Author: Lin Robinson

Linton Robinson was born in occupied Japan, schooled in Asia, and is now a 20 year resident of Latin America. Robinson is an award-winning journalist and noted photographer, with credits in top markets. His syndicated columns were cult favorites in the nineties. Learn more at his blog and his Amazon author page.

All Mystery Newsletter: A Great Free Promo Resource

all mystery newsletterIf you write mysteries, you’re kind of in luck. Because that’s a very high sales value genre. One very concrete measure of that is the pricing on BookBub—the highest priced advertising on their newsletter at $1500 for a book over $2.00. But there’s a way to get your book promo mailed to readers in that niche without the expense: the All Mystery! newsletter.

Rebecca Dahlke’s lively tipsheet/site for mystery novels has had an interesting history, particularly in light of that discussion of pricing. She explains the service’s bounce from free to fee back to free like this, “I started All Mystery e-newsletter in 2010. It went out once a month and it was free to all authors. Then social media fired up and more was needed, including the time I spent to produce, so a fee was charged. However, I’ve recently been able to revamp All Mystery, adding some much needed muscle to the social media aspect–and now I’m happy to be able to offer promotion again for Nada, zip, zero, nada.” Continue reading “All Mystery Newsletter: A Great Free Promo Resource”

Free: Still A Bargain

There is a free lunch, but some would have you believe it’s not good for you… because it’s free. Most people on IU, I’m guessing, are pretty comfortable with some version of the idea that you can sell more books by giving some away.

But not everybody out there in “writer web world” is and some even take it to the next step: moronic denial. Some examples of the arguments one runs into—and should beware of paying serious attention to: Continue reading “Free: Still A Bargain”

No Paragon

Sooner or later any writer on the web (especially on Linked In) will run into mega-spammer Paradon Books (a revolution in publishing they will tell you) or Indie Writers Support. They exist, they say, only to help you get to be a star. But there are a few problems… like they don’t seem to actually exist.

This innovative publisher—though it’s hard to pin down what is so revolutionary about them, or what they actually publish–lists a PO box in Great Falls Montana, and sometimes a street address there: 804 47th Street S, Great Falls MT. And a photo of their huge glass building with their name on the front. But Google Street reveals that address to be a small residential building, and the big glass skyscraper doesn’t exist. At least not in Montana. The post office box is unconfirmed and their phone number is an 866 non-geographical toll-free. Which does not answer, or even ring (sometimes it returns a “fax screech”.) All email addresses for the company and people associated with it are hotmail or gmail, none use their own “names” in the addresses. If you Google them up, you run into a chorus of deep suspicions, including mentions on “419” sites that have reason to suspect them as originating from that area code—Nigeria—which is richly associated with email spamming and scamming. Continue reading “No Paragon”

Specialty Mini-Graphics

This is the final section of this tutorial to deal with “mini-graphics”–small images for various writerly purposes–before discussing topics more related to generating covers and other major graphic output. There are three applications I think many writers would find useful–and all three are also a lot of fun for more general applications such as entertaining kids (inner and outer varieties) or just clowning and attracting eyeballs to your brand. Continue reading “Specialty Mini-Graphics”