts? Join the free class and learn the Social Media Quickie at WriteOnPurpose.com/quickie!

Please share this review all over the social web!

Follow your B.L.I.S.S.

Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

Join Ronda's readers for free stories, sneak peeks at her next books and more at WriteOnPUrpose.com/read

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Indie Publishers: Make the Most of Kindle Unlimited Video Tutorial

Kindle Unlimited is like Netflix for books. It's Amazon's $10/month unlimited lending library. Some indie publishers complain all their book sales dried up since enrolling their books. Others are doing great.

Here is a video tutorial showing you how to make the most of it.

Some ideas to Keep Kindle Unlimited from Robbing You of Royalties:

Put only the first book in a series into KDP Select.
OR enroll a book for 3 months then take it out.
OR rotate boks in and out of the program, perhaps once a year.
Remember you can exclude a KDP Select title from KU by following the procedure

Need help with your book? I do short trainings on all sorts of author-related issues. Fnd out more at WriteOnPurpose.com/free and get yourself some helpful free tools.

Please share this review all over the social web!

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Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

Join Ronda's readers for free stories, sneak peeks at her next books and more at WriteOnPUrpose.com/read

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Writing Tips: Writing British Characters? Use These Britishisms

If you're British, you might be offended if someone says , "Please hand me my fanny pack." That particular "f word" means  something less tasteful on that side of the "pond."

I've read books by American authors that include a British character Few make the dialogue sound real. There's a different cadence, and the idioms  are nowhere near th same.

If someone calls you a tosser, they're saying you're an idiot.

A dodgy person is suspicious.

Here's an infographic that might help you!

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Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

Join Ronda's readers for free stories, sneak peeks at her next books and more at WriteOnPUrpose.com/read

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Amazon Censorship: Interact with an Author and Your Book Review Goes Down!

If I have ever connected with you on the social web and I've reviewed your book - grab a screen capture, because Amazon might tear it down any second.

If I have ever reviewed your book on this site, the Amazon review I also do could be pulled down. Why? Simply because I interact with authors whose books I review, whether I know you or not. And the way Amazon is behaving, that means reviews from people like me, including your friends, fans, and anyone who tweets or FB's you, could be censored by Big Brother Amazon.

Here is a snippet from an article in The Guardian.

Amazon accused of 'Big Brother' tactics over customer reviews



Author Jas Ward has launched change.org petition after it emerged that the retail giant is monitoring social networks to screen would-be reviewers








Friends not welcome ... the Amazon logo pictured at a press conference. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

If you interact with an author in any way online, beware: Amazon might decide that you’re “friends” and ban you from leaving a review of their latest book. The online retailer appears to have tightened up its review policy to weed out people boosting their mates’ books with glowing notices, but whatever algorithms they’re using to work this out seem also to be catching anyone who engages with their favourite writers on social media. The policy has prompted allegations of “Big Brother” activity and sparked a petition calling on Amazon to reverse the decision, organised by US romance author Jas Ward, which is heading towards 11,000 signatures as of Thursday morning. Ward has penned an open letter to Amazon on the change.org petition site, writing: Read More

This is CENSORSHIP plain and simple.

Social media and email mean that even the loftiest star authors ae no longer out of reach. Most authors have a Facebook author page, a Twitter account, Instagram, and the like.

If you know an author, you may not be able to review their book.
If you tweet your favorite author, you're out as a reviewer too.
If you read a great book and review it and tag the author in social, watch out!

This is bad for authors and avid readers alike! Reviews are highly valuable and should not be stopped.

Amazon Customer Review Guidelines

friends of the person, group, or company selling on Amazon may not write Customer Reviews for those particular items.

So...Tweeting someone now makes them a close friend or family member? When did that happen?

What can you do

1. Sign the petition.

2. Tell your author and reader friends.

3. Make a lot of noise all over the web to bring this censorship to light!

Sign the Petition nown

Please share this all over the social web!

Follow your B.L.I.S.S.

Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

PS Before you go - Join NOW for FREE Tools for Writers!

What you get: The Author Profit Pack and MORE, including...

7 Ways to Earn Money While Still Writing Your Book" special report and video mini-class
7 Ways to Make Your Book Irresistible" special report and video mini-cl
Invitations to FREE right-to-the-point classes on everything from book marketing to e-publishing to social media for authors.
Free weekly author success top delivered to your inbox
and more!

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Amazon’s Indie Author Smackdown: Changes to KDP Select Payouts

Amazon has changed the way it pays authors who participate in the KDP Select program. Here is the email from Amazon:

In mid-June, we announced a change to the way we will pay for authors’ participation in Kindle Unlimited (KU) and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) (https://kdp.amazon.com/community/ann.jspa?annID=786). Starting today, the payout of the KDP Select Global Fund will be based on the number of pages KU and KOLL customers read.

 

In mid-July, we will post results for the fund in June, expected to be at least $11M, making June the largest monthly payout so far. As previously announced, the KDP Select fund for July and August will also be at least $11M.

KDP authors can now see the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC V1.0) for each of their KDP Select titles on the "Promote and Advertise" page in their Bookshelf (https://kdp.amazon.com/bookshelf). Please keep in mind that, because it is based on settings specific to this program and intended to normalize the count across all KDP Select titles, KENPC may well vary from page counts listed on a book’s Amazon detail page or page counts for a print book. As measured using KENPC, during the month of June, KU and KOLL customers read nearly 1.9 billion Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENPs) of KDP Select books.

For information about how we determine a book’s Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC V1.0), you can read more here:  https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A156OS90J7RDN.

 

We welcome your continued feedback and ideas about how we can further improve Kindle Direct Publishing and Kindle Unlimited.

 

Best regards,

The Kindle Direct Publishing Team

 

©1996-2015, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Amazon and Kindle are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. 410 Terry Avenue North Seattle, Washington 98109 US

Some questions Authors have:

What's a Kindle page?

There are no page numbers in Kindle, and anyone can adjust the font. Thus, it is unclear what they're calling a page. They're normalizing, but will it really be in our favor?

How will this affect payouts for the average indie publisher?

The program is new enough that it's hard to tell.

It feels to me like a way to apply a screwdriver to a place where sun doesn't shine!

Please share this all over the social web!

Follow your B.L.I.S.S.

Ronda Del Boccio

#1 best selling author, speaker, and Amazon Top Reviewer

About Ronda Del Boccio

Ronda Del Boccio is an award-winning and best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She tells transformational tales and helps visionary authors turn their dreams and imaginings into published books. See and order Ronda's books on Amazon.

PS Before you go - Join NOW for FREE Tools for Writers!

What you get: The Author Profit Pack and MORE, including...

7 Ways to Earn Money While Still Writing Your Book" special report and video mini-class
7 Ways to Make Your Book Irresistible" special report and video mini-cl
Invitations to FREE right-to-the-point classes on everything from book marketing to e-publishing to social media for authors.
Free weekly author success top delivered to your inbox
and more!

Get yours NOW!