A recent incident at my writers’ group sparked the idea for my post today. A writer submitted a piece where he offered no description of characters that exposed their race. However, the things he chose to write about the characters did make people wonder what race some of the characters were. The main character was a white man married to a black woman, and there were subtle hints — particularly around hair care — of the race of the wife, but nothing explicit. He’d done this on purpose, with the idea that he wanted the reader to imagine the characters to be however they wanted them to be. One of the ladies there, Pam, asked, “Why? Why would you want to be less specific about them? I’ve never heard a good reason for doing this?” Continue reading “Diversity Is About Inclusion, Not Exclusion”
Category: Staff Articles
Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.
Amazon’s New ‘Look Inside’ Feature for Blogs and Websites [Part One]
In case you missed it, Amazon is now keen for its customers to display ‘Look Inside’ links to their favourite books, from within their own websites or blogs.
To be honest, I cannot see too many ordinary bloggers bothering with this feature, but for us Indies it could prove to be marketing gold!
Why? Because the ‘Look Inside’ feature gives casual visitors the ability to sample our work without feeling pressured to buy. Now I know sales are the holy grail, but nothing puts me off faster than a hard sell, so why do it to potential readers? Continue reading “Amazon’s New ‘Look Inside’ Feature for Blogs and Websites [Part One]”
New Facebook Call-to-Action Button Options
Every now and then, Facebook rolls out something new for business pages (author pages and book pages fall under the “business page” umbrella). Most recently, Facebook has added more options to their call-to-action button.
If your page doesn’t yet have a call-to-action button, it’s easy to set up. I wrote about how to do it awhile ago. At the time, I picked the “Shop Now” button as my call-to-action button, and pointed it to my Amazon Author page.
But to be honest, the button hasn’t gotten me a lot of action. Maybe people visiting my page have been puzzled by the idea of a “Shop Now” button for an author; maybe they think of “Shop Now” as more appropriate for designer handbags or jewelry. I dunno. But just in case, I’m going to change my call-to-action button to one of Facebook’s new options. Continue reading “New Facebook Call-to-Action Button Options”
2016 Social Media Platform Cheat Sheets
The need to keep your social media presence accurate and viewable is increasing every year. Optimizing your profile pictures and sharing the best quality layouts goes a long way to representing you and your brand.
Social media platforms are constantly evolving. It’s difficult to keep up with all the changes to profile pictures, timeline rules, and Tweet specs. A few weeks back, we received a request for updated cheat sheets for the major platforms. We haven’t compiled this information since 2013 and a lot has changed since then.
So, here you are … the 2016 updated Social Media Platform Cheat Sheets for image size and general rules. Today we are focusing on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Each downloadable cheat sheet (just right click and hit “save image as”) gives you an overview of the best image sizes for each social network. Continue reading “2016 Social Media Platform Cheat Sheets”