Six or seven years ago my advice to aspiring authors of nonfiction books was to build an audience platform by blogging. An example of how critical blogging could be to securing a publishing contract can be found in the case of Ann Marie Ackermann, author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee. After an initial assessment of her manuscript, I had recommended she start a historical true-crime blog, and she did. In fact, the editor of the ideal book series at Kent State University Press became a fan of her blog and invited her to submit a book proposal. Her book won a 2018 IPPY in the True Crime category, closed a 180-year-old cold case, and has also been translated into German where it received critical acclaim and was recognized for its scholarly contribution to the history of forensics. Today, blogging may or may not be something an author decides to invest time and energy in. If your authority as an author is based on your subject-area expertise, it remains an important goal to have a visible presence on the internet establishing your credibility. Whether blogging is the best means to achieve that goal depends on you and your project. It may be more important to be listed as an expert source available to journalists and appear as a credible source in news publications covering your subject area. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) may be a better fit to…
Are you an author who wants to learn how to use social media tools? Are you looking for some time-saving tricks and tools to help you write and promote your book? Are you overwhelmed and don’t know where to start… or even which questions to ask? This is a 90 minute workshop for authors and writers who want to learn how to: Use track changes… [Read More]
For a comic book, its visual design is superb. Campfire’s latest adaptation, Rudyard Kipling’s classic The Jungle Book, is absolutely gorgeous: it’s not in the same playing field as popular superhero comics by DC and Marvel, that’s for sure. (Feel free to disagree, but neither Spiderman nor Green Lantern has ever been drawn so crisply or in colors so rich.) Children will love the drawings… [Read More]
Too often I hear writers say they don’t see the point of social media, while others say they will use it after they’ve written their book. It’s a common refrain: writers just want to write. Many writers shy away from social media because they think it is nothing more than hype and sales. These are the same people who use Google search engines, rely on online… [Read More]
Literary agents agree. Editors at Big Six publishing houses agree. Bestselling authors agree. If you want to publish a book, you need to use social media. But what is social media? How can YOU use it to sell your book-in-progress? Why have a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? How will you write your book if you are always online? And who really cares about social… [Read More]
In WordPress, the Blogroll is a widget that appears in a side column on your blog page. How does a blogroll work? It provides a list of links to blogs (or other websites) you think your readers might be interested in. A blogroll is your personal endorsement of websites – the places you recommend someone visit for related content. To add a blogroll to your… [Read More]



