The Photographer
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September 14, 2011

The mission opens with a good-bye and closes with a hello. The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders (First Second, 2009) opens with our protagonist leaving Paris to do a photo-reportage mission of a MSF (Médicins San Frontières, or Doctors without Borders) caravan that’s going into northeastern Afghanistan, near the city of Feyzabad. Starting with them in Peshawar, Pakistan he will cross fifteen… [Read More]

Content is King: the value of “new” social media for writers
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September 10, 2011

If you have been following our social media series and keeping abreast of the free advice Swenson Book Development LLC has to offer, please take note: this post trumps its predecessors. Search engine optimization, metadata, plugins, widgets, and pretty blogs all can improve web traffic and generate sales conversions. Nothing, however, is as important as the content on your website. Presentation and formatting makes a… [Read More]

6 WordPress Tools Worth Installing
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September 3, 2011

If you’ve read my last post on the difference between plugins and widgets and why every author platform should take advantage of these user-friendly tools, you will be happy to read this follow-up guide. I present to you, savvy WordPress user, plugins and widgets for a successful author platform. These are just a few of the basic plugins and widgets we recommend (and use ourselves)… [Read More]

Peter Nimble: an imaginative theft just short of magical vision
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September 1, 2011

Jonathan Auxier’s debut book, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, released August 1st by Amulet Books, is an imaginative attempt within the Young Adult (YA) fiction genre. But what appears to be the beginning of an action-and-adventure-filled series starring a persevering and original cast of characters is in reality an imaginative but half-hearted tale foiled by an amateur voice and copycat style. By his own… [Read More]

Plugin or Widget? Two enhancements your platform needs – now!
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August 27, 2011

Last week I explained the importance of using metadata to optimize your website or blog for search engines. Metadata, as you will remember, helps drive the right traffic to your page and makes your content more accessible. Brilliant! Your web traffic is growing and you are expanding your author platform. But now that visitors arrive on your homepage and take a first look, how do you… [Read More]

Upgrade Series, Part One: Meta what?
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August 26, 2011

If you are recreational web surfer and gadget users like me, it’s unlikely you know what metadata, meta-tags and meta-descriptions are. You could get a SEO or web guru to explain it, using fancy tech jargon and complex, detailed explanations. Or you could opt for human speak and read this post, in which I will endeavor to guide you through the world of “meta” (no,… [Read More]

A Straight-Edge Education
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August 23, 2011

Until I picked up Eleanor Henderson’s Ten Thousand Saints, I had never heard the term “straight-edge,” much less anything about a movement of it. At first, I thought the world Henderson created was 100% fiction. I could not have been more wrong. This is understandable, as I was born at the tail-end of all the action and, to add salt to the wound, I grew… [Read More]

Website and Blog Upgrades: A “How-To Guide” Introduction
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August 14, 2011

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work on websites. I spend my days playing with and installing widgets, writing meta tags and descriptions, cleaning up content, adding links, and overall trying to improve search engine optimization, also known as SEO. It takes time and focus… and sometimes a quick search for clarification and explanation. For the most part I avoid touching HTML code. It’s… [Read More]

The End of Country
by,
July 26, 2011

The End of Country is like many other books that have surfaced in the last five or so years on the scarcity of true wilderness and the abuse of natural resources resulting from corporate greed. Seamus McGraw’s story is frightening, even apocalyptic; after all, Nature’s resources are finite. But it needs to be told and, for many residents in Upstate New York like me, its… [Read More]

The Summer Without Men
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July 12, 2011

Don’t let the jacket copy and title fool you. No chick lit fodder beckons in Siri Hustvedt’s newest fiction: The Summer Without Men (Picador, April 26, 2011). The antics of Mia Fredrickson’s young and turbulent neighbors, the adolescent girls in her poetry workshop, and her mother’s senior circle composed of the wise and nurturing “Five Swans” provides the context for deep intellectual passages and keeps… [Read More]