Category: Guest Posts

Children’s Books Featuring Children With Disabilities Say “You Belong”

author Jo Meserve MachGuest Post
by Jo Meserve Mach

The books in everyone’s homes give out powerful messages. These messages can be scary, confusing, exciting, or hopeful.

My job as an Occupational Therapist providing infant-toddler services brought me into many homes where my role was to teach the parents of a child with a developmental delay how to help their child use their abilities. The parents were often reading books about their child’s disabilities. These books were scary and confusing. Continue reading “Children’s Books Featuring Children With Disabilities Say “You Belong””

How Authors can Utilise Facebook Live

Facebook Live LogoGuest Post
by Alan Parks

Almost every single Indie author that I know is on Facebook. Most of us spend time trying to sell our books to our friends, and many authors I know still insist on spending time copying and pasting a generic post to 20 or 30 Facebook groups and hoping that it will get them sales. STOP. There is a better way.

Facebook is still the best form of social media to use to sell your books, but you have to be smart. In recent months, Facebook has generously given us the best new tool for reaching and interacting with readers that we have had for years, and I haven’t seen anyone using it. It is called Facebook Live. Continue reading “How Authors can Utilise Facebook Live”

A Book Launch Tale: Planning with Abandon

author rb frankGuest Post
by R.B. Frank

When I planned my first book launch, ignorance is bliss worked just fine for me. Most people research a topic and make decisions with their accumulated information. Makes sense, right? Yeah, too much of anything is not a good thing (even wine). I got sucked into the vortex of blogs, twitter postings and online articles. Then I realized if I spent lots of time down the rabbit hole of internet links, my thoughts would never coalesce into a real plan for a book launch. I would forever research, vacillate and procrastinate with an ever-changing definition of a book launch and never jump in. Continue reading “A Book Launch Tale: Planning with Abandon”

How to Avoid Book Marketing Scams

Sabrina ZbasnikGuest Post
by S.E. Zbasnik

“No man is an island” wrote John Donne before getting ripped off by Simon & Garfunkle. Never is that more true than when an author is trying to get his or her book to market. It is impossible to do it all on your own from the cover, editing, proofing, formatting, and marketing. These things take not only time but also a skill set not everyone is proficient in, making them a breeding ground for scammers.

While a plethora of predatory publishers and editors exist within the pre-publishing stages, there are also a slew of scammers when it comes to marketing. What’s an author to do? You need to get the word out to drum up attention that hopefully leads to sales, and these shiny websites are offering their services to help – often for staggering fees. Requesting thousands of dollars has to mean they’re guaranteed to get results, right? Continue reading “How to Avoid Book Marketing Scams”