Another succcessful five-year mark

Congratulations to Lois Roelof, celebrating the five-year mark on her marvelous blog.


Enjoy a stop at loisroelofs.com and see the variety of witty, poignant, informative and funny material she writes.

Blogging is 20 years old!

WOW... Blogs have been around for twenty years!

Yes, 1994 was a long time ago and that's when blogs got started.

The Columbia Journal Review has a nice long piece here about the start of something that grew larger than anyone could have predicted.

Do reviews help ebook sales?

I;ll bet you think the answer is "Yes, of course."

Surprisingly, though, the chart below shows ebook sales attributable to a traditional media review represent only three percent. That means word-of-mouth and browsing are better methods of discovery. Of course, the best way is being a repeat author and having fans waiting for the release of your next ebook....

Thanks to Mark Coker of Smashwords for the chart below:

Author marketing... a continuous improvement project

Publishers Weekly has an important article on successful self-publishing:
Self-Publish Like a Pro: Finding an Audience, posted July 10, 2014.

In it, Alexandra Fletcher discusses the need to build a base of readers before your book comes out.
Regardless of your road to publishing, her statements ring true, and are a wake-up call to authors who think their book will sell without visibility and following.

"Nothing diminishes an author’s self-publishing dream quite like watching sales stagnate after a title’s release. An author aggressively promotes the book on social media platforms. Her friends, co-workers, and family members buy copies and write reviews to show support. But within days or weeks of the book launch, the author is hit with the sobering realization that sales have dropped off because no one outside of her immediate social circle is looking for it."

Wherever you are in your book promotion plans, take a look at the article and see if you can adapt a few of Fletcher's suggestions.  Here is the link: Publishers Weekly

Why good blogs succeed

Perhaps you enjoy maintaining your blog with a post only when you come across an item worth sharing, or a personal essay too good to let slip away. That's what I do here at Release Your Writing; share items I think will be of interest to you. And with over 34,000 visits to this blog, I feel gratified by the attention.

What if you want your blog to really sustain your big ideas? That requires more than posting a movie review, which is soon to be old news, or ranting about a topc of only marginal interest to your readers.

To bring a lasting value to your blog, TheBookDesigner.com [aka Joel Friedlander], offers the concept of a "backlist," similar to a publishers reprinting books that keep selling well, and magazine editors seeking evergreen content - those stories that everyone wants.

Below is a brief excerpt and here is a link back to the full article.

Although blog articles don’t have to prove themselves in the market the same way a book does, they have some of the same characteristics of great backlist books. Some kinds of articles that fall into this category include:

• Foundation content—articles that explain basic concepts will be in demand as long as those concepts are relevant to your readers

• Evergreen articles—software changes constantly, but general principles rarely change, and people always want to understand them
  
• Process overviews—quick-reference summaries of basic processes in your field are great to orient new readers to your topic
• Resource directories—readers will always need tips on where to find tools, vendors, and other necessities
• Best practices—whittling down the number of choices beginners face to just a few appropriate options will be helpful to many people

Let these five categories inspire you to write posts that help readers and keep them coming back for more.

Guest post by Rita Jean Moran

A chance to enjoy the perspective of another blogger with this guest post:

Hi, my name is Rita Jean Moran, and I am the author of The Library Kids book series (www.thelibrarykids.com).  I also have my own blog, ritajeanmoran.blogspot.com, where I post many articles on:  mysterious places I have visited, ancient history, and places to visit with your family.  My books are for children and adults and I want my blog to be family-friendly as well as interesting.

I would like to thank Helen Gallagher for teaching a wonderful seminar on Power Blogging for Authors and Writers.  She did a great job and had many fresh ideas regarding blogging.  I liked her tips on morguefile.com for finding free graphics that you can use as well as her tips for increasing traffic to your blog by guest blogging.  

             

My blog audience is growing.  What I’ve found out is how powerful a blog can be.  You are one person in a world of about 7 billion people and you can have a voice to the entire world with a great blog.  My statistics tell me that people from all over the world are viewing my blog.  I’ve had hits from America, Russia, Germany, Canada, India, England, France, South Korea, Italy, Latvia, Australia, Georgia, Croatia, Greece, Spain, Norway, South Africa, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Denmark, Romania, Dominican Republic, Israel, France and Moldova.  With a blog you don’t even have to know the languages of other countries because the viewer may even be able to convert their view on their web browser to their own language. 

            

I’ve found that mixing up great graphics with interesting articles attracts a lot of attention.  Using a good short title and readable font for your articles also helps.  I tend to use many of my own pictures but I can also get some really good ones from Wikipedia that are public domain.  You need to be very careful not to violate copyrights and you should site sources when necessary. 

Once again, thanks Helen and I hope some of your viewers come and visit my blog at ritajeanmoran.blogspot.com.

What's all the interest in Pinterest?

We can't seem to go a day without an inquiry or news item about Pinterest. Like a virtual bulletin board, you use it to pin images that interest you, and share them with others. Or just browse those of interest to get ideas for design, decorating, recipes, style, etc. An attendee at yesterday's blogging workshop mentioned one blog post she put there resulted in 300 new visitors to her blog. Others use it as a design board, idea board, or promotional tool.

Sample Pinterest Board

If it interests, you, you can read more about it here at a post on Freelance-Zone. 


Then, visit Pinterest and see if you want to get started. You have to request an invitation to participate, but you don't have to sign up to browse all the images.Like most social media, it is free, so all you have to lose is time... time... time. 

Power blogging workshops today

Great fun at two blogging workshops today. The Fremont and Ela-Area Libraries have some of the kindest and smartest patrons in Illinois. I was grateful to work with them today. For those interested in earning money from a blog, we spoke of using Google ads on Blogger as a good first step. Here's how to get started. Full details and clickable links are here:
http://buzz.blogger.com/2012/04/monetize-your-blog-with-google.html