Many people wonder if you can blog your book. This is a common question and answers differ. Here are my blogging tips for blogging your book. Fiction Writers For fiction writers, you can blog about your book’s content: setting, characters, and supporting background, but you can’t dole out your book in blog-sized chunks. Of course, […]
I recently posted a series on getting started using WordPress for your blog or website. In case you missed some of them, here are the seven posts: Setting up a blog is just the first step; the next one is coming up with great content and presenting it in the best way possible. Therefore, I […]
Part 5 in the continuing series on using WordPress for blogging: a platform-building, book-selling tool. WordPress categories and tags are confusing. They seem to do the same thing and offer similar results. WordPress Category A category is like a file cabinet drawer for your posts where you place related content. Categories are general groupings of […]
It seems people are jumping on the podcasting bandwagon. They want to grow their audience and build their platform in order to sell their books (or whatever other product or service they have to offer). This makes sense. Look at the recent surge of interest in audiobooks, with people who “read” books by listening to […]
Many Writers Wish They Had a Mentor The problem is that those who are most qualified to be a mentor are also the busiest, and the people who have time are usually not as experienced. If you find someone who would make a great mentor, just ask them, but leave them room to say, “No,” […]
For social media, I post an excerpt from my blog posts on social media, with a link pointing back to that post on my website. Though social media platforms prefer you don’t do this, because they want to keep you on their site, I want to get people to my site. That’s what is most […]
Writers Should Start Short and Then Go Long In “How to Write a Book,” I posted that the best approach for aspiring book authors is to start out with shorter pieces. No one wants to hear that, but it’s true. Shorter pieces let writers experiment and learn—quickly. Feedback is fast. And in an online world, […]
With social media posts, I always want to direct people to my website, my home base, that I own and control. This means posting a link on social media. I do that on Twitter (because there isn’t room for the full post) and on Facebook (because a link is all I have time for). I […]
WordPress has two versions: hosted and self-hosted. Serious writers recommend self-hosting. But beginners can opt for the hosted version. Here is a basic introduction to WordPress: The hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.com) is easy to learn and use. It also has minimal features. The self-hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.org) is highly flexible and rich in […]
Reading helps us understand what is marketable before we spend hours writing something that’s not. So does talking to others in the industry, especially agents, editors, and publishers. Also, look at the publishers’ current releases. As a starting point here are some general principles of what is not marketable. Though there are exceptions, they are […]