Day: November 5, 2013

Book Blogger Spotlight: My Reader’s Block

Meet Bev, the force behind the wonderful book blog, My Reader’s Block.

She is an administrative secretary for the Indiana University English department’s MA/PhD program. Bev says, “I’ve been a reader as long as I can remember—but I credit my mom with getting me hooked. When I was seven, she gave me her five-book set of Nancy Drew books. I haven’t looked back since. I’m a non-stop reader and a wanna-be writer (first draft of a mystery novel done…currently it is sadly in need of revisions), so when I named my blog I was looking to do a play on ‘writer’s block’ while also indicating that I was reviewing the books (putting them on the chopping block, so to speak). I planned to call it just ‘Reader’s Block’ but some guy had already claimed it. What’s really irksome is that he claimed it, posted like 2 or 3 times several years ago and then abandoned it. So, I stuck a “My” on it. Ta-da!” Continue reading “Book Blogger Spotlight: My Reader’s Block”

Martin Crosbie Interviews The Fussy Librarian

As authors, we have access to a number of professionally-run book promo sites where we can effectively promote our work. Some offer paid services and others are free. Some will post information about your discounted book and others only feature free books. Here’s a pretty extensive list of book promo sites I shared with Indies Unlimited.

There are blogs and websites that help you gain followers or connect with readers, and that’s great, I appreciate the help. Branding is important, and I participate in those sites from time to time, too. But, if I purchase advertising, or post my discounted or free book on a site, I have one goal – I want to make sales.

Bookbub and the others have built their subscriber lists and done a great job. I love dealing with them, but it’s become fiercely competitive to be considered for one of their spots. So, if you’re preparing your advertising in anticipation of the upcoming Christmas buying frenzy, you’ll want to focus on new book promo sites that are growing very quickly.

I thought it would be interesting to talk with some of the actual people behind the scenes in these sites to get a feel for what goes on and where they are headed. This week, I interviewed Jeffrey, who has a great new promo site called The Fussy Librarian. Continue reading “Martin Crosbie Interviews The Fussy Librarian”

Tutorial: How to Embed a Link in WordPress

Some folks have asked me how to make words into a link on a WordPress blog – you know, so when you click on the words, you go to a web page? This may sound silly to some of you, but it’s not intuitive to everyone. So here is a step-by-step tutorial for those who want to be in the know. The logic is the same for MS Word and for Blogger (blogspot) blogs, although the little buttons are a little different. (I’ve included a screen capture for Blogger at the bottom of this article.)

I’m going to use our own Mr. Dick Waters’ recent post on Createspace as an example.

Dick wanted to refer to Lynne Cantwell’s post about Createspace in the body of his post. So, when he sent it in to me, he sent me his text along with the link to her article. I added the title of her article in between the reference and the link. Since it’s a title, I italicized it. It’s still highlighted in blue. See the screen below. Continue reading “Tutorial: How to Embed a Link in WordPress”

Do You Need Some Exposure?

No, I don’t mean the kind where you’re told to go home and sleep it off. I’m talking about getting your books a little face time with potential readers. Here are three small-but-growing websites that have flown by my Facebook feed in the last few weeks. You might want to check them out if you need new places to promote your books. Continue reading “Do You Need Some Exposure?”