Month: January 2013

Lovers and Lupecalia

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This post, by Cristina Smith, originally appeared on the OM Times site on 2/9/12. The article provides some interesting historical background on Valentine’s Day, and may be useful for anyone working on a Valentine’s Day -themed manuscript or story.

Lupercalia was celebrated on February 15th every year in honor of Lupercus, a god of fertility whose Greek counterpart is Pan. The word lupus is Latin for wolf, an essential animal in Roman history. It was a ceremony for purification and fertility. Parts of the celebration are included in February traditions even today, such as Valentine’s Day and fasting customs such as Lent.

The festival, whose flower is the yellow crocus, is as old as Rome itself when it was nothing more than a few shepherds living on a hill surrounded by a wolf-filled wilderness. Lupercalia centered around a cave on that Palatine Hill, the lupercal. According to legend, this was the cave where the lost twins Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome, were nursed by a she-wolf and saved from starvation.

The rite went something like this. Vestal virgins brought sacred cakes made from the first ears of last year’s grain harvest to a fig tree. Two naked young men, assisted by the Vestals, sacrificed a dog and a goat, animals with strong sexual instincts, at the site. The blood was smeared on the foreheads of the young men and then wiped away with wool dipped in milk. At this point, the youths were required to laugh. Then the priests, or lupercai, would run about in loincloths made from the skin of the sacrifices, slapping everyone with strips of goat skin. Most believed the thongs to be februa that cleansed their sins and assured good fortune so they tried to be struck. Young wives were particularly eager since they believed it promoted fertility and easy childbirth. There was also lots of feasting and drinking, which is not too unusual when the ceremonial highlight of the festival is being slapped with goat strips.

Long after Palentine Hill became the seat of the powerful city, state and empire of Rome, the Lupercalia festival lived on. In fact, Lupercalia was not dropped from the liturgical calendar until 1969. Historic records indicate that Mark Antony was master of the Luperci College of Priests. It was at the Lupercalia of 44 BCE that he ran up to Julius Caesar who watched from the Rostra and offered him a laurel wreath as a symbol of kingship. Caesar rejected it and exactly one month later, he was assassinated. Conquering Roman armies took the Lupercalia customs with them as they invaded France and Britain. One of these was a lottery where the names of available maidens were placed in an urn and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love – for the duration of the festival, or sometimes longer. Some speculate it is from this practice that our modern Valentine’s Day has evolved.

Read the rest of the post on the OM Times site.

Publishing Coach And Author Emily Hill Talks About Kindlegate

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This article, by AR Vasquez, originally appeared on Digital Journal on 1/21/13.

Seattle– With Amazon’s expansion into new markets such as India, Brazil, Japan and Canada, Amazon’s KDP reporting for Kindle book sales have encountered technical glitches causing many upset authors to post messages in the KDP community forum.

Digital Journal had an exclusive video interview with Emily Hill, an indie author and publishing coach and founder of Kindlegate.starts.com, to discuss her experience with the KDP Select Program, Kindlegate, NaNoWriMo 2012, her coaching business and her interest in the paranormal world.

In the interview, Ms. Hill reveals how she was surprised to see her best selling books suddenly have zero sales in October 2012. She had been selling her books consistently every month and was extensively marketing and promoting her fictional paranormal book series Ghost Chaser’s Daughter in preparation for the Hallowe’en season in the KDP Select Program.

The KDP Select program is Amazon’s incentive for authors to sell their ebooks exclusively on the Amazon site for 90 days. The exclusivity means that authors cannot sell or give away their ebooks on other platforms such as Kobo, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Smashwords or even their own website. Another incentive in the program is the ability for authors to choose 5 days within the 90 days term to list their books for free on the Amazon site. Kindle books that are not enrolled in the KDP Select program limits authors’ ability to set the lowest selling price for their books to 99 cents. Other perks in the KDP Select program include higher royalties up to 70% for some Amazon networks around the world. Also, Kindle books in the program can be added to the Amazon Prime lending library which gives Amazon prime members the ability to borrow books for free with certain restrictions which pays authors a percentage from the KDP Select Global Fund.

When the KDP Select program was introduced in early 2012, many authors who joined experienced positive results. Some reported on their blogs their Kindle books were downloaded thousands of times during the free days promotions and watched in awe as their Kindle books rose up the best seller list rankings.

Read the rest of the article on Digital Journal.

Elephants In The Room

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This post, by Brett Sandusky, originally appeared on his blog on 1/15/13.

It’s a new year, and time to purge ourselves of the old and bring in the new. For years now, long before I was even involved in publishing, the industry has latched onto the “New Year, New You” marketing motto as each new calendar begins, in the hopes of selling books to customers who have decided to make a change in their lives. This year, it is time for a “new you,” but for ourselves. It’s time we stopped beating around the bush and dealt with our issues head-on and with realistic expectations. This morning, I saw two articles juxtapositioned, the (paraphrased) headline of the first read: “Ebook retail prices continue to plummet,” the second, “Independent bookstores can increase revenue by selling ebooks.” This second article implied that indies could be saved by the enormous revenue opportunity to be had in selling ebooks … whose retail prices have been steadily declining and continue to do so.

Are we even having the same conversation anymore?

Needless to say, these think pieces lead me to converse with a few friends, some publicly, and other privately, about what is going on here, and I have compiled a short list of elephants. These issues are those that we as an industry must address, not shy away from, and talk about in the open to come to a resolution. We continue to spiral into a complicated mess of “WTH IS GOING ON HERE? WHO’S IN CHARGE?” rather than a rational, business-oriented industry. I refuse any longer to play into the notion that publishing is dead or dying. It’s been changing over many years, and continues to do so. Now is the time to address our changes; now is the time for, in corporate parlance, change management, something we’ve all known but too little of.

The Amazon Issue. If we are talking about elephants, Amazon is the woolly mammoth of the lot. It’s time we dealt with the Amazon issue that everyone refuses to talk about. Yes, Amazon is single handedly responsible for moving a (digital) metric ton of digital materials through to customers, and many users have Kindles or use a Kindle app to read digitally. Yes, the Amazon digital catalog is the largest, and thus offers the most opportunity both to us and to our customers.

However, we must acknowledge that Amazon’s practices have also contributed to the (imminent-seeming) depletion of physical bookstores. They have forced our retail prices down so low that only a company of their, ahem, girth, is able to bear the burden of really taking on major losses. Publishers simply do not have the financial fortitude to emulate Amazon in terms of financial practice.

 

Read the rest of the post on Brett Sandusky’s blog.

How to Create an Endless Stream of Blog Post Ideas

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When you become a blogger you move into the role of content creator and media publisher.

As a publisher, you need to establish a posting schedule and stick to it. After all, when you ask people to subscribe to your blog, most people like to know what’s coming up or what to expect.

And meeting that schedule will go a long way toward establishing trust with your readers.

Your next challenge is doing it on a regular basis.

Sure, when you’re a new blogger it seems pretty easy to create 2, 3 or 5 new articles a week. But what’s going to happen 6 months from now? Is the enthusiasm you have now going to carry you all that time?

6 months of articles at 3 per week is 78 articles you’ll have to come up with. It’s starting to sound like a lot of writing, isn’t it?

But if you’re like most of us, the most difficult part of sticking to that schedule isn’t doing the writing: It’s figuring out what to write about.

Trust me, there’s going to come a day when you realize you need an article to post to your blog tomorrow, and you feel like the bottom of an old streambed. Dry, dry, dry.

You stare at the screen, wondering how all those other bloggers seem to be able to crank out posts day after day. Every post seems to have a reason for its existence, an enthusiastic audience, and lots of meaty content.

All you’ve got is that blank screen.

Don’t despair, there is help.

How to Create Tons of Blog Post Ideas

On a recent flight I pulled out my iPad and started a mind map about a topic I’ve been wanting to blog about.

I love using mind maps when I’m at the conceptual stage of writing an article. There’s nothing that helps me organize my ideas as quickly and efficiently as well as a mind map, and I highly recommend you check them out.

This article was written from a mind map developed in iThoughts HD, my favorite iPad mind mapping program.

The subject was this:

How do you know when your new blog is ready?

This thought had stuck in my mind when I was working on the Hub & Outpost Method of Social Media Marketing webinar. It seems to me that the best hub to use when you venture out into social media is a blog.

But you don’t want to be sending people to a blog that’s not ready for visitors, do you?

 

I put that question at the center of my mind map. Next I just started to free associate about the things you need to have on your blog to get started.

I created a branch on the mind map for each item that occurred to me that you would need for a blog to be “ready for visitors.” Most of them are common sense, like what plugins you need, having subscriptions available, and collecting email names with an opt-in form..

blog ideas

You can do the same thing without a mind map, by the way. Just use an outline instead.

Both outlining and mind mapping lend themselves to developing hierarchies of information, or “branches” of items as you develop the details of your idea.

For instance, under “Plugins” I started to list the different plugins you really want to have on your WordPress blog when you get started.

Under “Customization” I listed the different ways you could do this quickly and at little to no expense.

And under “Opt-in” I added a sub-list of 2 items: “picking an email provider” and “offering a freebie”.

blog post ideas

Just putting in words like this isn’t like writing at all, it’s a completely different activity, and kind of fun. After all, all you’re doing is making a list. How hard can that be, right?

By the time I was through I had 9 items like this, each with their own sub-list of items. The whole thing took about 20 minutes.

Now for the good part

What I had was the outline of a useful article that would help any new blogger organize themselves. In fact, it seemed like an article that would be bookmarked for later use, something all bloggers hope for.

But take another step with me. There’s more to this article outline than just a great blog article. Since I had 9 items each with its own sub-list, the next step was apparent.

I treated each top level item, like “Opt-in,” as the subject of its own new blog post. Each topic in the sub-list under that topic would become a subhead in the new blog post.

I changed color to salmon and started writing just the headlines of these new blog posts. It was surprisingly easy.

For instance, under “picking an email provider,” I wrote the article headline, “Why Every Blog Needs an Email List.”

Under “Offering a freebie,” I wrote “How to Create an ‘Ethical Bribe.’”

blog post ideas

Now I have 9 blog posts, and the most difficult part—picking good subjects and deciding what topics to deal with in the article—is already done.

Do you see where this is going? With a small amount of thoughtful planning, you can create a system of article generation that will keep you in blog post ideas forever. Yep, it really works.

(Attentive readers may have already realized that the blog post from Monday, How to Create Foundation Posts for your Blog, came directly from this mind map. And you also know that the remainder of topics contained in this one mind map will continue to produce blog posts for weeks to come.)

So the next time you get stuck for a topic, don’t despair. And don’t settle for just one article, either. Get out your mind mapping program or even just a pad and a pen and start outlining.

You’ll be glad you did.

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Are You An Author, Publisher And Entrepreneur? You Should Be. Interview With Guy Kawasaki

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I’m excited to share with you today an interview with Guy Kawasaki, who is a NY Times bestselling author and entrepreneur, and who I have followed online for a number of years.

His most recent book is APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur: How To Publish A Book.

guy kawasaki
You might think that there are already way too many books on this topic, but APE has a slightly different angle around ‘artisanal’ publishing and entrepreneurship, which I like a lot. It’s also significant that an author of Guy’s authority in the business book market is advocating self-publishing.

APE includes some good chapters on avoiding the self-published look and guerilla marketing, as well as building an enchanting personal brand. Here’s the interview with Guy along with some of my comments at the end.

You have had great success in the traditional publishing world with 10 books, including the NY Times bestseller ‘Enchantment’. Why did you decide to self-publish?

APE: Author publisher entrepreneur how to publish a book
I decided to self-publish because I wanted total control over the marketing and selling of my books—particularly in the ebook format. Traditional publishers cannot handle sales directly to customers, sponsorships, and site licenses. These kinds of deals that are not publisher to reseller to customer give traditional publishers aneurisms.

Have you stepped away from traditional publishing for good?

I haven’t stepped away from traditional publishing. All it would take is a huge advance—huge enough so that I don’t care about the marketing and selling of my books. You can’t buy me, but you can rent me.

Would you combine traditional with indie in a hybrid model which many authors are now favoring but NY publishing is resistant to?

what the plus
If a traditional publisher wanted to buy the printed rights and leave me with the ebook rights, I would do it. I actually have such a deal with McGraw-Hill for a book called What the Plus!

I love the term “artisanal” publishing. Can you explain what you mean by it?

My concept is that writers can control their craft from end to end. That is, they can control the content, cover, interior design, sales, and marketing just like an artisanal brewer, baker, or winemaker does.

How does this reframe the “stigma” of self-publishing?

It means that “self-publishing” or “vanity-publishing” does not translate to “My book wasn’t good enough for a traditional publisher, so I had to publish it myself.” One would never attach a stigma to an artisanal brewer, baker, or winemaker, so why should one attach a stigma to an artisanal publisher?

guy kawasaki quote

Many indie authors, myself included, use an ebook only model because financially, it is less of an outlay for a quality product. Print can be expensive to produce something that doesn’t look self-published.

But you present some compelling arguments that digital isn’t everything, so should we all be doing print?

This depends on the genre. The genre where ebooks are kicking butt is adult fiction. If I had an adult non-fiction book, I would publish it in printed and electronic format. If I had a photography book, I would publish it only in printed format. In ten years, I would print only a photography book.

Many authors/writers resist the term “entrepreneur.” Why do you think authors need to claim that term in order to be successful in this crowded market?

“Entrepreneur” sure beats “impoverished.” The reality is that artisanal publishing means there are more books than ever to choose from. Thus, it’s even harder to garner attention and therefore sales. Entrepreneurship—making a hobby into a business—is necessary to succeed. Returning once more to the artisanal brewer, baker, and winemaker, who would not consider what they do entrepreneurial?

barry eisler quote

Why is an author brand important?

An author brand is the foundation of entrepreneurship. It means that the author stands for something and owns, or at least represents, a genre. Gillian Flynn’s brand is crime novels. JK Rowling—no explanation needed. John Grisham is legal thriller. Anne Lamott owns the writer’s writer and messy faith brands.

Where do people start in order to build one?

We are in the best time ever to build a brand because of the ubiquity of social media. Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all fast, free, and ubiquitous. I don’t mean only for non-fiction, technical authors to build a brand—any author can use social media to build a brand.

The goal is to build a following because you share valuable posts that are simpatico with your brand.

My recommendation is to start building a brand the same day you start writing a book. In a perfect world, you’d write two-three hours a day and work on your brand an hour a day. It takes at least a year to build a brand using social media.

guy kawasaki quote
Incidentally, even if you are published by a traditional publisher that purports to have a marketing platform, I would still beg you to create your own brand.

There is no downside to creating your own brand so that you are not dependent upon your publisher because someday your publisher might not be there for you.

The ebook and publishing revolution has been US-centric for a few years now, but with Kobo moving aggressively into global markets that Amazon doesn’t dominate yet, what do you see as the future of ebooks in the wider global market?

The future of ebooks is bright around the globe. It would shock me if it’s not the dominant way to read books in the next ten years everywhere in the world. Some very smart people at Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung are doing their best to make this true. It’s hard to imagine that they won’t succeed.

How did you manage to get 145 reviews on Amazon in six days of which 135 are five stars?

I am tempted to tell you that you have to read APE to find out but that would be chicken. Essentially, I crowdsourced editing, and I offered a review copy of the near-final manuscript to four million social-media followers. This enabled me to have 1,100 people who read APE before it went live on Amazon.

Approximately four hours before Amazon turned it on, I sent an email to 1,100 people to ask them to post a review for me. I woke up in the morning, and there were forty-four five-star reviews. What does it take to make this happen?

First and foremost, it takes a book that people like. I could have asked 1,100 people to post a review and woke up to forty-four one-star reviews too. But beyond this, you need to trust people. I’m sure I passed around my manuscript and so I might have lost some sales, but the alternative, fostered by not trusting people, would be a lack of reviews.

By the way, no traditional publisher would let its author do something like this.

Like I said, I want to control the sales and marketing of my books. That’s what artisanal publishers do.

APE: Author publisher entrepreneur how to publish a bookYou can find APE on Amazon.com here or check out the website at APETheBook.com

Some of my own thoughts on the book

When Seth Godin left traditional publishing I thought the balance was tipping, but now I really think self-publishing has hit the mainstream. When authors of Guy’s stature do it their own way, that is something worth paying attention to. It means the consciousness has shifted amongst the thought leaders, and that can only be a good thing.

APE is a good primer for the new self-publisher. It does contain a lot of the basic information you need, from writing and editing, through publishing in print and ebook formats to marketing ideas. If you want a book that contains an end-to-end process, it’s definitely worth the buy.

Guy advocates using MS Word for writing, but I absolutely recommend you use Scrivener. It will help you write the book but also outputs the formats you need to self-publish directly to Amazon, Kobo etc. It’s been a life-changer for me and means you don’t have to rely on anyone else for your formatting.

The book is US centric, so when you read it, remember that non-US citizens cannot publish direct on Nook PubIt, or use ACX (Audible’s audiobook marketplace) at the moment. Hopefully that will change!

What do you think about artisanal publishing? I love the term and what it implies, but please do let me know your thoughts in the comments [on the original post]. Or please do leave any questions for Guy as well [on the original post]. [Now go APE!]

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Forward

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This post, by Steven Ramirez, originally appeared on his Glass Highway site and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

No, this isn’t about last year’s campaign slogan which by the way was a huge #FAIL for me since the geniuses who dreamed it up thought it would be better to be grammatically correct and add the period. Forward, then stop? Hey, here we go! Wait, there’s a period. Aww… Anyway. This is about actually moving forward in 2013 as an author. That means assessing the past year, figuring out what worked and what didn’t, and setting new achievable goals.

Looking Back In 2012 I had seventeen titles on Amazon and sixteen on Barnes & Noble. Now I have nine and eight respectively. Wait a minute, what? Yes, you read that right—I have fewer titles now. Why? Because on reflection I didn’t feel that everything I put out there was my best work. Kind of hard to admit, I know. Especially when I really enjoyed writing those other stories and couldn’t wait to share them with the world. Anyone else out there done that? Please leave a comment.

At the beginning of last year I had few than five hundred Twitter followers. Now I have more than two thousand, so yay me. I must be doing something right. To be clear, Twitter is a work-in-progress. The key for me is to give more than I take. That means consistently providing useful information while occasionally promoting my own work.

Last July I launched this blog. Though I don’t have tons of subscribers and my bounce rate is high, I still feel it is worthwhile—especially since I share it with guest bloggers, which I love doing. In fact, I hope to do more of that this year. If you are an author—or screenwriter—and you would like to share something, please leave a comment.

By mid-last year I had completed the first draft of my new zombie novel. Now I’m in revisions, and am targeting publication in the summer.

Highs and Lows Overall I would say that I achieved my goals in terms of building my platform. I’m no social media superstar but I do interact with quite a few folks around the world via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The encouragement has been amazing. It’s one of the things that keep me going.

Earlier I said I finished a first draft of my new novel. That’s actually not true. Currently I have no actual ending, though there are definite ideas knocking around in my head. So, while not a low, I would have liked to say I finished the whole thing once through.

2012 Goals that Still Matter I know you’ve all heard this before but creating unrealistic goals is a big, fat waste of time. Here are things I believe I can do. But first here are some things I laid out last July when I launched the blog.

Write better. Okay, this is a never-ending process. I’m confident that Stephen King still strives to write better each day. I do believe that I am a better writer now than when I began. By this time next year, I hope to say that again.

Master the publishing process. It was stupid of me to say this, although to be fair I did not put a time limit on it. First of all, I have yet to publish a novel. Most of my titles are short stories and one is a short middle grade novel. Publishing a real novel is another thing entirely. I’ll get back to you on this one.

Master digital marketing. Again, no time limit. Am I better than I was a year ago? Absolutely. But there is so much more to learn—especially around gathering and interpreting metrics. What I really need is a data person. Good luck to me. Have you seen what social media consultants charge to crunch the numbers?

Help others whenever I can. This one is easy because it’s what I love to do. I may not be the world’s greatest author/publisher/marketer but I am always happy to help those who are just starting out. In fact, that’s one of the value propositions for this blog. Ask me anything in the comments, and I will do my best to get you a solid answer. Really.

2013 Goals Publish my novel as an eBook in 2013. I really wanted to say Summer but, again, let’s make this realistic and achievable. There are many steps associated with publishing a novel—it’s a big job. First, I must “assemble my team.” Then I need to create a marketing campaign and begin marketing the book six months prior to publication. I haven’t decided whether to also publish a print version. I may delay that. I would love to hear the pros and cons of doing this in the comments.

Grow my author platform. This is an ongoing activity. It involves attracting more follows in social media and popping up as a commenter and guest blogger wherever I can. As far as Twitter is concerned, I’d like to double the number of followers. Hey, maybe that’s one of those unrealistic goals.

For those of you who are on a similar journey, what do you think? What’s missing from this list? In the meantime, here’s to an unbelievably awesome 2013. Forward!

 

Adapting Public Domain Literature to Comics: How it’s Done

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This post, by Ben Chabala, originally appeared on his I Speak Comics blog. While the target audience is comic book and graphic novel authors, the subject matter is equally applicable to any literary adaptation of public domain material.

Before I blast off into theoretical realms unknown I think it’d be beneficial to lay a solid foundation for the ideas I’ll be talking about later in the series. First and foremost is the term public domain, which I’ll be throwing around a lot and transmuting into an acronym when I get tried of writing it (PD). If something is in the public domain, and in our case we mean any literature in the PD, it is no longer under any sort of copyright protection.

So anyone that’d like to publish, let’s say The Art of War, can. It being written over 2000 years ago puts it out of reach of even the most dedicated copyright lawyers of the period. That isn’t to say that you can copy modern translations of the work though, present day lawyers will jump all over you for that.

Here’s another example: Let’s say you wanted to write a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” in comic book form. Well Cole Haddon has done just that in his comic series “The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde.” Seeing as the venerable author died in 1894, at the tragic age of 44, and over 100 years have passed since his demise, his work has fallen out of copyright protection and into the public domain and is now open for adaptation.


The same is true for other such masterful authors as Jane Austen, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Bram Stoker; the list goes on and on. Granted things get a bit trickier if you want to use works penned by the recently deceased authors of our age, what with copyright laws seemingly being pushed back to infinitum by our legislators, but that’s besides the point. For the third and final time – Public domain literature is free of copyright restrictions and can be adapted and tweaked at will.

So how have comic books creators taken advantage of this phenomenon? Over the past few years I’ve noticed 4 main classifications of adapted PD literature in the graphic storytelling medium: 1) Strict adaptation, 2) tweaked adaptation, 3) untold adventures, and 4) the patchwork universe. Of course there are always exceptions to every rule and these classifications are by no means immutable, but I think they do a good job of setting up the ground work for discussion.

A strict adaptation is when a creator takes a novel and transforms it into a visual tale. Here the writer must pick and choose which words to rip from the prose and feed to the reader while the artist must do their best to make sure that their every picture is worth a few hundred words at least.

This has got to be the most difficult PD adaptation a creator can undertake. They hack and slash the time-tested work of a master, reassemble it into something that communicates the story visually, and then find an artist with the ability to make it look and feel right.

Unfortunately, unless the finished product is something of such surpassing brilliance that it outshines its progenitor, most of these graphic novels tend to be merely an introduction to their meatier original material. Great examples of this type of PD adaptation can be found in the Puffin Graphics collection.

Tweaked adaptation occurs when a creator changes the events of the original work to suit their own creative desires. That probably sounds incredibly vague but for those of you well-versed in mainstream comics think about Marvel’s “What If?” books. There the writer changes an important event in the history of the Marvel U, e.g. General Ross originally becomes the Hulk instead of Banner, and then reveals an all-new aftermath over the course of the comic. It’s still a Hulk story with the same events leading up to the Gamma Bomb explosion, but stars a different Hulk.

 

Read the rest of the post on I Speak Comics.

7 Things Joining KDP Select Can And Can't Do For You

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I have no problem with authors deciding not to put (or keep) their books in KDP Select because there are a number of good reasons not to sell an ebook exclusively through Amazon. What does bother me is when people put a book into KDP Select with unrealistic expectations, or don’t do their homework about how KDP Select works, or blame Amazon when their books don’t sell, and then announce that KDP Select is not a good strategy to follow for independent authors.

It is my hope that this post will help educate authors about what KDP Select can and can’t do, thereby creating more realistic expectations and better decisions about whether or not KDP Select is right for their books.

However, before reading the rest of this post, I do recommend that every author read the KDP SELECT FAQ page first so that they have a basic understanding of how the program works.

Four Things KDP Select CAN NOT DO for you:

1. If there is some reason why people are not buying your book when they run across it (too few reviews, negative reviews, badly designed cover, ineffective product description, badly written or formatted free excerpt, wrong price–too low or too high), then simply being in KDP Select will not change this, and people will not start to buy or borrow your book just because it has the Amazon Prime designation.

2. If people can’t find your book when browsing in the Amazon Kindle Store because the book isn’t in the right categories, or doesn’t have the right key words or tags associated with it, simply being in KDP Select will not make it easier for people to find the book, and they will not start to buy or borrow this book. (There is no special promotion by Amazon of all KDP Select books).

3. If your book has demonstrated its salability, is in the right categories, has the right keywords and tags, but the book has not sold enough in the last 30 days to put it in the top 100 of the popularity lists for its categories (or in the last 24 hours to put it in the bestseller list of those categories), then simply being in KDP Select won’t change its discoverability, and people will be unlikely to find the book, and they will not start to buy or borrow this book.

4. If you do a free promotion of your book using the KDP Select free days, this will not automatically ensure that it gets a lot of downloads, and, even if it gets a lot of downloads, this will not always result in an increase in sales or borrows of the book.

For example, if your book fits in category one above (there are problems with the book itself in terms of why people don’t buy it), doing a free promotion won’t necessarily cause a lot of people to download it. I routinely look at the free lists of the categories I am interested in, and I routinely take a pass on free books that don’t appeal to me for a variety of reasons. In this case a book that already has problems probably won’t get enough downloads to cause a rise in visibility afterwards. And, even if a number of people decide to take a chance on a book, just because it is free, when the book goes off free it will face the same problems it had in selling that it had before the promotion.

Or, if the book is only listed in one category, and that is one of the larger categories (say it is only listed in contemporary fiction-where there are 109,000 books and where not every free book makes it to the top 100 free books in that category), then the free promotion may not gain enough attention for the book to make it visible after the promotion is over. Again, this means the promotion will not result in increased sales or downloads.

Or, if you do nothing to publicize your book’s free promotion, even if it is in the right categories and has demonstrated its ability to sell well when people find it, there is no assurance that enough people will download it (under the new algorithms) to result in increased visibility when the sales are over. This again means the promotion will not result more sales and borrows.

In fact, a failed promotion (one that generates few downloads) may hurt your book’s sales since the book will not be selling at all for the days of the promotion, lowering your average sales for those days. In this case your book will be worse off in visibility than before the promotion.

Three Things KDP Select CAN DO for you:

1. If your book is already selling well enough so that it is visible on one of the browsing category popularity lists or bestseller lists, then people who are looking for books to borrow through Amazon Prime can now borrow it. Since borrows translate as sales, KDP Select can help you maintain your visibility and add to your earnings for the book. A number of authors have mentioned that they can’t imagine that readers would bother borrowing a book unless it was a highly priced book, but this does not seem to be the case.

At $3.99, my two historical mysteries, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, have been borrowed 4108 times through Amazon Prime in the last year and made me $8,161 (just short of $2 per book). These borrows have also helped keep my books visible between promotions.

2. If you do a promotion where you get enough downloads to put you on the top 100 of a popularity category list, being in KDP Select will result in at least some increase in sales and borrows after the promotion.

However, to ensure you get enough downloads, you need to make sure your book is ready (cover, description, categories, etc) and that you have done adequate marketing of the promotion. (see my Simple Steps to a Successful KDP Select Free Promotion.)

This has become particularly important because of the increase in the number of free books that are available in any given day, and the change in the algorithm for translating downloads to sales that has limited the impact of all promotions. Presently, if you don’t break through into the top 100 Kindle free book list with your free promotion, your promotion will be unlikely to bump your book up high enough afterwards to effect subsequent sales (unless your book was already doing well, and the promotion is designed to maintain that visibility.) Using sites like the Author Marketing Club, having your book picked up by a site like Pixel of Ink, or doing a paid promotion, for example through BookBub, is increasingly necessary to achieve that level of success. Here is a recent post at BookBuzzr on 7 Resources to Help with KDP Free Days Promotions.

If your promotion is successful (you break into the 100 Free Kindle books list), and the book is saleable, and you have your book in categories where you have a fighting chance of being visible after the promotion is over, KDP Select will increase your sales and borrows.

For example, the two weeks before my recent December 28-30 KDP Select promotion, Maids of Misfortune sold an average of 25 books a day, and Uneasy Spirits sold an average of 9.8 books a day. The first 10 days of January, after the promotion, Maids of Misfortune sold an average of 43 books a day, and Uneasy Spirits sold an average of 40 books a day. In addition, in those first 10 days of January 907 people borrowed one of these books.

3. If your book has already had positive reviews and you have a successful KDP Select promotion, you will increase your total number of reviews, which will improve the chances that people will buy the book when they see it.

Although you may garner a number of negative reviews (people who wouldn’t normally buy your type of book may give it a try if free, find it is not to their taste, and a number of them seem to enjoy telling everyone why they didn’t like it.), the increased number of positive reviews ultimately improves the overall credibility of the book.

For example, before doing my first KDP Select promotion last December, when the book had been selling for 2 years, I had 38 reviews for Maids of Misfortune, with an average 4.3 stars. A year later, after numerous free promotions, I have 191 reviews with an average of 4.2 stars. The slight slippage in stars is more than out-weighed by the positive impression of having those many positive reviews gives of the book. Probably even more importantly, Uneasy Spirits, my sequel, which had only been out 3 months before the first promotion (and only had about 8 reviews), now has 88 reviews with an average of 4.3 stars. I would never have gotten this number of reviews in just over a year without the KDP Select promotions I have done.

In summary, if your book is not selling well on Amazon (it is not at least visible on one of the one browsing categories) don’t sign that book up for KDP Select if you are not planning on putting in the work to do a successful free promotion. You will be disappointed, and you will be going exclusive to Amazon in exchange for no discernible benefits.

On the other hand, if your book has the potential to sell, it is in marketable categories, and you work hard on putting together an effective promotion, KDP Select can earn you more money in sales and borrows after the promotion, maintain a level of discoverability that will permit your book to continue to make money, and help your book accumulate a healthy number of reviews. How many sales and borrows you make a month (in comparison to what your sales are out side of Amazon), and how willing you are to continue to do promotions when those sales begin to dwindle (as they will almost inevitably), will then determine whether or not you want to keep your book in Amazon’s KDP Select.

I hope this helped clarify a little what to expect from KDP Select and what not to expect so that any decision you make as an indie author will improve the likelihood that readers will find and buy your books.

This is a cross-posting from M. Louisa Locke‘s blog.

New Scams Preying On Writers Who Are Struggling Financially

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Maybe “scam” is too strong a word, but I’m not sure what else to call it.

I’m seeing more and more marketing materials specifically targeted to indie and mainstream authors who are struggling to earn a fulltime living as writers, or finding it impossible to make the transition from day job to fulltime author. Whenever a demographic that contains many disappointed, disillusioned and possibly desperate or gullible people is formed, the vultures are quick to start circling.

Today I received yet another solicitation from a company offering to solve all my financial and work-life balance problems by helping me realize the dream of not only being a fulltime writer, but being paid handsomely for it.

The email sympathetically acknowledged how many writers have tried to get a mainstream publishing contract and failed, or self-published and seen disappointing profits. The email went on to reassure the reader that the dream of making a living as a writer is well within reach for anyone who wants it, and in fact the simple key to success is a little-known career niche that many writers simply don’t know exists.

The email claimed success in this niche is easy; so long as you know about this type of work, love writing, and are able to write well, you can exceed your wildest dreams of success as a professional writer. According to the email, many writers who have discovered this little-known niche are earning six-figure incomes while only spending 20 hours a week or so writing.

Hmm…Sounds ‘Legit So Far…

Loaded language like “little-known”, “secret”, “six figure income” and the like tends to make my internal red flags pop up, especially when it comes wedged into what’s obviously a sales pitch of some sort. Mental alarm bells start going off for me when the pitch purposely avoids ever explicitly stating what’s being offered for sale.

All that was missing from the email was the assurance that with “this one weird tip” my career would take off instantly, or that a “[insert your hometown name here] mom” had been the one to make this discovery, which career experts didn’t want me to know about, and which would soon be solving all my career problems, whitening my teeth and making me lose pounds and inches.

It was looking pretty darned scammy and pyramid-scheme-y, but hey, this email was delivered to me by a reputable, national writers’ organization, with an intro stating that organization was excited to share this amazing opportunity with me, so it couldn’t possibly be a scam, right? Whatever this offer turned out to be, it must’ve been fully vetted, and I should give it the benefit of the doubt, right?

And The Secret Is—Wait For It, Wait For It—

I read all the way to the bottom, hoping ‘the secret’ would finally be revealed at the end, but instead was presented with a ‘let me show you how’ link. That link took me to another lengthy statement on a web page attesting to the awesomeness and profitability of this amazing writer opportunity, and included testimonials from other writers who’d taken advantage of the offer and had relocated to Easy Street shortly thereafter, with their full names, photos and everything.

Yet nowhere did this second, even longer sales pitch state what was being marketed to me, or how much it would cost.

It wasn’t until I followed yet another link, at the bottom of that lengthy page of marketingspeak B.S., that I got to a page that actually showed what was being sold and what it would cost: a series of e-publications on topics about how to find copywriter jobs, how to succeed as a freelance copywriter, how to generate copywriting leads, how to break into travel writing, et cetera et cetera, and even though they were valued at over $200, for a “limited time” I could have them ALL for a mere $49.

$50 Is A Big Chunk Of Change, But Does That Alone Make It A Scam?

No. I’m fairly certain all of the “secrets” in these e-pubs are already available for free in multiple locations online, but I can see where gathering them all together and offering them for sale in a single package—otherwise known as a “book”—adds enough value to justify charging for the material. But here’s why I still classify this as a scam:

1. The seller repeatedly emphasizes how EASY it is to “immediately” start earning large fees; she conveniently leaves out the part where essentially, she’s just advising you to start your own freelancing business, and she also conveniently leaves out the part about how HARD it is to launch a new freelance business.

Plenty of people, myself included, have sold books or training programs intended to provide writers with necessary business or craft skills, but the ones who are being honest will tell you the ugly truth right up front: it’s hard work, it’s a longterm investment that will not “immediately” start paying off, and no book or training program can guarantee career success. Many people can and do make a respectable or even comfortable living as freelancers, but it took a lot of time, effort and sacrifice to get there.

2. The key to success here is NOT any of the e-pubs she’s offering to sell you, it’s having a very strong entrepreneurial drive and a lot of business savvy. If you already have those things you don’t need anything she’s selling to launch a freelance business, and if you don’t, no amount of advice or e-pubs from her or anyone else will make your business a success.

This person is not selling a course in how to run a small business, covering your tax and regulatory bases, basic accounting and so on, but she’s marketing her copywriting information as if it IS a one-stop, magic portal that can take you from being unemployed, or unhappily employed in an unfulfilling day job, directly to a glamorous new life where you’re making tons of money, setting your own hours, and basically living the dream as a professional writer.

3. The sales copy repeatedly emphasizes how one need only spend 20 hours or so a week writing to earn a fulltime income—yet never mentions the many MORE hours freelancers must spend chasing after leads, networking/using social media to promote, preparing bids, trying to collect on jobs already completed and seeing to all the same small business administration tasks as any other small business owner.

In addition, the sales copy fails to mention the fact that freelancers must also get and maintain a professional-quality website, and be prepared to invest time and possibly money in advertising themselves and their “products”. If all of this stuff sounds familar, that’s because it’s all the same stuff authors are supposed to do to sell their books.

The copywriter career path is being sold as an easy, painless alternative to the disappointment and long hours of trying to make it as an author, yet the very same things that can make trying to earn a fulltime living as an author disappointing and exhausting are required of a fulltime, freelance copywriter.

4. While this may not technically fit the criteria to be classified as a pyramid scheme, in one sense, it is: the seller is making her money by getting you to buy her e-pubs and subscribe to her magazine. She must be working as a hugely successful copywriter too—if she weren’t, how could she be in position to advise you, after all—, but it’s a safe bet that a large piece of her income pie chart comes from this particular revenue stream.

The fact that she’s trying to make money by selling something isn’t the problem; it’s that she’s trying to make money by using deceptive advertising techniques that are very much in line with the techniques used to suck people into multi-level marketing scams.

5. The whole thing is being sold to a demographic that was targeted specifically on account of its members’ financial problems. If you want to be cynical, you could say the message of the whole thing boils down to, “Money problems? Give me fifty bucks and I’ll tell you a secret that’ll make you rich overnight!”

It would be more responsible to target people who are already making some headway as freelancers, but need some additional guidance and advice from more experienced and successful freelancers who’ve gone before them. That’s a group of people who already know what’s involved and have already made some level of commitment to a career in freelancing, not a bunch of struggling authors who still hang on to the hope that there’s some magic bullet that can make all this promotion / author platform / day job stuff go away and escort them directly into the ranks of wealthy, fulltime writers.

BOTTOM LINE: How Good Can Your Product Or Service Be If You Have To Trick People Into Buying It?

I don’t begrudge anyone wanting to earn some money in exchange for sharing the knowledge they have to offer. This woman’s e-pubs and magazine may be filled with all kinds of great information that can absolutely help anyone who’s already trying to make a go of a career in freelance copywriting and already appreciates all the challenges he or she is up against.

What bugs me is the bait-and-switch marketing approach. Why not just open with a statement like this:

“We all know it’s the rare author who earns enough from book royalties to live on, but that’s not the only way to make a living as a professional writer. You’d love to quit your ‘day job’ for something that makes better use of your writing skills, but you still have to pay the bills. Have you considered a career as a freelance copywriter?”

I’ll tell you why not: because putting it right out there in the open, right up front, makes it impossible to bend the truth and offer exaggerated claims. The statement above would let the reader know this supposedly “little known career niche” is actually just the same old freelancing that’s been around since the dawn of civilization. Most people know that freelancers who are earning a comfortable living at it only do so by working very hard, that it took a long time for them to start earning a fulltime living at it, and that they’re no less rare than authors who make a comfortable living on their book royalties alone. But the truth won’t sell many $49 “career packages”.

The above statement also makes it possible for the reader who actually IS interested in pursuing a career in freelancing to simply start Googling for all the same “tips” and “secrets” this woman is trying to sell.

Yes, making a fulltime living as an author or writer is a rare and difficult thing. But there is no “secret”, no magic bullet, and no “little known career niche” that will make it any less rare or difficult. Barring a winning lottery ticket or generous inheritance, we all have to work for a living, and the harder we work, the more we stand to gain. As Westley the Farm Boy (and sometime Dread Pirate Roberts) so eloquently put it in The Princess Bride:

Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

Don’t buy it.

This is a cross-posting from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton’s Indie Author Blog.

Revealed: The Grubby World Of Comment Spam

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This post, by Greg Stevens, originally appeared on The Kernel on 8/30/2012.

Publetariat Editor’s Note: as our regular readers know, in recent months Publetariat has been increasingly targeted by spammers and hackers, to the extent that we finally had to disable new user membership registrations. We are fighting a daily battle against spam comments as well, and many of you may be tilting at that same windmill. This post explains where those spammy, gibberish “comments” come from and why they’re being posted, and may also help clue you in to how you can differentiate between spam and legitimate comments. It’s well worth reading the entire article.

Greg Stevens dives into the feculent bowels of the internet to reveal the tactics and software used by comment spammers. Can this form of marketing be neatly divided into good and evil?

From time to time you may see a comment on a blog or a news article that looks something like this:

Definitely believe that which you stated. Your favorite justification seemed to be on the web the simplest thing to be aware of. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and defined out the whole thing without having side effect, people can take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks

At first glance, it could be an earnest attempt by a non-English speaking reader to give the author some kind of compliment. Detracting slightly from this impression is the fact that the name of the commenter shows up as “buy cheap loui vuitton bags” with a link to an online store.

If you run your own blog or news site, you may see dozens of these comments a day. They come in many varieties. There is the Vague Compliment (“Excellent post! Thanks for the useful information!”), the Vague Criticism (“of course like your web-site but you need to take a look at the spelling on quite a few of your posts”), and of course the very charming categories of Endless Rambling Nonsense and Endlessly Repeated Links. Often exactly the same comments will appear, word-for-word, across dozens or hundreds of different web pages.

In technical circles, these comments are called “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Spam” or “Search Engine Spam,” although the reason for this might not be obvious to those who are not technologically savvy.

When Google, or any other search engine, decides which websites to place at the top of a list of search results, one of the factors it considers is the number of links pointing to the site. A page that has many links from other places on the web (these are called “inbound links”) will rank more highly in the search results than a page that has only a few links. Web pages with many inbound links are more popular, and therefore Google concludes that those pages are more likely to have the information that a user is looking for.

Spam comments are a way to “game the system” by randomly blasting comments into the web in order to get as many links to your site as possible. Some of these will be deleted by attentive (and irritated) editors and administrators, and some of them will be filtered out automatically by spam filter programs. But some will get through, and the more that do, the more inbound links your website will have, and the higher the search engines will place your site in search results.

The mass-production of generic comments is one of many techniques that are described in the industry as “black hat SEO”: techniques for increasing a website’s search engine status that are viewed as underhanded, shady, or in some other way inappropriate. The term contrasts with “white hat SEO”, which includes techniques for improving search engine placement that conform to the proper ideals of how the web should be used, and are generally honourable, honest, and non-annoying. At least, that is the standard pitch.

Read the rest of the post on The Kernel.

25 Things Every Indie Author Should Know

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This post, by Nenia Campbell, originally appeared on her Goodreads blog.

1. If you are vending inferior goods, don’t be surprised if you don’t have any takers. You wouldn’t buy moldy food or a shirt that’s falling apart, right?

2. Do set your book at a reasonable price. Cheaper is probably better. People are more willing to branch out and experiment if the cost to them is low.

3. Your readers are not walking bags of money. Don’t treat them as if they are. They are people with thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and their respect and interest must be won, not wrested.

4. Big egos are lethal. If you are your own worst critic, nothing anyone says will bother you and advice will be easier to stomach if you admit to yourself that you are not perfect.

5. What happens on the internet does not stay on the internet. Anything you say can and will be held against you. Don’t be a jerk. Not just because you’ll inevitably get caught, but also because it’s just not professional.

6. Don’t take your readers for granted. Having a steady following doesn’t mean people won’t notice when you let your writing go.

7. Don’t write things you’re not comfortable with, even if it’s a popular trend. Nothing is more painful to read than an awkwardly written sex scene.

8. Do read over your stories. Spell-check doesn’t catch all typos–in fact, sometimes it causes them–and it doesn’t do anything for grammar.

9. Do feel free to engage with your readers. If you’re enthusiastic and positive, other people will be, too. Readers don’t have to stay readers–they can also be friends!

10. Don’t attack people for negative reviews. If they were unhappy, it was probably for a reason. Pay attention to their criticism and be honest with yourself: is it warranted? If yes, read over your draft again and see if anything needs fixing. Feel free to ask for elaboration (politely), but don’t be pushy. If no, ignore them. Seriously. Some books just aren’t for some people.

 

Read the rest of the post on Nenia Campbell’s Goodreads blog.

Marcher Lord Press And The Hinterlands Imprint

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This post, by Jeff Gerke, originally appeared on the Speculative Faith blog on 1/11/13. In it, the publisher for Marcher Lord Press explains his decision to start a new imprint for a controversial book rather than risk being blackballed by a prominent Christian Fiction writers’ group and awards process.

Could I publish a book with vulgarity, nudity, and sex? That was the real question. What would my mom think, you know? What would all the awesome homeschooling moms who love MLP think? What would my other authors think?

Since our launch in 2008, my small publishing house, Marcher Lord Press , has billed itself as “the premier publisher of Christian speculative fiction.” We were premier in the sense of “first,” and also, I hoped, in the sense that we would remain at the forefront even when other small presses eventually joined our ranks.

Our niche is that segment of Christians who love fantasy, science fiction, time travel, superhero, and all the rest of the wonderfully weird genres. We target Christians who love Big Bang Theory, Christians who shop at ThinkGeek.com, and Christians who would go to Comic-CON if given half a chance.

Since 2008, we’ve racked up three Christy Award finalist nominations and two wins, something like ten ACFW Carol Award finalist nominations and three straight wins, a number of EPIC and Indie and Inspie nominations and wins, and several positive reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and USA Today Online, including a coveted “starred review” in Publishers Weekly.

One of the advantages of running your own publishing company, especially one that doesn’t try to get its wares into brick and mortar bookstores, is that you can publish anything you jolly well please. It used to be that Christian bookstores (and, sometimes, the very conservative patrons of those bookstores) controlled what could and couldn’t be published by Christian publishers. One complaint from these folks, and a book could die. Multiple complaints, and there was big trouble. But with a small press selling online, this is not an issue.

That’s both good and bad. The good is that you can publish any book you want to publish. The bad is that…you can publish any book you want to publish. It used to be that those folks at bookstores were drawing the line in the sand about what could and couldn’t be published. Now, there is no line. Now it’s up to the individual publisher as to what will be published. The mantle of censorship, so to speak, has now been placed on my shoulders and on the shoulders of any indie publisher.

In late 2011, one of my MLP authors came to me with an idea. He was disappointed with the latest volume in George R. R. Martin’s hugely popular secular epic fantasy series that began with Game of Thrones. My author wanted to produce “the Christian answer to Martin.” He wanted to write an epic not only in scope but in actual size—he wanted a book as big as Martin’s. A typical novel runs around 100,000 words. A typical MLP novel runs around 125,000 words. This one was set to be more than 200,000 words (and ended up being even larger, as you’ll see).

But the story idea was going to push the boundaries of Christian fiction. It was to be a warfare book, so there would be lots of violent content—but that wasn’t a problem for me. I often laugh that traditional Christian fiction is allowed to have so much violence. You can have a body count as high as the sky…but you can’t say dang or have a couple French kiss. Anyway, I wasn’t bothered by the prospect of violence in the book.

What threw me was that the author felt very strongly that the book needed to have vulgarity (which, he informed me, is different from profanity), nudity, and even sex. He had one scene in mind especially, the reunion between a husband and wife when the man comes home from war. He wanted his book to be a corrective to secular fantasy fiction, which almost never shows sexual conduct between married people but seems rather to glorify adultery.

Indeed, much of his novel was imagined as a corrective to secular fantasy. He wanted to show the Christian faith as a positive influence, for instance. He wanted to show Christian clergy as real people—some good, some bad—instead of as the uniformly sinister and corrupt hypocrites that secular fantasy shows them.

In many ways, this epic fantasy was designed to be the fiction equivalent of a Christian standing up in the middle of, say, Comic-CON and saying, “I love all the things you guys love and are doing, but you’re missing the most crucial aspect, the aspect that matters for eternity. Come over to my booth, and I’ll explain what I mean.” It was, in a sense, a work of apologetics (which has nothing to do with apologizing, btw).

So then the decision fell to me. Of course I wanted to create the Christian answer to Martin, not just for the large audience we’d be sure to attract-slash-irritate, but also because of the author’s noble intent.

But could I publish a book with vulgarity, nudity, and sex? That was the real question. What would my mom think, you know? What would all the awesome homeschooling moms who love MLP think? What would my other authors think? I tell you, this decision drove me to my knees. I spoke to my wife, my advisors, and my stable of authors.

I ultimately felt that God was allowing me to go forward with it, so we did.

In terms of the mature content, about the only thing I changed in editing was to scale back that husband/wife reunion sex scene. The author wrote it out explicitly, leaving it to me to decide where to draw the line. Ack. I scaled it back a couple of times until I could read it without freaking out.

Meanwhile, during the editing of the book, word was getting out that we were heading toward the launch of this book. One woman wrote me to say that we were no longer a Christian company and when I came back to God I could drop her a note and she’d think about supporting us again. I expected that sort of thing.

What I hadn’t expected was the support I received. I had a number of authors—some were my own authors and some were folks who had despaired of ever finding a publishing outlet for their mature Christian novels—privately tell me how much an answer to prayer this new development was to them.

Things were going along pretty well until two days before the book was to release. I got a note from the folks at a prominent Christian fiction writers group in America saying that if we released this book, they would take MLP off their list of approved publishers. That meant that all MLP books would not be eligible for their annual award.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Speculative Faith blog.

Are You Alienating Facebook Friends with Your Political Posts?

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This post, by , originally appeared on the Fox 4 News site on 10/11/12, during the lead-up to the election. As political issues such as gun control and the economy continue to dominate the national consciousness, it’s still a very timely piece and one that authors concerned about platform-building should find particularly interesting.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — (CNN) Steve Reeder says it’s no secret among his Facebook friends: He’s a Republican.

But after he began posting news articles and political cartoons on his page that reflect his support for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, his friend count began falling off. Today, it’s down by several dozen.

“One day, they are there. The next day, they just disappear,” said Reeder, 53, of Roswell, Georgia. “Most (people) don’t say anything to me about it. So I just say ‘good riddance.’”

It’s a story that’s been playing out on Facebook and Twitter with growing frequency among friends, family members, colleagues and acquaintances as an already contentious presidential campaign between Romney and President Barack Obama enters its final, frenzied weeks. Your close friends may share your political views, but that eccentric uncle, former co-worker or high school classmate may not.

Nearly one-fifth of people admit to blocking, unfriending or hiding someone on social media over political postings, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The biggest gripes: The offending person posted too often about politics, disagreed with others’ updates, or bothered mutual friends with partisan political postings.

“In the real world, we navigate these issues all the time. We know not to bring up politics around certain friends or family members. We try to avoid people who are constantly looking for an argument or trying to sell us on their pet ideas,” said Aaron Smith, a Pew research associate.

“Since blocking, unfriending, hiding people is the closest social analogue to those real-world examples, it’s not necessarily surprising to see people taking these steps in the virtual space.”

Muting the rhetoric

It’s the hateful tone of the political conversation that is particularly disturbing to Luis Stevens, who has temporarily muted the Twitter voices of roughly 150 people and blocked more than 400 others until after the November 6 election.

More than one person has threatened to show up on Stevens’ doorstep after he disagreed with them on Twitter. A few more have called him names. And at least one stepped across a political “red line,” endorsing a pundit that Stevens finds offensive.

“This is a pretty mercurial campaign on both sides. People on both sides tend to get heated pretty fast,” said Stevens, 37, of Ruidoso, New Mexico. As a result, he said, “there are way too many people on Twitter who are a little scary.”

Stevens tweets under the pseudonym @pettybooshwah. He doesn’t post pictures of himself, nor does he release details about his whereabouts.

But he’s not shying away from political debate.

“When you don’t follow people with the opposing viewpoint, Facebook and Twitter can become an echo chamber where everybody agrees,” Stevens said.

‘Facebook is not a democracy’
 

Read the rest of the post on Fox 4 News.

New Year’s Resolutions Be Damned, These Things I Will ALWAYS Do

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I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions. I get the concept, and it’s an entirely admirable pursuit, but it’s often like crash dieting or NaNoWriMo – it’s fundamentally unsustainable. People make all these promises to themselves in the heat and excitement of a new year, and then sink in guilt and stress when those things may not come to pass.

After all, January 1st is only one day after December 31st and it’s entirely arbitrary that we choose to tack onto that day a new identifier for the year. The Chinese aren’t celebrating their new year until February 10th next year, for example. It’s all bollocks, as is all time. As Terry Pratchett said, we just invented time to stop everything happening at once. Which is funny, but also not true. Time is a purely human invention to help us make sense of things and organise when to meet at the pub.

My simple point is this – making specific resolutions for the new year is a fine sentiment, but it’s often very hard to follow through. For example, saying, “I will lose 20kg in 2013″ is potentially opening a person up to failure. But if you say, “I will be a healthier person in 2013: eat healthy, exercise and try to lose some weight”, then that’s more of an attitude than a particular goal and easier to hang onto for a longer period of time. It’s easy to look at that sentiment throughout the year and try to stick to it, as there’s no specific measurement involved that might slip away. And if you fall back from that attitude for a while, it’s pretty easy to look at it, remind yourself and get back on that horse to ride again. Giddy up, motherfucker, there’s no point in crying when you could be trying.

So instead of making new year’s resolutions, I’m going to list a bunch of things I intend to hang onto all year. Not resolutions, but attitudes to never forget. These are ways of being that I’ve always tried to maintain, and intend to maintain into the future.

So, in 2013 (and beyond):

I will continue to work hard at being the best writer I can be, because this shit isn’t easy, nor should it be.

I will finish all the things I start.

I will continue to pursue publication in all the places I’ve yet to crack and further publications in the places I’ve already been featured.

I will have more work published.

I will write novels, novellas and short fiction, because stories are great in all sizes.

I will grab every opportunity that comes my way, because I am a fucking professional and time is made, not found.

I will celebrate the successes of all other writers, because their success is proof I can succeed too. And they deserve it.

I will share the good shit and ignore the rubbish.

I will help my writer friends wherever I can, because I didn’t get where I am now without help.

I will strive to excel and improve, because where I am now is nowhere near where I want to be. I want the moon and the fucking stars, baby.

I will continue to read like a voracious word devourer, because a writer who doesn’t read is a crappy writer. And a bad person. A really, really bad person.

I will look after my health.

I WILL WRITE, because the only actual requirement to be a writer is that you write. Being published, being famous, being rich and successful, being happy with your creative endeavours, none of it comes unless you write. First and foremost before everything else: WRITE. You will not find the time to write – you MAKE the time to write. If you really want it, you will make it happen. Only got one hour, twice a week? Fine, start there. Write for two hours a week, every week. Guess what? You’re a writer now. Then make more time. Make. It. Happen. Then all that other stuff can follow.

These are only my writerly attitudes, of course. Similar philosophies apply to my life as a martial artist, instructor and personal trainer, and to my life in general as a human person of Earth. It’s good to focus on these things and remind ourselves of them regularly. New year is a fine time to take stock, but so is every other day of the year. These things are not resolutions. These things are constants.

May 2013 be everything you want it to be. I wish you all (and myself) happiness, health and success in all you do. Now get out there and make it happen, motherhumpers. I want to hear your names sung from the mountaintops, and mine sung along with them.

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s Warrior Scribe.

The National Emerging Writer Programme – a Great New Free Resource for Writers

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If you’re a budding author, you could do a lot worse than check out the National Emerging Writer Programme. It’s a free training resource open to writers world-wide.

To quote from the website…

Developed by writing.ie and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, the National Emerging Writer Programme is a world first – a centrally funded initiative to foster and develop new writing talent.

A year in development, the National Emerging Writer Programme harnesses the experience and expertise of three of Ireland’s leading writers, Carlo Gébler, Sinead Moriarty and Declan Hughes and brings it via DVD and You Tube directly to those who can benefit from it most – emerging writers.

The main resource consists of three 40-minute videos: ‘Start Writing’, ‘Telling the Story’ and ‘Revising, Rewriting and Overcoming Obstacles’. Lots of good advice and food for thought is on offer, and plenty of inspiration as well.

As stated above, the videos are available on DVD, but they have also been saved to YouTube in bite-sized chunks. I’ve embedded the introductory trailer below…

As always, if you are receiving this post by email or RSS, you may need to visit my blog to watch the video.

As well as the videos, all of which can be viewed via the writing.ie website, a range of written support materials can be read or downloaded in PDF format. They cover such topics as Structuring Your Story, Creating Characters and Writing Dialogue. The PDFs are quite short (1 or 2 pages) but contain some valuable tips.

The National Emerging Writer Programme is a great resource for aspiring authors and completely free, so why not take a look today?

Many thanks to Vanessa O’Loughlin of the Irish online writing magazine www.writing.ie for drawing the National Emerging Writer Programme to my attention.

This is a reprint from Nick Daws‘ Nick’s Writing Blog.