Allie Potts's Blog, page 39

Gaining Reviews – The Quest Continues

One of the tips sent to me on soliciting reviews when you are self publishing was to join the author program with www.goodreads.com. Up until very recently I was unaware of this site, but I am happy that other bloggers were helpful enough to suggest it as an option. I have joined the groups and have already gained some traction from interested parties. I have heard that some authors view other writers as the competition, and I have to admit that until I had a project ready to send to an edito...

Tips for gaining honest reviews

I was recently introduced to Alice Osborn, a board member on the NCWriters’ Network,and her website, www.aliceosborn.com. Since the launch of my novel, I had struggled with how to go about finding reviewer and her recent blog post, 4 Surefire Ways To Get Your Book Reviewed by Paul Morin (http://aliceosborn.com/book-reviews/4-surefire-ways-to-get-your-book-reviewed/).

In the article, he included tips for developing a handy sell-sheet, which I’ve attempted to adapt into my own work. An Uncertain...

Open Source Publishing

Coming from a background in engineering, I am very familiar with open source advocates with regards to computer operating systems, but I didn’t realize this same sort of advocacy applied to other industries as well. I dreamed of being a writer, but was turned off by the traditional publishing process. Perhaps this was also a result of watching my husband launch his business. I would hope that a company’s best advocates are its owners/operators. The same should be true of any publication and i...

My Obsession with Amazon

Ever since I discovered that Amazon’s SEO was more complicated than merely a word for word keyword match, I have been visiting my book on its virtual shelves daily. I was very happy to see that I now have top billing when searching for my book, at least I have top billing based on my searches. Who knows where I may still rank with other people’s searches, and that unknown keeps bringing me back to Amazon day in and day out as if Amazon would suddenly take pity on me and say, yeah we know you...

How did people branch outside their social circle before the internet

With today’s public offering of Twitter, I found myself wondering how people branched out of their nearby social circle before the arrival of the internet. I have been invited to attend a networking event for working mother’s in my local area sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and supported by a LinkedIn group later this year. I might not have even know this group existed before email, and I probably wouldn’t have been comfortable with interacting with them if I didn’t have the option of qu...

So many hats

When writing an Uncertain Faith I struggled to contain the many roles the main character has into a single story. Each of her roles could have taken over the entire story. This week life imitated art. We found out that a former employee was breaching his non-compete contract and actively attempting to steal clients, I was pulled into multiple international conference calls, and had to somehow find the time to plan a five year old’s birthday party while also pulling together last minute Hallow...

Searchability In Amazon

As previously mentioned, my recently published debut novel entitled, An Uncertain Faith, was recently picked up by Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. I was understandably excited and wanted to promote this event within my network of family and friends. When they went to search for it by title, however, it didn’t appear in the results. I also conducted the same search with similar results, however searching by author’s name found my novel instantly. I thought surely there must be a mistake somewhe...

How did I get here?

A few years ago, my husband learned of his faciliy’s imminent closing when a co-worker happened to notice that their site was no longer showing on the corporate website’s locations. Determined to be more in control of our own destiny we decided to enter into the world of small business ownership. I’ve often joked since that I could write several books on the various mistakeswe’ve made since then. Eventually though I decided to stop joking and wrote An Uncertain Faith, loosely inspired by thos...