Eric Dontigney's Blog, page 11

Guest Post from Author Brae Wyckoff – Are book giveaways effective for authors?

Image courtesy of Brae Wyckoff.

Yes and no. It really depends on how you target your reader base and through which social media platforms you do your giveaway.

Before I tackle the monster giveaway through Amazon’s KDP select program, let’s tackle a couple others.

Personal giveaway program- This is where you set up contests and seek out people to read and review your book. This is greatly effective to start getting those much needed reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Reviews do matter suffice it to say. I typically take the top rating and the lowest rating and discard them before making a sound decision in buying a book. I have done several contests on facebook and through blogging for book giveaways. This generates a buzz as people like to win things…who doesn’t, right? You need to market yourself and in marketing you need to give some books away. Don’t just hand them out like candy to anyone but try to be effective in your planning. Giveaway contests are good to build an audience on FB and on your blog. It is also nice to give books away on other bloggers sites if they are close to your genre (Don’t give a book away on an erotica site when you have an epic fantasy novel…wrong kind of fantasy group to reach, if you know what I mean). Seek out genre specific readers and ask for them to review your book. Your book needs to get traction within that specific genre audience so be selective. Some will say yes and others will say no. I reached out to over a hundred bloggers, emailing them all to get a book review and about ten got back to me, so that is a 10% return.
Goodreads is another great spot for a book giveaway. This is for paperback books only. You can target the USA or several other countries. Most of the time, the winner is a US resident but if you have an out of country winner then expect to pay more for shipping to them. (You can set up an Amazon account in that country and have your book delivered via Amazon instead to save a few dollars on shipping and you get money back for the sale. Just don’t state that you will be sending an autographed copy if you do this option). To be safe, target USA only or your specific country you reside in. Do a single book giveaway as I have not seen the benefit of doing multiple copies at once.  I have done 3 separate giveaways. My first go around was for 3 copies and I had it up for a month before the contest ended. This generated over a 1,000 people entering and placing my book on their to-read list. Not bad. My 2nd go around was for a single book for just five days. This generated over 1,200 entries and more people adding it to their to-read shelf. The 3rd time was also a single book for one week.  I had over 1,400 people enter to win and another thousand placing it on their shelf. I am approaching almost 2,000 people having my book on their shelf to read and in turn people are inevitably viewing my book. Once someone keeps seeing the same image over and over they will eventually check it out. This is a great way to get your book into the public. I am looking forward to having a million people viewing and buying my books. It can and will happen for you to but you have to put your time and effort into it.
Okay, let’s talk about Amazon’s KDP Select program and the five free days that come with this. You must be exclusive with Amazon so you can’t have your book on any other platform. I have personally not seen the benefit of having the free day usage for books. Some have used it to achieve great things but very few, so it begs the question, “Is this really effective for authors?” Some say yes (few) while others will say no. I have been very watchful of other authors and my take is this. There are a lot of people out there that just want free books and won’t spend a dime. I call these people “ebook hoarders”. They collect and download free books but never really read any of them. It is almost like a security blanket, a strange collection if you will. They feel better knowing they got it on their computer or kindle. I have downloaded some free books myself but they just sit there. I made no dollar investment so the perceived value is, “well, I will get to it someday but it is not a priority because I didn’t spend any of my money on it.” I think it can be effective if you strategize and plan on a reason to have a free giveaway of your book or maybe having a sale, but not completely free. My 2nd book, The Dragon God, will be out later this year and it is wise to get my first book out there more so it will drive sales for the sequel. I will strategize with my Orb Street Team and my PR Manager (Aileen Aroma) to make it the best it can be.

With everything that I have said there is one major thing that you must have in place even before you do this and that is having a professional book from top to bottom. Professional cover and professional editing. Your book needs to stand toe to toe with the greats out there. Your book needs to shine and rise to the top of the millions of mediocre novels being shoved into our faces and downloaded onto our kindles. Invest in yourself and do it right. Oh, and make sure you get feedback about your story. You might think it is good but others opinions do matter. IT IS TIME to step up and be that bright star within the book world. People are waiting for the next big thing. Are you it? Are you all in? I am.

Bio: Brae Wyckoff was born and raised in San Diego, CA and is working toward a Psychology degree. He has been married to his beautiful wife, Jill, for 20 years, and they have three children; Tommy, Michelle, and Brittany. He has a beautiful grandson named Avery.

​Brae has been an avid gamer since 1985. His passion for mysterious realms and the supernatural inspired him to write The Orb of Truth, the first in a series of fantasy action adventures. Brae describes The Orb of Truth as a cross between the Lord of the Rings and the Wizard of OZ where you will be swept away into a magical land of Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings. Learn more at his website: http://www.braewyckoff.com/

 

Guest Post – Are book giveaways effective for authors?

Image courtesy of Brae Wyckoff.

Yes and no. It really depends on how you target your reader base and through which social media platforms you do your giveaway.

Before I tackle the monster giveaway through Amazon’s KDP select program, let’s tackle a couple others.

Personal giveaway program- This is where you set up contests and seek out people to read and review your book. This is greatly effective to start getting those much needed reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Reviews do matter suffice it to say. I typically take the top rating and the lowest rating and discard them before making a sound decision in buying a book. I have done several contests on facebook and through blogging for book giveaways. This generates a buzz as people like to win things…who doesn’t, right? You need to market yourself and in marketing you need to give some books away. Don’t just hand them out like candy to anyone but try to be effective in your planning. Giveaway contests are good to build an audience on FB and on your blog. It is also nice to give books away on other bloggers sites if they are close to your genre (Don’t give a book away on an erotica site when you have an epic fantasy novel…wrong kind of fantasy group to reach, if you know what I mean). Seek out genre specific readers and ask for them to review your book. Your book needs to get traction within that specific genre audience so be selective. Some will say yes and others will say no. I reached out to over a hundred bloggers, emailing them all to get a book review and about ten got back to me, so that is a 10% return.
Goodreads is another great spot for a book giveaway. This is for paperback books only. You can target the USA or several other countries. Most of the time, the winner is a US resident but if you have an out of country winner then expect to pay more for shipping to them. (You can set up an Amazon account in that country and have your book delivered via Amazon instead to save a few dollars on shipping and you get money back for the sale. Just don’t state that you will be sending an autographed copy if you do this option). To be safe, target USA only or your specific country you reside in. Do a single book giveaway as I have not seen the benefit of doing multiple copies at once.  I have done 3 separate giveaways. My first go around was for 3 copies and I had it up for a month before the contest ended. This generated over a 1,000 people entering and placing my book on their to-read list. Not bad. My 2nd go around was for a single book for just five days. This generated over 1,200 entries and more people adding it to their to-read shelf. The 3rd time was also a single book for one week.  I had over 1,400 people enter to win and another thousand placing it on their shelf. I am approaching almost 2,000 people having my book on their shelf to read and in turn people are inevitably viewing my book. Once someone keeps seeing the same image over and over they will eventually check it out. This is a great way to get your book into the public. I am looking forward to having a million people viewing and buying my books. It can and will happen for you to but you have to put your time and effort into it.
Okay, let’s talk about Amazon’s KDP Select program and the five free days that come with this. You must be exclusive with Amazon so you can’t have your book on any other platform. I have personally not seen the benefit of having the free day usage for books. Some have used it to achieve great things but very few, so it begs the question, “Is this really effective for authors?” Some say yes (few) while others will say no. I have been very watchful of other authors and my take is this. There are a lot of people out there that just want free books and won’t spend a dime. I call these people “ebook hoarders”. They collect and download free books but never really read any of them. It is almost like a security blanket, a strange collection if you will. They feel better knowing they got it on their computer or kindle. I have downloaded some free books myself but they just sit there. I made no dollar investment so the perceived value is, “well, I will get to it someday but it is not a priority because I didn’t spend any of my money on it.” I think it can be effective if you strategize and plan on a reason to have a free giveaway of your book or maybe having a sale, but not completely free. My 2nd book, The Dragon God, will be out later this year and it is wise to get my first book out there more so it will drive sales for the sequel. I will strategize with my Orb Street Team and my PR Manager (Aileen Aroma) to make it the best it can be.

With everything that I have said there is one major thing that you must have in place even before you do this and that is having a professional book from top to bottom. Professional cover and professional editing. Your book needs to stand toe to toe with the greats out there. Your book needs to shine and rise to the top of the millions of mediocre novels being shoved into our faces and downloaded onto our kindles. Invest in yourself and do it right. Oh, and make sure you get feedback about your story. You might think it is good but others opinions do matter. IT IS TIME to step up and be that bright star within the book world. People are waiting for the next big thing. Are you it? Are you all in? I am.

Bio: Brae Wyckoff was born and raised in San Diego, CA and is working toward a Psychology degree. He has been married to his beautiful wife, Jill, for 20 years, and they have three children; Tommy, Michelle, and Brittany. He has a beautiful grandson named Avery.

​Brae has been an avid gamer since 1985. His passion for mysterious realms and the supernatural inspired him to write The Orb of Truth, the first in a series of fantasy action adventures. Brae describes The Orb of Truth as a cross between the Lord of the Rings and the Wizard of OZ where you will be swept away into a magical land of Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings. Learn more at his website: http://www.braewyckoff.com/

 

Websites for Indie Authors – Where to Start, Part 4

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

 

In this final installment of my mini-series on where to start in terms of indie author websites, it’s finally time to talk about just what should actually appear on the website. There is a touch of crossover with picking an approach to getting a website up. For example, if you go the DIY route or use WordPress, you don’t need to know everything that is going to appear on the site up-front. If you’re going to hire someone to build it for you, however, you need a pretty clear idea of everything that is going to go on the site in order to get all the work done.

Basic Elements

Author sites vary a lot in terms of complexity, but no author website can do without certain basic elements.

Home Page – The homepage on an author site presents certain problems for authors. Since your primary offering is books, rather than some kind of service, and you probably don’t sell your books directly, there’s a gap straight businesses normally fill with that kind of information. Nonetheless, you should still create a homepage. It can feature things as simple as an author picture and a blurb about your latest book, which is the approach used on Nora Roberts’ website, or it can be a cross-section stuff from several sections of the website, which is the approach used on Stephen King’s website. No approach is fundamentally better, but the Nora Roberts’ website model probably offers the least work-intensive approach for DIY types.

Author bio – If your readers are even sort of committed to your books, there is a distinct possibility they’re going to want to know a little more about you. Author bios provide you with a chance to do some branding, particularly if you write in a particular genre and intend to keep writing in that genre. If you write thrillers, it should probably say something about that in your bio. Is there something offbeat in your background, like spending a year working in a bakery in Paris? Information like that should definitely be in your bio because it gives you some character.

Books – There needs to be a section devoted specifically to your books or areas dedicated to specific series, if you write one or more series. Even if you’ve only written one book, you should still have a spot designated for books, because you’re probably going to write another one at some point. Each book entry should include links to where people can buy the book, especially mainstream outlets like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the iBookstore.

News – There are a lot of ways to handle/title this section, but you ought to have some space dedicated to providing author-centric information, such as links to interviews and press releases, upcoming projects, as well as information about where you might be doing book signings or other appearances. Put this under the mental category of “making it easy for fans.” The harder it is for people to find out about where you’re going to be and what you’re doing, the fewer people there are that will make the effort to show up or find out.

Contact Info – This one is sort of a quandary for indie authors, since they don’t have agents and publicists to handle media contact. The simplest approach is set up two kinds of contact info. One set of contact information is for fans, such as a dedicated email address like fanmail@amazingauthor.com, where readers can contact you. The other contact information should be clearly labeled as Media Contact Information, with an email such as media@amazingauthor.com. There should be an explicit notice stating that fan contact will not receive a response if sent to the media contact address/email.

Even if you do nothing else, these things must appear on your author website. Consider these the baseline for being taken seriously.

Best Practices

Of course, hitting the minimum is not the same thing as knocking it out of the park. There are some best practices in terms of what should be included on your author website.

Integrated Blog – Among a list of other very good ideas, Thomas Umstattd recommends the inclusion of an integrated blog on your website. If you’re using WordPress, this is taken care of for you since it’s a blogging platform. Author blogs are just an expected part of author self-marketing. Having the blog integrated as part of your website makes

it easier for readers and helps keep readers on the site, increasing the chances of them deciding to pick up another one of your books.

Social Media Links – As Caitlin Muir so succinctly puts it in this post: “If you aren’t on social media, you might as well be dead to the majority of the online world.” Your readers want to connect with you and you want to make it easy for them. Since the odds are good that you’ve set up author profiles on most of the major social media outlets, you should have “connect with me” icons that link to those profiles. The other side of this coin is making it easy for your readers to tell people they know about your site/blog posts/etc., which means you need social sharing buttons as well. Be sure to keep your social share buttons separated from your connect with me social buttons.

Images – You may be a writer, but not having images on your author website is a no-go. The internet is an inherently visual medium and you should take advantage of that fact. Put up pictures of yourself at events. Make sure you have cover images for your books up. Another fine suggestion from Thomas Umstattd, have a spot for fan art (if you get fan art). Posting fan art is a two-for-one for an author. One the one hand, it provides you with visual content that you didn’t have to commission or exert any extra effort for, and it helps to entrench your fan base.

There are lots of options for additional things you can have on your site, ranging from fan forums to selling signed copies, but I take the above as the most functional and necessary elements.

Contests and Novels and Twitter, Oh My – The Eric Update

From time to time, I like to step back and offer a little update on what’s going on in the world of Eric. So, without further ado, here’s the top of the pile.

A while back, I agreed to participate in The Iron Writer Challenge.

Here’s is the particularly awesome image from the Iron Writer site that sums it all up

For those of you who don’t know about The Iron Writer Challenge, it’s a flash fiction contest. Each incarnation of the challenge features four writers that must take four, randomly selected elements and weave those elements into a 500 words or less story. Here’s the kicker. You only get four days to complete and submit the story, which is harder than it sounds.

Without giving away too much, my entry features all new characters set in an entirely new universe. Sorry Sam Branch fans, the muse spoke and I listened. The stories go live later today and you’ll be able to read them here. Please do go, read the stories and cast a vote. It’s good for writers to know people are reading their stuff. It helps keep us sane.

I also put together a gag promotional bit about the contest that you can listen to here.

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As most of you know, I’m working on the third novel in the Samuel Branch series. I gazed into my crystal ball, consulted the cards (maybe snuck a glance at the word count on the document), and it looks like I’m set to crack the 30,000 word mark this weekend. I’d like to think that means I’m somewhere around 30% finished, which is also the point at which I start feeling compelled to settle on a title and start cover artwork, so keep your eyes open for those.

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In other news, I recently reached a personal goal of accumulating 2,000 followers on Twitter. When I set that goal, back in the dark days of having 200 followers, it seemed like one I couldn’t possibly reach. Yet, over time, the followers appeared and I appreciate them all.

For anyone wondering how I did it, I owe some of that success to having a diverse range of interests. My followers include professional artists, writers, marketers, and people interested in the wonderful world of transmedia storytelling, to name but a few. I do, however, owe a special thanks to the Authors Social Media Support Group for helping me reach this goal. They helped to bolster my numbers, but, more importantly, they retweeted my interesting stuff and helped to get my name out there. Thanks guys, you’re awesome!

Get Your Free Website Assessment Checklist from Agility

As a rule, I don’t send people to places that ask for contact information. Today, I’m making an exception to this to rule. Agility, a media-focused content management solution company, has released a website assessment checklist to help people optimize their sites.

In addition to providing a list of site features to be aware of, the site assessment also links to over 30 resources that provide more in-depth coverage of features, as well as best practices for using them. I think this is a fantastic resource and does a lot of legwork for you in terms tracking down information about good website practices. Not everything on the list will apply to every website, but it’s still a great time saver. The checklist is free and you can get it here.

If you’re concerned about giving over your contact information, there are two reasons you shouldn’t be concerned. First, I contacted the company and the CEO, Michael Assad, got back to me. He assures me that the contact information isn’t being used to build a sales list and you’re not opting-in to an email list either. Second, I downloaded this report myself a few weeks ago and I have not received any spam or sales emails from the company.

(This is an unsolicited recommendation on my part and I am not being compensated for it. I have no professional or financial relationship with Agility.)

Websites for Indie Authors – Where to Start, Part 3

Once you’ve procured your domain name and gotten yourself hosting, you come to a major decision point. What’s the best way to go about putting up a website?

Hosting Service Website Builder

Admittedly, most hosting services provide a website builder, but these tend to have limited functionality and range. Their purpose typically isn’t to enable you to do anything fancy, but guide you through a series of steps that will leave you with a very basic, functional website. For some people, this is enough, but I don’t advocate for it.

If you want to try it out, I strongly recommend creating a subdomain called “test” or “practice” and building a site using the hosting services program there. This will give you a very clear sense of what the site builder can and cannot do and, if you don’t like it, you just delete the subdomain. If you use the hosting services program on your main domain, you have to go in and figure out what files you need to delete and which ones you need to save. Far easier, I say, to just have a subdomain you can get rid of entirely.

WordPress

A lot of people have taken to installing WordPress blogs on their domain in lieu of building an actual site. For simple efficiency and sanity, I strongly advocate this as the go-to choice for indie authors. First of all, the vast majority of hosting services have a one-click install option for WordPress. You install the software and you can start adding content immediately. The standard theme that comes with WordPress is a minimalist affair. I like it, but if the theme isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, there are countless free themes available through the WordPress site. You can also get free themes here, here and here, along with lots of other places.

If you still can’t find what you’re looking for in the free themes, you can also look into buying a “premium theme.” Premium themes tend to offer a wider variety of special features and functionalities and are readily available through countless online sources. Premium themes typically run in the $70-$100 range (circa April 2013), but pricing varies from provider to provider. If you’re inclined to go this route, you can start the search here, here and here.

The final option is to have someone make a custom theme to your specifications. You’ll probably need to hire a web designer to build a custom theme for you and pricing may be an hourly rate or a flat fee. If you go this route, I’d advise you to work with a designer who offers a flat fee option. As of April 2013, the base rate for custom Wordpess themes looks to run around $400 and go up from there, depending on the complexity of the project.

DIY

Then there is the do it yourself option. Way back in the day, this is the route I picked to creating the website for my series of novels. I used a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) program called Kompozer. I cannot begin to tell you how many hours I poured into building that site and, when it was all said and done, I wound up with a basically functional site that I probably could have built using the hosting service website builder. Here’s a picture of the homepage for site I built.

(Click for better image.)

The real lesson to take from this is that, unless you happen to be a website designer by day and writer by night, you probably have no business trying to build a website from scratch. It’s a wildly aggravating process and, every few years, advancements come along that make your website look amateurish and outdated.

If you’re still committed to building the site yourself and you don’t have a website design program installed on your computer, you’ll probably want to either sign up for something like Adobe’s Creative Cloud service for the Dreamweaver program or get comfortable with a browser-based HTLM5 editor like Aloha or Raptor.

Professional Web Designer

Your final option is to hire a web design professional to build you a site from scratch or to fix the mess of a website you tried to build for yourself. You may not think it’s worth it, but web designers exist for a reason. I’m getting my website (remember the picture above) redone by a pro right now. What you see above took me (too much time face consciously) to finish. This is what my brother came up with as a demo fix for that site in an hour or two, while sipping coffee and petting his cat.

 

(Click for better image.)

It’s a completely different visual experience and that’s not even the finished version. If you’re not a web designer, don’t like the WordPress options, and the limitations of your hosting service’s website builder leave you cold, I’d recommend hiring someone to do the work for you. You’ll get a much more professional looking end-result and fewer migraines. Also, in case you’re wondering, yes, my brother is for hire.

Crafting Readable Content for the Web

One of the catchphrases in marketing is that “Content is King.” If content is king, though, readable content must reign supreme as the One King to Rule Them All. Of course, the Catch-22 here is that content must also be scannable, optimized, subheaded, bulleted, shareable, meta-tagged, and contain keywords….By Zeus’s beard and thunderbolt, it must contain keywords!

With all these competing and often diametrically opposed issues at play, not to mention the ongoing, black box mystery of Google’s search algorithms, creating content a human being can read, understand and enjoy becomes a challenge. When crafting readable content, all of these issues matter. The mistake is thinking that all of these issues matter all of the time.

Meta-Tags

Meta-tags, for example, are more of a site level concern. If you’re crafting meaningful, relevant content, it should align with the meta-tags with no extra effort from you.

Subheads, Bullets, and Scannability

Subheads and bullets serve a couple of functions. They break up content into easily digestible chunks. This post, for example, would be much more difficult to read without subheads. It also means the reader can easily scan over the article to get a sense of what it’s about and what, if any, parts they want to read.

I’ve seen requests for content that include both subheads and bullet lists. In my experience, any given article or blog post can call for a bulleted list OR subheads, but very few ever call for both, and some call for neither. Readable content employs the tactics the topic warrants and only those.

Shareability

Shareability boils down to two, virtually unrelated items. There is a technical component, which usually entails turning on a plugin in your blog software or embedding some HTLM code in website so that sharing buttons appear. The other side of shareability is more nebulous. Different groups of people share different kinds of things.

People that are primarily passive recipients of information (news, gossip, and so on) tend to share things related with their obsessions. Fans of the Marvel Universe films, for example, will share more or less any update on those films. People involved in an industry or profession, on the other hand, tend to look for and share actionable content. How-to articles, tips and tricks, and strategies for professional/business development tend to top the list. They want things they can use. Understand the kind of readers you’re developing content for and angle in that direction.

Keywords

Keyword is one of those inescapable terms when it comes to developing content for the web. Everyone is looking for the golden keyword that will draw in readers and buyers by the droves. Then there is the ever-shifting advice on keyword density. If your content is actually about the topic you think it’s about, the keyword should turn up naturally in the text and at about the right level of density. If you find yourself shoehorning a keyword in to get the keyword density up, it probably means the content isn’t nearly as relevant to that keyword as you think. More importantly, it’s going to be aggravating to read. The keyword becomes repetitive and the content becomes less enjoyable to read.

Semantic Search

One of the things that is and will likely continue to change the game for web content is semantic search on Google. While the technical details are beyond me, the basic idea is that rather than simply giving a list of websites that have the right keywords, the search engine will look for contextually relevant content. In theory, this should provide results that will align more closely with the search query. Mashable provides a good overview here. For those developing content, however, it should also mean that well constructed, readable content starts ranking a little better than lousy, barely readable content that was search engine optimized.

How to Lose Fans and Aggravate People or, How Fox Screwed Up PR, Again

So I recently read this article over on Buzzfeed. The quick version of the story goes like this. Many moons ago, there was a show on Fox called Firefly that aired for one, far too brief and truncated, season. Fox then cancelled the show and more or less forgot about it. However, the show developed a rabid base of fans that refer to themselves as Browncoats. One of the symbols adopted by the Browncoat culture is called the “Cunning Hat” or “Jayne’s Hat,” a yellow and orange knit hat with flaps, similar to one worn by actor Adam Baldwin (Character name: Jayne Cobb) in an episode of the show. See a picture of Baldwin in character, wearing the hat, here.

For years, Firefly devotees with a knack for knitting have crafted these hats and sold them to other Firefly devotees that lack a knack for knitting, via sites like Etsy. Now, after years of fans working like crazy to introduce friends and family to the show, the film continuation Serenity, and the wonder that is the Cunning Hat – in effect, creating a market for a product based on a show that Fox treated very, very badly – website ThinkGeek partnered up with Ripple Junction and, by proxy, Fox to provide official, licensed versions of the hat. Okay, fine, a decade too late, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

The kicker, however, is that Fox’s legal department has begun carpet bombing all the Etsy-based Cunning Hat providers with cease and desist orders. Caveat: I acknowledge that Fox has at least a tenuous legal right to do this, though an argument can be made that they abandoned their legal interest in this by turning a blind eye to the fan-made products for a decade. Simply as a point of honor, this is a miserable way to treat the people who helped build the market you’re trying to cater to. It’s also clear that Fox’s legal department didn’t consult their PR people before sending out these cease and desist orders. Here’s how I know this.

It would have taken less than an hour of research for someone who knew absolutely nothing about Joss Whedon, Firefly, Serenity or the Browncoat fanbase to realize that this move was going to be a public relations mess of Hindenbergian proportions. Browncoats are tech-savvy, social media-engaged, and a very proactive group. For example, there are the annual, fan coordinated screenings of Serenity. Or, you might recall that fans banded together to Help Nathan Buy Firefly after actor Nathan Fillion made a casual comment that he would buy the rights to Firefly if he won a $300 million lottery. Then there is the annual Browncoat Ball where fans gather from around the world to celebrate Firefly.

This is a culture that cares about the show, but also a culture that is deeply protective of its members. Laying down legal napalm on working moms and grandmas knitting in their rocking chairs is exactly the kind of thing to make legions of Browncoats rise up in fury. More importantly, any PR person worth their salary could have told Fox that this was a bad move. What Fox could have done that would have earned it miles of goodwill and tons of great press is to issue limited licenses to the Etsy “Cunning Hat” producers. Build a limit of 500 units per year into the license, which is probably a lot more than most of the Etsy sellers would ever make, and call it good.

Pinterest and the Indie Author

For writers, visual media is often foreign territory. We’re masters of punctuation and pacing, not gurus of the rule of thirds and depth of field. So, naturally, Pinterest presents a quandary for writers. As Liz Bauman puts it here, “Pinterest is a freight train barreling down the social media tracks.” We can’t dismiss it, out of hand, as being a thing “not for writers.” Yet, the visual nature of the site makes it look very much like a thing that really is not for writers. While it doesn’t seem like a natural fit, authors can use Pinterest as one more element in audience building and promotion.

Do I Really Need Pinterest?

It’s an open question and the answer hinges more on the individual than the site itself. If you have trouble managing your existing social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, adding a Pinterest account into the mix won’t make your life a better place. It’ll be one more task you don’t really have time for, but still feel obligated to try to do. If this is you, focus on your existing social media and social networking. It’ll be better for you to deliver consistent engagement via platforms where you’re established than to lurch erratically between them. Should you get to a point where you have more time, then look at Pinterest.

Remember, It’s Still a Conversation

Like other social media and social networking sites, being on Pinterest is to have a kind of conversation. Pinning an image is like posting a status update or a tweet. If all you ever do is post your own images, you’re talking at people, not to or with them. Nobody likes the guy who talks, but never listens. Repinning is the equivalent to reposting or retweeting. It’s a way to show that you’re looking at what other people are doing and that you’re interested.

Character Boards

Among other good suggestions offered here, Caitlin Muir suggests creating boards to share characters details. (A board is like an individual page where you put focused content.) For example, if I were to create a board for my character, Samuel Branch, I might include things that you wouldn’t normally see in the novels. If, in the back of my head, I always saw him as a Jazz fan, I might pin a photo of Miles Davis on the Sam Branch board. If he’s a t-bone fanatic, I might try to get a two-for-one. I can search on Pinterest and repin a picture of a t-bone steak.  It’s an easy and kind of subtle way to add new dimensions to a character, while also giving you the chance to engage other users.

Process Insight

One of the suggestions that turns up a lot of places, and one I happen to agree with, is using Pinterest to give people an insight into your process. You can pin a picture of your desk. Or you could pin a stack of books that you’re using as reference material. You can also use this to incite some speculation by tossing a red herring in the mix, but you run the risk of alienating fans with this tactic. Some people take that kind of misdirection as part of the fun, while others might be deeply disappointed if the picture of that book on China doesn’t lead to a scene set in China or at least a reference to China. It’s a calculated risk and you have to decide whether your fans are of the right kind of mindset to appreciate the game of it.

Your Books/Media

Of course, you should be pinning things like your book covers with appropriate links to your website. Same goes for book trailers, author interviews and the like.  Just dole it out at a reasonable pace. Right at first, like most people, you’ll post a bunch of things about yourself and your books. After that, though, give at least equal weight to repinning other people’s content. It’ll gain you some goodwill and give your followers the chance to learn a little more about what your interests are.

Cautionary Note

Use the same level of discretion on Pinterest as you would use anywhere else. You might be very proud of how your house/lawn/landscaping looks, but don’t post a picture that gives away specific location information, like a house number or street. Pinterest is built to be public, so don’t post anything you wouldn’t want to discuss with your parents, kids or random strangers in a line.

Websites for Indie Authors – Where to Start, Part 2

Last time I introduced you to some of the more common terminology you’re going to confront when you start moving toward building a website. This time, we’re going to talk getting a domain name and selecting a hosting service.

Getting Your Domain Name

Getting a domain name is almost absurdly easy. One of the fastest routes is through one of the countless domain name registrars. These are companies that act as a kind of middleman between private citizens/businesses and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN does a lot of things, which you can read about here, but for our purposes they’re in control of making sure domain names work globally. Domain name registrars do the bureaucratic heavy lifting of keeping track of who controls what domain names and for how long, while ICANN deals with global coordination.

There are lots and lots of domain registrar services out there to choose from and hosting services have jumped into the game of providing domain names as well. In my opinion, you’re best served by buying (well, renting) your domain name through a well-established registrar, such as GoDaddy, independent of your hosting service. There are two reasons for this.

First, I’m normally an advocate of anything that streamlines technical processes, but hosting services do occasionally go out of business and you don’t want your domain name getting caught up in their problems. You can always load your website onto the servers of a new hosting service, if you have your domain name registered independently. Second, hosting services have no incentive to offer you a discount on registering a domain name. Registrars regularly offer discounts on registering a domain name and will sometimes offer significant discounts if you register a domain name for more than one year.

Selecting a Domain Name

This is where the process gets a little trickier. Selecting a domain name isn’t just about finding an available domain name. Unless the name of your book happens to be Ladies Panties, for example, the domain name ladiespanties.com probably isn’t going to be helpful to you, even if it is available. This is something you spend some serious time thinking about (more than I did when I picked my domain name oh so many years ago), because it goes to branding.

Are you setting up a website for you book, series of books, or for yourself? If your setting up a site for you book, the domain name needs to be the title or something pretty close. If you’re setting a site up for a series, the domain name should probably be the series name or the name of the central character. If you’re setting up a website for yourself, it should probably be your own name. Of course, those domain names may already be taken, so work up 3 or 4 alternatives/variation that you can search for, just in case someone else has your top choice.

If someone else already has your top choice and if you’re willing to spend some time/extra money, you can always try to negotiate with that person for control of the domain name. Personally, I think it’s faster and more expedient to simply choose a different name, but it is an option you can explore if only one domain can really work for you.

Hosting Services

There are a lot of things that go into choosing a hosting service, but there are a few key issues to consider.

Cost/Storage/Usage Caps

Hosting services range from the free to the pricey. The most expensive services are typically called unlimited packages or something very close to that. Getting an unlimited package typically means you get no cap on bandwidth usage and storage or caps with limits that are so high you’re unlikely to ever crack them. (Bandwidth, in this context, means the total amount of data that can be transferred/used by people accessing your site over a given period of time, usually a month.) Free hosting services generally place much more stringent caps on both storage provided and bandwidth allocated, but those caps are deceptive. The hosting service 000webhost.com, for example, offers 1500MB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth as the caps on its free hosting. Very, very few websites are likely to need more space or require more bandwidth than that, especially in the beginning. Free hosting services often offer paid versions that lift restrictions on bandwidth and storage, so you aren’t required to find a new hosting service if you find your site getting too popular for free hosting.

PHP and SQL Database Versions

I talked about what PHP and SQL are last time, so I talk about why they matter here. Not every hosting service supports both PHP and SQL, so that’s the first thing you’ll want to check on in the features list. If the service doesn’t support them, move on. Too many things you’re likely to want will depend on your hosting service supporting PHP scripts and SQL databases/management systems. If the service does support PHP and SQL, the next thing you’ll want to look at is which versions they support. The people who develop PHP scripts and applications that use SQL databases/management systems tend to build them and update them based on the latest stable version. At present, PHP is on version 5.4.13 or thereabout. MySQL, probably the most common SQL management system, is on version 5.6.1. Anything as far back as MySQL 5.1 is probably adequate for most websites, but the more recent the release version the fewer problems you’re likely to experience.

Uptime

Uptime is one of those terms that hosting services proudly trot out as they claim 99% uptime or 99.9% uptime. What they’re really saying here is that your website is likely to be available the vast majority of the time. Good hosting services tend to store files redundantly, so that even if one or even several of their servers fail, people can still access your website and, hence, you get very little downtime. If uptime is of critical importance to you, Netcraft provides a list of the most reliable hosting services.

Control Panel

Control panels come in a couple of flavors, but one of the most common control panels is known simply as cPanel. It’s an icon based control panel and you can get a live demo of it here. Just click on the CPANEL DEMO button under Domain Owners to see what you’re likely to encounter in the back end of your hosting service.

There are a variety of other concerns that may affect which hosting service you choose, from one click install features like Fantastico to email autoresponder support, but those considerations hinge on your intended use of the site. For now, to help you at least narrow your search, here is a recent Top 10 list of Free Hosting Services from Smart Media Tips and a Top 10 list of Paid Hosting Services from TopTenReviews.