It’s that the first Wednesday of the month, which means it’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group Wednesday. Thanks to our noble Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh, it’s time to share our fears and insecurities, or support and assistance. Doesn’t matter which.
If you’d like to join us, click here. Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.
Our hashtag is #IWSG
Alex’s wonderful co-hosts for September 2 are: Julie Flanders, Murees Dupé, Dolorah at Book Lover, Christine Rains, and Heather Gardner!
Please stop by and thank them for their time and effort.
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The IWSG Short Story Contest 2015
After the success of last year’s IWSG Guide to Publishing and Beyond, we decided to create another book. This time it’s a short story competition with the top ten stories getting published in the anthology.
Eligibility: Any member of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group is encouraged to enter – blogging or Facebook member. The story must be previously unpublished. Entry is free.
Word count: 5000-6000
Theme: Alternate History/Parallel Universe. That’s right, we’ve decided to go the speculative route. This theme has plenty of scope and we’re open to pretty much anything along these lines, except erotica or graphic violence.
Story deadline: November 1st 2015
How to enter: Send your polished, formatted, previously unpublished story to TheIWSG at gmail dot com before the deadline passes. Make sure to include your contact details.
Judging: The IWSG admins will create a shortlist of the best stories. The shortlist will then be sent to our official judges:
· Laura Maisano – Senior editor at Anaiah Press for their YA/NA Christian fiction
· Russell Connor – Author and owner of Dark Filament Publishing Startup
· Candace Havens – Editorial Director for the Covet, Select, Select Otherworld, Select Historical , Embrace, Indulgence for Entangled Publishing. She is also a nationally syndicated columnist and awarded-winning and best-selling author.
· Dawn Frederick – Literary agent and the founder of Red Sofa Literary
· Alice Speilburg – Founder of the Speilburg Literary Agency
· Michelle Johnson – Bookstore owner and founder of Inklings Literary Agency
· Kendare Blake – Author
· Lydia Moëd – Associate agent at The Rights Factory
Prizes: The winning stories will be edited and published by Freedom Fox Press in the IWSG anthology next year. Authors will receive royalties on books sold, both print and eBook. The top story will have the honor of giving the anthology its title. The winners will also receive an exclusive badge to display on their blog.
We’re excited to see the creativity and enthusiasm that’s such a part of this group put into action. So don your creative caps and start writing. And spread the word!
The #IWSG short story anthology contest is open! For details – http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/2015/09/iwsg-post-day-and-special-anniversary.html #contest #shortstory#anthology
A s k P Z M
(repost from July 2010)
Q: What are the most important elements for a book author website?
The most important element of all is the ability for you the author to make changes yourself at a moment’s notice. If you have an unexpected book signing come up or a fabulous book review that you want to post ASAP, then you need to be able to do that.
(While you can do this on Facebook and other social media sites, you do not own your accounts on those sites. If Facebook, for example, decides to take down your account, you’ve lost everything.)
I personally recommend using WordPress.org (known as just WordPress) for both a blog and a website that puts the power in your own hands.
Once a WordPress self-hosted site is up, you can make changes as easily as you make changes in Word. (Of course, there is a similar learning curve as there was with Word.)
First, a clarification. I am NOT talking about WordPress.com, which is a hosted site the same way a blogger site is a hosted blog site. (A hosted blog site rather than self-hosted has the same issue as in the Facebook example above.)
Second, it is important to understand that you really need a web person to set up your self-hosted WordPress blog/site. And what’s more, just any WordPress website isn’t ideal.
You need a site built by a person who understands search engine optimization, keyword pages, etc. Otherwise your site will be way, way back in search engine results.
Once your site is set up, you are ready to take over (if you want).
Third, your website address (the URL or domain name of the site) is important. When you use your website address on social media sites, you want it to reflect what your site is about. If you have a book title that is not very specific, such as the imaginary “Having Fun,” you might want to get the URL “HavingFunTheBook.”
FYI: All is not lost if you have a site now without an effective website address. You can get a new URL and redirect that to your current site. In the above example, you would get “HavingFunTheBook” and redirect it to “HavingFun.” Then you would use “HavingFunTheBook” when you share the link to your author site.
Fourth, of course, you want to make it very clear where someone can buy your book – and make it very easy for people to do so.
You do NOT want to give the link, for example, as amazon.com. When people get to the home page of Amazon, they can get easily distracted and forget what book they are looking for or actually try unsuccessfully to find your book.
(Be very careful not to make the mistake I did on purpose in the above paragraph. I recommend not putting a period after a URL if the URL ends a sentence. This is because sometimes people who copy a URL pick up the period also and then can’t get the link to the site to work. Either I just leave off the period or find a way to end the sentence with other than the URL.)
Make sure that the link to buying your book is very obvious – and have it near the top of the page and not where people have to scroll down to find it.
Fifth, make sure that people coming to your book author site know exactly what’s on offer. Is the book fiction or nonfiction? The first of a trilogy? An award-winning book? And the cover of your book should be featured prominently.
For an example of this, go to my site at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com and see how I have put FICTION and NONFICTION as top nav buttons. Then click on those buttons and note my book cover galley for each that allows site visitors to clearly choose which books to learn about. Also, you can include excerpts of your books on your own site or link to your excerpts on other sites such as Wattpad. (I have utilized both of these options on my author site.)
Sixth, if at all possible, have a blog as part of your website (using WordPress for a site automatically includes the opportunity to have a blog as part of the site). A blog is usually the best way to continually add fresh content to a website, and search engines love fresh content. Thus fresh content on a blog can help your site rank higher in the search engine results.
(Note that at my author site I have chosen to put my blog on the home page, but this is not required. You can have other info on your home page and have your blog elsewhere on your site.)
Also, have a sign-up on your site so that people can automatically get your new blog posts either through email notification or through an RSS feed. This is what I have automatically at the end of each blog post:
Want to know when Phyllis writes a new blog post?
Sign up for email notification.
(ENTER YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS)
