If you’ve been following this blog the past month as you build your new author website, you’re almost ready to launch! Now that you’ve uploaded your text and images into your new Pages, you can see what each one will look like when it goes live if you click on the Preview button as you are customizing the Page. When you are satisfied, hit the “publish” button. I recommend you install a Contact form on your Contact Page. If you plan to use MailChimp for delivery of your blog and/or your newsletter, use Easy Forms for MailChimp as your widget. Once you’ve customized the look of your Pages to fit you and your book, it’s time to finalize the navigation bar. In the dashboard under Appearances, you will find the item “Menu.” Here is where you can determine the structure and order of each of your Pages. Drag each item into the order you prefer. Home, Author, Book, Blog, Contact. Then click the blue button “save menu.” Now the Navigation Bar on your new website will appear. You’re almost finished. You will want to activate the plugins for MailChimp, Askimet Anti-Spam, Google Analytics, and Facebook Open Graph, Google + and Twitter Card Tags. MailChimp will automate the delivery of emails from your site. Askimet blocks spammers. Google Analytics will import your metrics into your dashboard so you can see them when you sign in. The Facebook Open Graph widget helps your website links load an image and pop up when…
If you are an author who seeks an agent or publisher, you know that it is important to have an audience platform. What’s an audience platform? Historically we think of the soapbox a speaker stood upon at a busy intersection of streets hawking one’s ideas or wares. Print advertisers have long based their rates on the size of their circulation, or the “reach” of the… [Read More]
Filed Under: Bookscan, Facebook Page Insights, free tools, Google Analytics, Hubspot's Marketing Grader, keyword search, Klout, Nielsen, social media metrics, target audience, twitalyzer
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How does one combine memoir, ethnography, self-discovery, and history, while contributing to two important bodies of literature—Holocaust and psychotherapy—in an eminently readable book? Do what Leila Levinson has done in Gated Grief: The Daughter of a GI Concentration Camp Liberator Discovers a Legacy of Trauma (Cable Publishing, 2011). The breadth of her project is evident even in the awards it has won—one for women’s memoir… [Read More]
The biggest secret of the best web users is not a browser, or a program, or a web site. The biggest secret is two keys that have been on your keyboard from the very moment you got a computer – Ctrl-f. To those in the know about Ctrl-f, the idea of not knowing might strike you with surprise and pity. How, you may ask, is… [Read More]
I’m going to ‘fess up: I don’t read enough nonfiction for pleasure. Fiction has always been more compelling to me. The fantasy, the adventure, the imagination, the characters – this is the stuff of storytelling. But there are some exceptional books of non-fiction and memoir that trump my fandom of fiction. Here’s my top 4 picks for NF and memoir. These books are not only… [Read More]
Filed Under: addiction, appetites: why women want, Azar Nafisi, beautiful boy, book selections, Caroline Knapp, compelling narrative, cultural studies, David Sheff, female hunger, feminism, forbidden books, Jon Ronson, memoir, Nic Sheff, Nonfiction, psychiatry, psychology, psychopathy, reading lolita in tehran, reviews, the psychopath test
Even the most poignant blog post is virtually unreadable without a little visual appeal. On one hand, text matters most because content is KING of SEO. However, the queen in this strategic game toward publishing flanks the important part of your content – key words, headings, and links generate your SEO. Your ideas are what will make people keep coming back and your visitors come… [Read More]