Month: February 2014

How to Make Your Book Signing Event Completely Successful

carol tankSome of my ideas for marketing might be considered a little outrageous – but this one, however wacky it might seem, could attract the right attention for a book signing.

Recently, I had the good fortune to be invited to do a book signing at a hotel. The manager who hosts a weekly cocktail party wanted to surprise guests by having me there, signing copies of the book that features his hotel. Attendance to these events has been dropping off and he wanted to make it a little more interesting. Continue reading “How to Make Your Book Signing Event Completely Successful”

Writers Are Ugly Actors

sophie jonas-hillGuest Post
by Sophie Jonas-Hill

If writers were better looking, they would be actors. Our skill set is very similar, they have to pretend to be a whole heap of different people, and so do we. In a way, we’re even more versatile because we don’t have the dead eye of the camera judging us and prescribing what we can be. We get to be anyone and everyone regardless of gender or ability or skin colour. Or we should be able to, anyway.

What ever character you’re working on, if they’re not coming to life then I’d heartily recommend taking a long look at the acting profession and try ‘being’ your character for a while, rather than writing them. Continue reading “Writers Are Ugly Actors”

Link Building: The Basics for Your Blog or Website

Link Building Basics Link building is a method used to increase visibility and improve your search rankings. Without getting into a lot of mumble jumble, search engines examine the links to and from your site to assign it a certain ranking. Links aren’t everything in search engine optimization (SEO); however, it accounts for a large percentage of weighting in search results as shown in this survey by MOZ.

If you are interested in growing traffic to you blog or site, growing the link profile will gain attention, traction and traffic from search engines. In addition, the strength of the link plays a big role as well. Spam hits in your blog “comments” do not help in establishing links that matter (which is why you have a “nofollow” option in your settings.) Links acquired from your target community, such as indie writing or publishing, matter more than off topic links.

How do we go about link building? Here are the top ten basic methods to build links and improve your site’s visibility. Continue reading “Link Building: The Basics for Your Blog or Website”

Featured Book: Shadows of Doubt

Shadows of DoubtShadows of Doubt
by Mell Corcoran
Mystery, Crime, Thriller with a touch of Romance and a Paranormal twist
Available from Amazon.

Have you ever been in far too deep to turn away? Detective Lou Donovan is convinced there’s a serial killer on the loose but she has no evidence to prove it. Every step she takes to try and solve the case brings her closer to uncovering a dark secret that will alter her world forever.

Book excerpt:

She proceeded cautiously through the burned out hull of some sort of outbuilding, possibly an old barn or corral once upon a time. Any trace of daylight was long gone, making anything five feet in front of her lost in the pitch black of the moonless night. Not a sound stirring, not even a shuffle from Vinny in the distance as she carefully climbed over a pile of wood that appeared to have once been a barn door. She could smell stale hay and kerosene as she ducked under a collapsed rafter, proceeding deeper into the ruins and trash. He was in here. She could feel it and she shut off her flashlight so as not to give him a spotlight on his target.

What others say:

“Her latest offering, Shadows of Doubt, is a mystery/thriller that challenges your every perception and shakes the marrow of your bones.”  – T. Hall.