Siobhan Daiko's Blog, page 4
August 20, 2016
How to Grow Your Author Blog
Some good advice here.
Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Mike Licht
I am a huge fan of writers having a blog, but one of the first arguments I get is, “But I did have a blog and it did nothing.” I hear your pain. We live in a world of instant gratification and often it is why we are more inclined to post content on our Facebook or Twitter instead. Instantly we can see other people sharing and responding and it feels oh so good.
The blog? Meh.
The problem, however, is that any “benefit” from Facebook or Twitter evaporates almost as soon as it appears whereas the blog (if we stick to it) will keep giving us rewards for years to come.
Reframe Your Goal
Original image courtesy of flowcomm, via Flickr Commons
I will give you tips for growing your author blog here in a minute, but a simple…
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July 29, 2016
August 2016 is Write An Amazon Review Month! By @TerryTyler4 #AugustReviews
On Monday 25th July, book blogger Rosie Amber wrote this post encouraging readers and writers alike to post a short review on Amazon for any book they’ve read and enjoyed ~ following this up, Terry Tyler is starting this initiative along with other writer-bloggers including Rosie, Cathy from Between The Lines, Barb Taub, Shelley Wilson and Alison Williams.
The idea is that, from August 1st, everyone who reads this uses their Amazon account to post just one review on one book that they’ve read (but feel free to carry on if you get in the swing!). You don’t even have to have read it recently, it can be any book you’ve read, any time. The book does not have to have been purchased from Amazon, though if it is you get the ‘Verified Purchase’ tag on it; however, if you download all your books via Kindle Unlimited, as many do these days, they don’t show the VP tag, anyway.
Remember, this isn’t the Times Literary Supplement, it’s Amazon, where ordinary people go to choose their next £1.99 Kindle book. No one expects you to write a thousand word, in-depth critique; I don’t know about you, but I’m more likely to read one short paragraph or a couple of lines saying what an average reader thought of a book, than a long-winded essay about the pros and cons of the various literary techniques used. Yes, those are welcome too (!), but no more so than a few words saying “I loved this book, I was up reading it until 3am”, or “I loved Jim and Vivien and the dialogue was so realistic”, or whatever!
Why should you write a review?
They help book buyers make decisions. Don’t you read the reviews on Trip Advisor before deciding on a hotel, or any site from which you might buy an item for practical use? Book reviews are no different.
If the book is by a self-published author, or published by an independent press, the writers have to do all their promotion and marketing themselves ~ reviews from the reading public is their one free helping hand.
The amount of reviews on Amazon helps a book’s visibility (allegedly). If you love a writer’s work and want others to do so, too, this is the best possible way of making this happen.
It’s your good deed for the day, and will only take five minutes!
Off we go, then! A few more pointers:
If you need any help with writing your review, do click on Rosie’s post, above.
A review can be as short as one word. The shortest one I have is just two[image error]
You don’t have to put your name to the review, as your Amazon ‘handle’ can be anything you like.
No writer expects all their reviews to be 5* and say the book is the best thing ever written; there is a star rating guide on Rosie’s post.
Would you like to tell the Twittersphere about your review? If so, tweet the link to it with the hashtag #AugustReviews ~ and thank you! I will do one blog post a week featuring these links: The #AugustReviews Hall of Fame (thank you, Barb!).
If you have a blog and would like to spread the word about #AugustReviews, please feel free to copy and paste this blog post, provide the link to it, re-blog it, or whatever ~ many thanks, and I hope you will join in to make this idea a success[image error]
July 27, 2016
Roving Romaniacs in Umbria (The Italian Job, Part 2)
One day…
Sue Moorcroft’s fabulous course at Arte Umbria a few years back was something that fellow Romaniac Laura James and I will never forget. When I got the chance to go again to kick start my retirement from teaching, this time with my Romaniac buddy Debbie Fuller-White and a whole gang of other wonderful people, it wasn’t too hard to jump at the chance.
This time, Debbie was taking part in the full course, I was doing the writing retreat thing and the terrace above was the place where inspiration struck most often (possibly because that’s where wine kept appearing.)
Sue did lots of one-to-ones, ran sessions on building characters, short stories, plotting and all sorts of other useful angles on getting a book to take shape and then beating it into submission. We didn’t write hot sex by the pool this time. It was just too…hot.
We even found a…
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July 25, 2016
4 Quick Ways To Write A #BookReview And Overcome Your Fears #MondayBlogs
Go forth and review!
Authors WANT Reviews
Simple! How many times have you read pleas on social media for readers to write reviews? – Probably Loads.
Does the thought of writing a book review send you racing to the hills? – I can see plenty of you nodding in agreement.
WHAT holds you back?
6 common replies:
I can’t write.
I can’t write paragraphs about a book.
I don’t know what to write.
I’m afraid of what people will think of my review.
I’m an author and don’t want a backlash on my own books.
I don’t have the time.
Let’s turn this around
I can’t write – I bet if you can read, you can write.
I can’t write paragraphs about a book – Good News, Amazon accepts one sentence reviews now as do many other sites.
I don’t know what to write – Ah! Quick Question – Why did you like or Dislike…
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July 5, 2016
Wednesday Wing – #Hashtags: How to Use them and How Not to #TwitterTip #wwwblogs
Some great #hashtag advice.
This week on Wednesday Wing we are looking at Hashtags from a different view.
Please welcome back our fountain of Twitter Knowledge @TerryTyler4
Hashtags: How to use them—and how not to
I’ve been using Twitter for so long that I sometimes forget that not everyone understands the purposes of hashtags—it’s easy to forget that every day new people arrive at the site and wonder what the hell they are, too—just like I did!
No, they’re not just random, and neither are they a magic secret that everyone knows about except you (which is what I thought at first….). They have seven basic uses, as far as I can see, which I will outline here:
Expanding the reach of your tweets
I’ve talked before about the blog share hashtags such as #SundayBlogShare and #TuesdayBookBlog. It’s not all about blogs, though; there’s also #FolkloreThursday, #MusicMonday, #MondayMotivation #FridayReads, #WordlessWednesday and so many more…
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July 2, 2016
One, Two… Thieves Suck, Three, Four…Rhymes with Suck
This is something all indie authors suffer from, and it annoys the hell out of us. But what can we do?
I’ve sat on this post for almost two weeks, unsure of hitting publish. It’s been changed a hundred times. This is becoming quite common with authors I know.
On the heels of publishing a new book, I’ve dealt with this kind of BS:
I’m talking about a different book going up on the same Thieving site each day. There are a lot of comments on the book links from those who have STOLEN them, and they are happy to have their stolen books.
I don’t usually make a big deal out of this other than pulling out hair. I’ll handle the site and move on, but suddenly it was as if a NEW thief discovered my books, and went nuts with all of them. Apparently, they caught me in the wrong mood this time.
One of my friends who found her books on the same site, pointed out that all…
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June 28, 2016
Wednesday Wing – Guard Against Your Amazon Reviews Being Removed #wwwblogs @TerryTyler4
This is good advice if you have had any of your Amazon review removed.
This week on Wednesday Wing…
Writers/Reviewers: Guard against your Amazon reviews being removed.
Terry Tyler offers advice and thoughts on the matter.
There has been much blogged about lately on the subject of Amazon removing book reviews. I am no authority on this subject, but believe their principle is to counteract the growing number of fake reviews; writers who cannot get them any other way (I will not go into the reasons for this right now!) have perhaps made use of the various sites around the internet that sell five star reviews. The owners of such sites do not read the books, but just post reviews. I saw one that had posted around a hundred on the same day, all of which consisted of the five star rating and one word, ‘brillent’, which I imagine was supposed to say ‘brilliant’; I suspect many of these sites are run by scammers…
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Happy Now?
My thoughts, exactly.
It is day four in the Big Brexit house.
I had hoped after Friday’s absolute catastrophe of a day that the country might somehow magically rally over the weekend. I mean, when you plunge your country into possible ruin on the promise of a golden future that will allow it to rise like a phoenix from the flames, you have a plan, right?
As it turns out, you don’t. The only person that seems to have any plan at all, and be acting on it rather than just spouting meaningless Churchillian rhetoric is Nicola Sturgeon, and I can’t even vote for her.
I was distraught and angry on Friday. I had hoped to feel better by today. Instead I am running on barely controlled rage and getting more enraged by the moment.
Here are a few things I am furious about:
Firstly, leave voters telling me to calm down. I’m sorry…
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June 17, 2016
Think You Couldn’t Possibly Lose Your Amazon Publishing Account? Think Again.
A terrifying situation for an indie author.
There’s this indie author I know a little bit from the Kboards.com forum. Her name is Pauline Creeden, and she’s an ordinary midlister, like so many of us. I remember PMing her some time ago and gushing about how particularly beautiful one of her book covers is — the one for Chronicles of Steele: Raven.
Here, I’ll include an image. Gorgeous, eh?
Anyway, today I tuned in to Kboards and noticed that Pauline had started a thread. It contained what’s surely the worst news possible for an indie author: Amazon had closed her publishing account. All her ebooks had been taken off sale. Permanently. Here’s the email she got from Amazon:
We are reaching out to you because we have detected that borrows for your books are originating from systematically generated accounts. While we support the legitimate efforts of our publishers to promote their books, attempting to manipulate…
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