Authors Electric

Once upon a time, Google told you what was popular. I remember in the mid-to-late 1990s, you could type something into Google and the top however-many hits would appear on the page. You could be reasonably sure that what was at the top was actually the most popular link for that search. Back then I was very involved with the British Fantasy Society and my address was the submissions address for several of the publications.  In 1996 or so, if I googled my name, I’d be most of the first page of hits – either as me personally or me with my BFS-hat on. I even wrote a blog about it 10 years ago! I shared the second page with the Debbie Bennett PR agency and somewhere there was a Debbie Bennett racing car driver, which always struck me as a bit crazy.  Jump forwards 10 years and the entire first page of Google is various pages of the Debbie Bennett Funeral Director’s website. This is a UK company with 3 offices in NW England and it has an almost-identical domain name to me – I’m de...

Hope it's a good one! It falls to me once more (and it comes round scarily quickly) to wish you all a very happy new year, and a good year to come. To celebrate, Authors Electric are not charging you to read this blog… but then we never do. Nor do all the other bloggers I know of. In fact, our online lives, lucky us, are crammed with Free Stuff. Woohoo! Spoiled rotten, we are. Facebook? Free. Wikipedia? Wonga-less. Google? Gratis. Amazon? Amazingly free to publish with and awash with free Kindle books. Youtube? Yes, buckshee as well. And yet, and yet… Something odd happens when people get things for nowt. On the one hand, they start to resent paying for stuff. On the other hand, they have less respect for the free stuff. They take it for granted. An example. When you are holding a poetry reading or a book event, if you sell tickets in advance even if they are just £3, people are more likely to turn up on the night. Give away the tickets, and if it rains, they’ll stay away in dr...

Veni, vidi...Wiki! Not long ago I had the all-time greatest Great Idea: one, born of total ignorance, that nearly tanked a novel. As you may have guessed from my opening line, my subject is Julius Caesar. But you might not have guessed from the title that my Great Idea entailed his being reborn as a penis. Don't laugh, please, I beg you. I saw no way around this, even though showing JC as a 'dick' might lead some to think that I've written a spoof. In fact, it's a serious thriller. Without giving the plot away, I can say this: I needed JC's ghost, today, remembering his nights with Cleopatra on her fabled golden barge. There  was the heart of my book--a ghost trying for 2000 years to relive that lost boogie with Liz. And I'd begun to run with this when my memory corrected me: Mark Anthony, not JC, was on the barge with Cleo. And this was after JC's death. What the hell was I to do, lacking the good sense to check memory's 'facts...

Do you google yourself? It might sound like something you really shouldn’t admit to at all, but let me assure you it’s a vital part of maintaining your online presence. If you’re a new author, google your name before you even think about publishing. See how many other people share your name and what they do for a living. Promoting yourself as Jane Doe, Children’s Author will be a lot harder if Jane Doe, Mistress of The Seductive Arts hogs all of the front page of a google search! You might want to think about changing your name, writing under a less common pen-name, or just adding an initial to stand out from the crowd. Debbie Bennett is my real married name. I’ve always been me online, with a real picture (the pros and cons of this are for another time and blog, maybe). I was Debbie Louie for the first 26 years of my life – at least that was unique. Certainly in the UK as I was growing up, most of the Louies in the pre-internet phone book were my relations. Louie is phoneti...

According to a post on Problogger, my Undercover Soundtrack series might doom me to deepest obscurity because of new Google search algorithms. In a post titled Why Blogs that allow Guest Posts Will BePenalised in 2013 , Problogger explains that the term ‘guest’ and the use of multiple links are now likely to make Google bots condemn my content as spam.   In the Undercover Soundtrack, I host writers who use music as part of their creative process ( here’s a recent post that explains ). It’s guests galore.  Don't say 'guest' Problogger says: ‘Stop using the words “guest post,” “guest blog” etc. Oh dear. What other noun do I use to introduce a post that’s not by me? ‘Guest’ is perfect. Like ‘said’ in dialogue, it does its job and doesn’t get in the way. Anything else is absurd. Bad to link And what of the other major SEO clanger, links? They’re not all bad, says Problogger, as there’s a difference between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ links.  Her...