Authors Electric

 Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Do you have an author newsletter? It took me a while to see their usefulness but I’m glad I have now got on board here. I use the free Mailchimp plan which is enough for my needs. I use my monthly newsletter to share news, writing tips I’ve found useful, links to my on-line stories, my blog, plus I will share the odd giveaway (where I’ll put in some of my stories not found elsewhere). I enjoy putting the newsletter together and think this is crucial to the longer term success of such things, no matter how you define success. I don’t define success by subscriber numbers funnily enough. It will be ages before I would have to upgrade to a paid plan on Mailchimp but what is encouraging is in having a consistently good open rate.  I subscribe to author newsletters too. I love finding out what my favourite writers are up to, which was the key reason to finally decide to have a newsletter myself.  If I ha...

  Yesterday my second full length novel was finally published. It has been a busy and exciting time in the run-up. The writing of the book was finished a long time ago - I long for those days! Now I am in the throes of the far less appealing marketing stage. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could just spend all our time writing, and not worry about getting our books sold and read? Sadly, that is not the way of things. My first book came out during lockdown. I was vaguely aware at the time of something called a book tour – where authors travel from place to place and talk to enthusiastic gatherings about their new release. I was frankly grateful that Covid just made all that getting out there impossible. But how to get my book talked about, seen, bought even? I was fortunate enough to be a part of a writers group who introduced me to the idea of a blog tour. This simple idea relies on recruiting bloggers and book reviewers who are willing to read and review your book on their blogs. I...

  Oh, They have a long list of reasons why the book that's your baby belongs in the casket they've already made. It's too short/long/purple/plain/commercial/literary/off-the-wall/common...or to put it simply: I've spent the past year on a project that had Too-Too all over it before I'd even started. And yet I continued with some trepidation. But, as I continued, I grew more defiant. I also grew more confident that there was a market for my project: seven radical renditions of poems by one lesser-known Roman poet--'inspired-by covers ' instead of conventional translations. I envisioned a book totaling maybe 50 pages, including commentaries that I hoped would be half of the fun. Since nothing like this book exists, it might have a fighting chance if I remembered E. Lynne Harris.   Harris was a bisexual black author who self-published this first book in 1991. Like other authors in those pre-Web days, Harris drove around in a car loaded with copies. But unlike o...

Completed projects often leave me with an enormous void. With writing books, I have found out, it is different.  This time, no dark black hole... I was saved by the M-word. Yep, marketing. I had already started on social media. Now I am working on my prequel to give away as a present when people subscribe to my newsletter. What are your thoughts on that? I like doing the prequel because the questions in the book are things I have often asked myself. How did Wilma land on the tulip fields? How did she survive. I mean she weighed 99 grams when we found her, that is not an awful lot. Or, maybe she was a wild cat and we took her in... I love this part of writing, the 'what if stage'. But then I wake up and realise I need to sign up to mailerlite (tick); transfer my website to another platform - preferably one that is easy to work (tick and loving it, just need to create about 500 thumbnails for the images); get a customised email address (tick), and another day has gone...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Girl-Susan-Price/dp/B08F6RYHJF/ My brothers put me on to Pinterest which, being artists and hooked on visuals, they are scrolling all the time. You probably know it yourself:- a website where people 'pin' images on 'pin-boards'. Some people keep their pins private, their principle purpose being to keep ideas for their kitchen refit or garden make-over in one easily accessible place. But others pin images connected to their hobby, or favourite place or interest, whether that's cooking, classic cars, scuba-diving or whatever and make them public. It's a pictorial blog. Creative types use it to share their latest art-work and writers set up boards for each of their books. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1532756879 A visual image is much more compelling than words, whether written or spoken. Sorry, writers, but it's true. I suppose that's why we try so hard to create a vivid visual image with words. If you want to remember a ...