Month: September 2015

Which “Flowers for Free” Flash Fiction Story Gets Your Vote?

Vote5It’s that time again…time to choose your favorite flash fiction story of the week! The judges have whittled down the entries to a select few, and now it’s your turn: time for the public to have the final say. It’s super easy – choose your favorite and cast your vote below for this week’s Flash Fiction champion.

Remember, the winning entries will all be included in the next edition of the IU Flash Fiction Anthology.

Check out this week’s entries here – we’ve even labeled the finalists to make them easier to spot. Make your decision, then use those share buttons at the bottom of the post to spread the word.

Voting polls close Thursday at 5 PM Pacific time.

Which "Flowers for Free" Flash Fiction Story Gets Your Vote?

  • Kat Stiles (39%, 9 Votes)
  • A. L. Kaplan (35%, 8 Votes)
  • Marc Twine (13%, 3 Votes)
  • Jon Jefferson (13%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 23

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NOTE: Entrants whose submissions are not relevant to the prompts and/or exceed the 250 word limit are eliminated from the poll. ONE VOTE PER PERSON, please. Duplicate votes will be deleted. The results displayed above are unofficial until verified by administration.

How My Novel Became a #1 Bestseller

bestselling author virginia grayGuest Post
by Virginia Gray

My goals in writing The Carrot were that it be seen and read, but after nearly a year of posting, sharing, tweeting and pinning and Google Plussing, hoping to catch a reader’s eye, I found my novel drearily hovering around an Amazon sales rank of 200K (I don’t even want to talk about B&N, Kobo, or iBooks). After perusing some interesting blogs, banging my now concussive head against the social media marketing wall, and discussing strategies with other authors, I decided to do what all major publishers do: pay for advertising. Continue reading “How My Novel Became a #1 Bestseller”

Google Plus September Fest

Google Plus LogoLots is going on with Google right now. When isn’t there, right? So how about we take this opportunity to make some new friends on Google Plus?

This is how it works: If you are an author, publisher, publicist, literary agent, book reviewer, librarian (or especially a book-lover), etc., in the comments below, paste in the link for your Google Plus profile (one link ONLY please). Make sure you show some love to the links in the comments above yours (by adding them to your circles), and check back throughout the day to catch up.

If you’re not sure what link to post, just find your profile, then copy and paste the URL. It should look something like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/115965541971717273872 

This should be fun and should generate a lot of exposure for everyone who plays. Let’s get things moving!

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

Battling the Misconceptions about Self-Publishing

slaying self publishing misconceptions knight-40850_640For the past few months I’ve been preparing for a couple of workshops I’m going to be giving on self-publishing. There’s a continuing education program that’s just starting in my little town, so I figured this was a great time to do one workshop on self-pubbing paperbacks and one on eBooks. Last fall, a few other local authors and I held a panel discussion on the various ways to self-publish, and we had a great turnout, so my more in-depth workshops seemed like a natural progression.

In the ramp-up to the new fall semester, the learning institute has been organizing meet-and-greets at various locations where all of us facilitators can interact with the interested public and get to know each other. It’s been quite an education in and of itself hearing what misconceptions people have about self-publishing. I am constantly amazed at the wild ideas people have. Here are a few of the things people have said to me: Continue reading “Battling the Misconceptions about Self-Publishing”