Top 10 Tools for Authors in the Digital Age
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October 10, 2017

What should be in your digital toolkit for the business of being an author? Google Suite for your email. Do you wonder why your emails don’t get a reply? It may be they were never delivered. If your account is with AOL, Hotmail, or Yahoo, there is a strong likelihood if you send someone you don’t already have a connection with they will never receive… [Read More]

Author Shelfies
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June 27, 2017

Good writers don’t happen by chance. Chances are they draw from their favorite books to craft their own. What’s on your shelf? We encourage you to post your shelfie in the comments below and on Instagram. Six of our authors with forthcoming or new releases shared what is on their bookshelves, giving you an inside look at the books they’ve been reading. Check out their… [Read More]

Instagram and Books
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June 20, 2017

In the past two years, the importance of Instagram for marketing books has grown exponentially. Readers, book reviewers, and now even publishers have adopted this new social media platform for marketing new releases. As of April 2017, there are more than 700 million users. And it is extremely popular with the millennials. If your audience is under age 35 or college educated, consider joining Instagram…. [Read More]

Frustrated with Facebook?
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May 23, 2017

More than 1.7 billion people are active on Facebook. Fifty-three percent of them are female. The average Facebook user in the U.S. was 40.5 years old. These statistics help explain why it is one of the most popular social media platforms used by authors to engage with readers. But what happens when Facebook explodes with news about political scandals, natural disasters, celebrity deaths, or sports?… [Read More]

Sockpuppet Armies Attack Authors
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November 22, 2016

When your writing is published, expect to go public. Positive engagement with your audience is critical to the success of your book. Readers want to connect with authors. And writers like to hear feedback from their readers. During the last decade publishers have come to expect authors to create and manage their online personas on various social media platforms to promote and market their books…. [Read More]

An Interview with Elaine Mansfield on using social media as an author.
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February 9, 2016

Elaine Mansfield is the author of Leaning Into Love: A Spiritual Journey Through Grief (Larson, 2014). Gold Medal Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award 2015, her memoir captures your heart—from the extraordinary closeness of Elaine’s marriage to how she and Vic transformed their struggle with cancer and despair into a conscious relationship with mortality. After Vic’s death, Elaine leaned into her ongoing love as… [Read More]

Audience Engagement and the Sales Funnel: The Business of Being an Author
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November 3, 2015

How are readers going to find you? When agents and publishers consider a book project, especially nonfiction, they ask questions about your discoverability. There are two basic ways authors and their books get found by readers: search or referral. The first method requires you master search engine optimization and the second requires you master social networking. The marriage of the two in social media marketing… [Read More]

Tips for Building Your Audience Platform
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March 24, 2015

How can you spend your time wisely with social media? Based on current research,  best practices for frequency of social media posts: Twitter – 3 times a day, or more. Facebook – 2 times per day, at most. LinkedIn – 1 time per business day. If you’re on Pinterest – 5 pins per day. Blog at least once a month, no more than once a… [Read More]

My Top 10 Digital Tools for the Business of Being an Author
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January 27, 2015

Today I’m going to share my top 10 digital tools for the business of being an author. Most of these are free and all of them are easy to use. I recommend them to you because I use them and find them valuable and think you will too.   (1) WordPress for website and blogging – Hands down there is no better platform for authors… [Read More]

How to use Twitter for research and writing
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December 9, 2014

Nearly a billion people have registered accounts on Twitter and 100 million of them use it every day. Three quarters of them on a mobile device. As a writer, it’s easy to dismiss Twitter. If you’re an author, it’s a mistake to do so. If your readers are over 50 years old or under 10, you won’t find them on Twitter, right? Wrong question. If… [Read More]