Month: May 2012

Fear and self-loathing, sober on my couch

Writers are sensitive folks, generally. This is good. Empathy is important and all that. This is also bad. Lots of us kill ourselves or drink ourselves to death, etc. I was thinking about this today because I started feeling really bad about myself, and then I had an epiphany.

See, I write a lot of things and some get ignored and some blow up and some just kind of exist, taking up internet space. So, anyway, what got me all bummed out was looking at my stats on Amazon. (I have yet to figure out that Jim Devitt trick that would make me the #1 bestselling writer named JD Mader or something – I love you, Jim – this isn’t about you, you’re awesome – and I WILL figure it out).

So, I was looking at my stats and I started feeling crappy. I did the KDP select program with one book (more about that on Thursday). My reviews are good. I’ve done pretty well, but it felt shitty. And then I stopped and mentally bitch-slapped myself for a moment. In far less time than it took to endure middle school, I have self published two novels, gotten this IU gig, started some blogs which I now pretty much ignore, started BlergPop with two writer friends, wrote Bad Book with Hise and Brooks, started an advice column (I have only done one so far, but people are digging it), just published an article with the biggest online fishing resource, and started a Freelance writing business. So, thought I to myself, why are you tripping you gorgeous nimrod, you? Continue reading “Fear and self-loathing, sober on my couch”

Tuesday Tutorial: Hootsuite 101 by Troy Stewart

Marketing Strategist Troy Stewart
Troy Stewart

Hootsuite 101- Twitter Just Got a Lot Easier
So you’ve been using Twitter and starting to gain followers. Perhaps you log in every morning and check to see what your followers are saying. Maybe, you even click on hashtags to see what is going on with current trends. That’s great, better than most actually. But there is a lot more that Twitter has to offer.

How do you access the rest? By using Hootsuite.

A Dashboard

Hootsuite is a “social media dashboard.” Basically, it takes up a page or tab of your browser (it is completely web based) and allows you to see Twitter through an entirely different lens. Hootsuite allows you to view Twitter in a “column” view. That is, your home feed, your @ mentions, your Direct Messages and everything else is put into columns for you to easily access. Continue reading “Tuesday Tutorial: Hootsuite 101 by Troy Stewart”

Will Technology Drive Readers to Demand More?

It rarely happens, but this year, I had the opportunity to go somewhere nice on vacation. Not only was it somewhere nice, but it was on a river cruise, a “cozy” setting where I had a week to get up close and personal with 140 people, pretty much all of whom had disposable income, at least one variety of electronic reading device, and no shyness about whipping out their TBR lists. Continue reading “Will Technology Drive Readers to Demand More?”