Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Quickie tip: on perspective and creating an elevator speech

Rarely does advice on voice and perspective come in such practical terms: if you're a writer, of white papers or web content or Facebook pages or flash fiction or just about anything else, I bet you'll appreciate this blog post from Jonathan Hop. (Thanks, Jonathan)

I'm looking forward to using this technique as I review and revise my (admittedly lackluster) elevator speech.

So... who wants to share their elevator speech?

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Children's Writer Poetry Contest

If you think you're as smart as Shel Silverstein
And your writing skills are really keen,
Go ahead and prove it -
But you better move it:
The deadline is Halloween!

And there you have it. You can enter this children's poetry writing contest with absolutely nothing to fear from me.

About the contest:
Sponsored by Children's Writer*
Free for subscribers, $15 entry fee for non-subscribers (which includes a one-year subscription to the newsletter)
Poems may be on any subject, up to 300 words, and must appeal to children
Top prize is $500 and publication
Deadline for entries: October 31, 2011
Good luck!

*Children's Writer is a newsletter of writing and publishing trends. Since I've been a subscriber, I've been impressed with its very practical advice. (Not that my children's books are winning any awards - oh wait, that's because I don't have any published children's books...yet. Well anyway, good luck!)


Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Bye-bye BookTour

"We regret to inform you that BookTour will be shutting down on Thursday, September 1, 2011. On that date, all of our services will end and our data will be unavailable."

So begins the message from BookTour.com to users, sent today. Although I agree with the company's assessment that its basic services are well-managed by others (including Amazon's Author Central, which I mentioned in a previous post) I'm sorry to see another casualty in the publishing industry, and it was especially painful because BookTour so clearly calls out the elephant in the room: lower book marketing budgets. Duh, but ouch.

Here are the two take-aways from this little post:
1- If you have any info in a BookTour.com page, go get it, and while you're at it, clean up and replace any links to BookTour you may have on your website (or other sites) before September 1, and
2- If you're an author, you're in charge of marketing and sales.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Now Sell This

Now that the second edition of my hiking guide, 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of Cleveland, is available, I've set some pretty lofty sales goals. Dublin, Ohio-based artist and author Carmen Ambrosio kindly invited me to offer this guest post on her blog regarding my author-as-sales manager philosophy. (Thanks, Carmen!)