Month: April 2015

April Facebook Fest!

LikeUsOnFacebook_IconThis past Monday, our Shawn Inmon had some great tips for getting your author Facebook page some exposure. Of course, his advice will work for anyone with an FB page, not just authors. Go have a read of his article, then come back here and get your Facebook page some love!

This is how it works: If you are a person with a Facebook page you’re welcome to join in. This is not limited to being an author, publisher, publicist, literary agent, book reviewer, librarian, (but if you’re a book-lover – that’s awesome!), etc., in the comments below, paste in the link for your Facebook Page. Make sure you show some love to the links in the comments above yours, and check back throughout the day to catch up. (“Likes” from other PAGES do not count. Only “likes” from personal accounts register.)

Please make sure to come back and check the like-fest over the next couple of days to make sure you’ve gotten everyone. Because people reply to each comment with “liked you!,” we’ve had to turn off comment notifications because we were generating more emails than the SPAM guidelines allow. Thank you.

[Don’t forget, if you right-click the links, you can choose to have them open in a separate tab so you don’t have to worry about navigating back and forth to pages.]

This should be fun and should generate a lot of likes, follows, etc. for everyone who plays. Let’s get the party started!

To those with concerns about the ethical implications of “liking” the page of a book you have not read, we regard  likes as more analogous to a “high five” than a rating or review. We do not support the idea of rating or reviewing a book you have never read.

PLEASE be sure to reciprocate by liking those who like you. This is give and take. If everyone plays by the golden rule, we all benefit.

Self-Publishing Children’s Books

Mrs Kangaroo's New BabyIn honor of the International Children’s Book Day, I thought I would talk about publishing children’s books via CreateSpace. My particular experience started after my parents passed away and I was going through their files. My father was an artist and my mother was a teacher, actually almost direct opposites in temperament, so I was surprised and excited to find the layout of a children’s book written by my mother and illustrated by my father. It was very obvious the little project had never seen a publisher, so I determined to publish it for them.

Because the story was short and simple, appealing to younger children, I chose an 8”x10” paperback format for it — easier for small hands to hold, and the layout my parents had designed fit perfectly. Since the original work was done back in the 1950s, my parents had done a literal cut and paste — typing up the text on a typewriter, cutting the lines out with scissors and pasting or taping them onto the board mats where my dad had drawn the illustrations. Lucky for me, the glue and tape held on after all these years, so it was easy for me to see exactly how they envisioned the set-up of the book. Continue reading “Self-Publishing Children’s Books”

Book Brief: The Sense of Darkness

The Sense of Darkness Book CoverThe Sense of Darkness
by Cinzia De Santis
Genres: suspense, romance, thriller
Word Count: 64,915

A world of intimacy, of smell and touch, is all Clara knows. Blind from birth, she is gifted with an extraordinary sense of smell which guides her through life. Raised by her aunt Trinidad in a small village in Latin America, Clara becomes a renowned healer. She can smell people’s diseases and can heal them with her special recipes. Their lives fall apart when members of a guerrilla gang bring to their home a wounded prisoner whom Clara has to heal. While she struggles to understand the feelings he produces in her, Trinidad’s past returns, carrying the power of an obsessive love. But will it be enough to save her and Clara’s lives?

The Sense of Darkness is available from Amazon.com and Amazon UK

Cinzia, how did you come up with the title for your book? Does it have any special meaning?
The title has a dual meaning. Clara, the main character, is blind, but her extraordinary sense of smell allows her to flourish despite the darkness. Just as important, the violence that closes in on her small village threatens her life – but even that darkness can have a sense, a meaning. Continue reading “Book Brief: The Sense of Darkness”

How to Make an Author Media Kit

making an author media kitYou have a new title out, or you’ve been asked to do a book signing or an interview, maybe participate in a panel discussion — a brilliant opportunity for some publicity. And then someone asks you for a media kit. Gulp. You don’t even know what that is, let alone how to put one together. The good thing is that you probably have all the ingredients for a media kit sitting around on your computer, your website, or floating around on the interwebs. Let’s hunt them down. A quick note first: What I’m walking you through here is only one possible version of a media kit, which is sometimes called a press kit. Your actual mileage may vary.

Mine is divided into two main sections: Information about me, and information about my books.

For information about you, you’ll need… Continue reading “How to Make an Author Media Kit”