To Tweet or not to Tweet by Sarah Wisseman

Our new president posts regularly on Twitter. Whatever you think of Trump's politics, he certainly has a large following. I tweet occasionally, but never in the middle of the night or early in the morning.

How many of you post on Twitter?  Do you regularly follow people you admire on Twitter?

Elaine Orr believes in Twitter, and has written a book  about it.

Facebook is my social media drug of choice. Although I created a separate author page, I tend to use my regular page to post a mix of announcements, thoughts, and pictures. I want my FB friends to know me as a person, not just an author.

Some groups of authors cross-promote each other, especially when new books come out. It’s hard to measure how effective this is (you can check your Amazon statistics for a few days before and after a post). My own observation is that when you post matters less than how often you encourage people to return to your post by adding a comment or replying to someone else. Most of us don’t make it to the bottom of our own feeds, let alone other people’s.

Blog tours are fun, but they can be time consuming. As with all promotional activities, you have to split your precious time between writing fiction and writing promotional pieces. This works best if you are a guest blogger on a site that already has a lot of traffic. I also blog about other topics besides writing (archaeology and painting, for example) and include a link to my writing. My latest blog was created for the Archaeology, Science, and the Bible class I am teaching.

Email is still my favorite method of communicating. I write and answer emails several times a day, and once in a blue moon I send out a newsletter. Perhaps the easiest thing I do is include a link to my website in my email signature, often with a quote about writing or a brief announcement.

What is your favorite online promotion?

What are your writing plans for 2017?

If you don't take stock of what all you accomplished when the new year turns over, you should. By making a short list of the highlights you will feel a sense of accomplishment and pride. Preventing us from getting too caught up in the tough stuff every year seems to bring.

Let's see if I can do a quick assessment:
1. Finished my New Adult/Young Adult Novel
2. Edited #1 multiple times after input from trusted critique partners
3. Shopped #1 to several NA/YA agencies for representation
4. Submitted NA/YA MSS to a couple of contests
5. Worked on new women's fiction novel
6. Worked on new MSS in the feisty family series

A couple of things on my list for the year that I did not accomplish:

1. Attend a writer's conference
2. Do more marketing
3. Submit to more contests

Okay, that's enough of looking back. Let's look forward to 2017. 

What are your plans?

My number one item is to find a publisher for my NA/YA novel. Since my search for agents only resulted in nibbles and no bites, I will return to the small independent publishers that have good reputations and don't require an agent. In other words, I'll do my homework and search on-line for small pub houses, talk to other authors, and see if there's a writer's conference this year that will work with my schedule.

Take a tip from me. It takes a lot of time to do what we do and we can't get discouraged if we want to succeed. Nobody that has ever written seriously has said it was "easy." It's a lot of hard work and dedication with a little luck thrown in.

The publishing industry is constantly changing and we have to keep up. Publishers Marketplace. Writer's Digest. Goodreads. These are just a few of the sources of publishing information on-line and in print. Check them out. See what advice resonates with you and your writing process. Try things you haven't thought of trying before. I'll be right there with you and will share any insight I garner along the way.

Enjoy the writing journey, my friends, it can be an exciting roller coaster ride!


Bonnie (BD) Tharp is an award-winning author of women's fiction, with novels FEISTY FAMILY VALUES and PATCHWORK FAMILY.  Also, the author of Kindle ebook short stories: THE CROSSROADS & EARL DIVINE.

What Authors Can Learn from Donald Trump by Jacqueline Seewald

About a year and a half ago, I initially wrote on this topic. I decided to update it because I believe the opinions expressed are proving to be truer than ever. Draw your own conclusions.

How do writers become bestselling authors? Publicity seems to be one crucial element or factor. To get fans, writers have to become known in the first place. Donald Trump has a talent for drawing attention to himself. Trump has observed in the past that there is no such thing as bad publicity, only publicity--which attracts attention to an individual and his or her work.

In the case of writers, publicity traditionally would be accomplished through the efforts of a publisher who has a PR staff that solicits significant reviews and promotes an author through numerous channels. But nowadays, this is often not the case. Many publishers now want to know that writers have the ability to promote and publicize their work themselves via social media before the publisher will issue a contract. Also, many writers are currently self-publishing their work. This too changes how publicity can be obtained.

Trump is an example of someone who breaks the rules. He promotes himself as a maverick in politics.  Perhaps what Trump offers to writers is the idea that we need to free ourselves. We have to look for creative ways to promote and publicize our own work--just as writers shouldn’t feel it necessary to write to any pre-conceived formula. We need to express what is unique to ourselves in our own way.

My belief is that we must write exceptional work that stands out from the herd. This is one important way we can get recognition and acclaim. Not every reviewer will give a fair or just review, but if we continue to provide quality work, eventually we will get noticed for it.

As for me, I have a new novel, THE INHERITANCE, a romantic mystery from Intrigue Publishing, which I hope will excite reader interest. There have, in fact, already been some very good reviews from readers which I greatly appreciate:

https://www.amazon.com/Inheritance-Jacqueline-Seewald/dp/1940758505

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-inheritance-jacqueline-seewald/1124086025?ean=9781940758503

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/inheritance-88

http://www.ipgbook.com/the-inheritance-products-9781940758503.php?page_id=32&pid=IPU

In regard to Mr. Trump, it will be his actual ability to serve the country with good sense and integrity by which he will ultimately be judged. The key to success is having something of quality to offer.

Authors need to be unique and original, not imitative in their writing. Hopefully word-of-mouth will follow and help build a readership. Promotion and publicity help but they have to be backed by more than mere promises and rhetoric.

Fellow writers, what are your thoughts and opinions on getting recognized? Are you of the opinion that bad reviews are better than no reviews at all? Is there anything you recommend in particular in regard to promoting your own work that has worked well for you?

Readers, what would like to see more of from writers? 

Pinterest for the Writer, by Susan Oleksiw

I recently began work on a new mystery that I hope will lead to a series. This story draws on experiences I never expected to write about. My family comes from a long line of farmers, and like many in the younger generation I never expected to be back living on one. And I’m not, but I'm trying to reconnect with those early experiences, plus all the stories I’ve heard from my relatives over the years.

A couple of those stories and experiences have found their way into fiction. I wrote a longish short story, “When Love Takes a Detour,” and posted it myself as an ebook. You can find it here. I also wrote a short story set in the same rural area, which will appear in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine in February. These two stories have helped me establish in my own mind at least the world that is West Woodbury, the very small rural community in the Pioneer Valley.

But I wanted to do more. I set up a board on Pinterest partly to establish the sense of place for readers and partly to entertain myself with images of the quintessential New England village and the farm where my character lives. Tall Tree Farm is a combination of the several farms my family has lived on as well as the one I need for my story line. The board is a place for me to try out images, or capture an essence that I want in the story.

Some of the images I have already posted on the Tall Tree Farm board are the calico cat, sheep, farm tools, and a few other items. I haven’t posted any of my own photos here, but will probably do so in the future. I keep some on my desk top, also as a reminder of family history and stories. The board is mostly to give me perspectives to think about, and to remind me of details for the story.

I’ve been posting erratically on Pinterest for a few years, but I decided to pay more attention to it last year and have been building up my images. The most popular board is, not surprisingly, Pottery, and after that comes Books and then Libraries, Book as Art, and Writers.

Even though I'm still very much an amateur on Pinterest, this form of social media can be a valuable sales tool for writers on all levels because it gives us a different way to look at our work but also because it gives readers a different perspective on us. I have boards on my other two series, the Mellingham series and the Anita Ray books, where I can post the most recent titles. But I also have one on Indian food, and we all know you don’t have to live in India to love Indian food. One of my favorite boards is Book Covers, and I’m thinking of splitting this into two boards, old and current books.

Right now I don’t have a business account, because I'm still learning. Mostly I want to enjoy the site along with others. I'm glad to see readers following one or the other of the series boards, and I'm always glad to find others are reposting my pins. Social media has become a burden for some of us, but this one aspect of it is still fun.

For those who want to know more about how to use Pinterest as a business site, tracking clicks and more, go here.

For those who want to see my boards, including Tall Tree Farm, go here. https://www.pinterest.com/susanoleksiw/

To find all my books in both series, go here: