Free Ebook Publishing - How to Publish on Smashwords

In the last few months, I have been exploring the self-publishing options in ebook format. Over time I will probably post on each of the major distribution options, but I found an interesting centralized option that I had never heard of.

Smashwords.

First, when you publish through Smashwords, your work becomes available through the Apple iPad/iPod store, Barnes & Noble, Sony Reader Store, Kobo Store, Aldiko Store, and more. Although they do not have a direct connection to the Kindle store, they will publish your work in Kindle format where users can transfer the book to their hard drive and to the Kindle when it is plugged in via USB.

That is an incredible first step to getting your new ebook to market. This is the closest thing to one-stop ebook publishing that I have seen so far.

Second, it is FREE! No setup cost, no publishing cost, no package cost, no upload or book revision cost, and they even include a free ISBN number for your ebook.

Third, for any ebook sold through their Smashwords store, you earn 85% of the price which is the most I have seen anywhere. And for the sales that occur through the major retailers you still receive 60%.

Fourth, they have free marketing tools to help you get the word out on your ebook, which is one of the hardest parts of self-publishing in my opinion.

Fifth, if you publish two or more different author works, you can upgrade your account for free to a publisher's account to centrally manage all of your author's works, and you get your own publisher's page on their site to showcase the work as needed for new releases or circumstances like a good news cycle going along with one of your book topics.

Although I am sure I will also use some of the direct publishing through the individual ebook stores, I have a hard time finding a reason not to start with Smashwords due to the incredible return on your time investment.

Click the link to get all the details for yourself, but I'm sure you will agree this is a great ebook self-publishing option. If you find other key points that I missed, please post in the comments for others to see.

Smashwords - How to Publish on Smashwords

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

Writing Contests 2010

The new year is just around the corner. If you want to enter writing contests in 2010, start scanning the contest options and find one or more that fit you. Here's my annual summary of some contests that look promising. Good luck!


CONTESTS - NO ENTRY FEE

Ladder Writers Competition - Short Story competition with a prize of approx. $100.
Deadline: January, 14, 2010

http://www.ladderwriters.com/

The Eric Hoffer Award - Here you will find two contests.
1) A winning work of short prose will earn you $500, and you can win other honors or distinctions.
Deadline: March 31, 2010
2) Submit your independent book, which includes self-published books, and you could win $1,500.
Deadline: January 21, 2010
http://www.hofferaward.com/


Career Transition Story Contest - Write a non-fiction story about your real life career change experiences and you could win $500.
Deadline: January 30, 2010
http://www.worklifegroup.com/contests/career-transition-stories/


First Annual Spirit Meditation Poetry Contest - Submit your unpublished poem for a chance to win one of three prizes between $50 and $150.
Deadline: January 31, 2010
http://www.spiritfirst.org/spirit_first_news.html#poetry

Christian Poetry Contest - You could win $3,000 in this poetry contest.
Deadline: February 28, 2010
http://www.utmostchristianwriters.com/

The William Saroyan Society Contest for 1st Grade through College - Submit your short story for a chance to win up to $100 in several grade groupings.
Deadline: March, 8, 2010
http://williamsaroyansociety.org/


CONTESTS - MODEST ENTRY FEE

American Short Fiction - Submit a short story and you could win up to $1,000 and publication.
Deadline: January 1, 2010
Entry Fee: $20
http://www.americanshortfiction.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp%3bview=article&amp%3bid=38-contest&amp%3bcatid=6-announcements


Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize - Write a short story on the theme Apartments and Neighbors under 750 words, and you could win $1,000.
Deadline: January 10, 2010
Entry Fee: $25
http://writingcontests.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/the-2010-stella-kupferberg-memorial-short-story-prize/

Iron Horse Literary Review Competition - Submit a collection to try for a $1,000 honorarium.
Deadline: February 15, 2010
Entry Fee: $15
http://writingcontests.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/iron-horse-literary-review-single-author-issue-competition/

Limnisa Short Story Contest - Write an original short story up to 3000 word and you could win a two week writing class in Greece or a one week vacation in an apartment in Greece.
Deadline: March 1, 2010
Entry Fee: £5.- (€6.-)
http://www.limnisa.com/pageID_7585721.html

Westmoreland Poetry and Short Story Contest - Submit unpublished short story or poems for prizes ranging from $75 to $200.
Deadline: March 15, 2010
Entry Fee: $10 - $20
http://www.artsandheritage.com/poetry-short-stories.htm


Once Bitten Contests - Here you will find a variety of poetry and other fiction contests with prizes from $150 to $5,000.
http://www.oncewritten.com/WritingContests.php

Web 1.0 vs 2.0 promotion

I thought this was an interesting reference chart that was worth sharing.

http://amarketingexpert.com/ameblog/marketing/web-10-vs-20-do-you-know-the-difference/

Some Good Writing Articles and Blog Entries

Here are some more links to interesting blogs and articles I found on the web.

Tweet a novel?
http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2009/08/09/writing-a-novel-just-tweet-it/

Approach the blank page.
http://writeanything.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/approaching-the-blank-page-part-3/

Fifth time's a charm.
http://hubpages.com/hub/NaNoWriMocom-Can-You-Write-a-Novel-in-a-Month

For young writers.
http://www.examiner.com/x-19400-NY-Gifted-Education-Examiner~y2009m8d10-Gifted-Education-101-Expert-advice-for-the-aspiring-young-author

Road to publication getting harder?
http://www.zeriously.com/1412/get-a-book-publishedthe-roadto-publication-might-be-getting-a-little-rougher-3/

Great article about podcasting novels.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-08/07/novels-by-podcast-how-to-make-money-from-free.aspx

9 ways to promote your books online.
http://www.examiner.com/x-16045-Portland-Writing-Examiner~y2009m8d5-9-ways-to-promote-your-books-on-the-internet

Hope these help you out.

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com
www.facebook.com/jhughthomas

Novel Setup in Lulu.com and Choosing Book Size

I am making good headway on the Novelette/Novella, and as I started thinking about overall page length it led me to thinking about the book size. So I logged into Lulu.com and started setting up my book.

Here is a quick run down of getting started in Lulu.

1) Setup an account if you don't already have one. This part is a pretty straight forward sign up process.

2) Start a new project. You can choose paperback, hardback, or a host of other formats. In my case, I choose paperback.

3) Add the title, author name, and you can set the work as private or public. When you are just getting started and playing around, just make sure it is private. Then click to Save and Continue.

4) Choose the paper type and size. You can choose Publisher grade (only ships from the US) or Standard for the paper type. The size options are too many to list here, but all the standards are available. You also pick the binding: Perfect-bound (traditional for novels), coil-bound, or saddle-stitched. You also get a neat floating calculator in the top right of the screen that shows you the cost of your book based on your selections. You also choose black and white or color, but the black and white option does include a color cover.

Play with the combination of these features to determine the best combination of size preferences and cost. I only started checking, but also consider the ISBN option you will want. If you choose the free option of publishing with a Lulu ISBN, your print sizes are more limited. If I decide to purchase my ISBN (for $99.99), I like the Digest size (5.5" x 8.5"). Due to the print size, this allows for the least amount of paper waste and therefore the best price. For a 300 page Digest book the cost is $7.00 per book. For a 300 page Pocket book (4.25" x 6.875") the cost is $10.50 per book. Obviously that means a smaller book with less words costs more money. That is why I like Digest for a first book without an established audience.

5) Upload your file. I uploaded a Word document but you can use a PDF and I think there are more options than that.

6) Design your cover. There is a great wizard for designing a simple cover. I will probably end up designing a custom cover but it is nice to have something setup in the meantime.

You can then generate a print-ready PDF to see what your book will look like in layout. I am very impressed with the ease of setting up a book in Lulu. I'll give more details as I evaluate the different parts of Lulu.

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com
www.facebook.com/jhughthomas

How and Why To Use Google Alerts

When you take off your writer's hat and put on the marketing hat, consider Google Alerts. They can be your best friend in both driving your marketing efforts and in showing you new avenues to explore.

One of the m0st difficult aspects of marketing is knowing how to reach people who might be interested in your content. Sure you can invest time in good search engine optimization, joining common interest groups on the Internet, and social networking with the right groups of people. In fact you should do all of these.

But how well is it working? Other than Google alerts, you should be monitoring your website/blog stats through a service like Google Analytics or Statcounter.com to see where the referring traffic is coming from.

I will start with the "how" of using Google Alerts.

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and if you have a google account, login. If you do not have a Google account, then signup here. Once you are logged in and on the alerts page, you will see a form where you can create alerts that looks like this:

In the "Search terms:" blank, just fill in the words, phrases, or an exact website URL that you want to search for. Effectively, Alerts do the same thing that happens when you go to the Google search page and type in a search. One big difference is that if you do daily or weekly alerts, it will only include NEW results since the last time. You decide if daily or weekly works better for you. Then choose the email address to deliver to and you are done. You will begin getting alerts.

Also, just as with regular web searches, make sure you qualify your search as needed. If you want to search the exact phrase Till death do us part, you must use "Till death do us part" to do an exact phrase search.

So now that you know how, why use Google alerts?

1) Google Alerts can show you who is linking to your website/blog. Why do you care? I hope you can come up with lots of reasons, but here are a few. The person who added a link to your site did you a huge favor! They are directing traffic from their site to your site. It is good Internet manners to go to their site and post a "thank you" comment and perhaps put a link to their site on your site, if it is appropriate.

You also care because the more links there are to your site, the more your site will be optimized in the search results from Google. That is just a free bonus which requires no extra effort on your part.

2) Google Alerts can show you where you should be marketing. You can setup alerts for search phrases that people might use who would be interested in your subject matter. For example, setup a daily alert for "teenage vampire fiction" if you have a YA vampire book. Then look at all the links that come to you in your email, and click on every link. If the page seems to have users that might be interested in your fiction, leave a comment on the page if you can and include a link to your website.

You just directly marketed to your target audience. If you do this on five links a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks in the year, it will result in 1,820 unique links to your site from locations on the Internet that are part of your target market!

Seems like an easy choice to me. Hope this helps propel you from Internet anonymity to cyber-stardom.

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com

www.facebook.com/jhughthomas

New Google Voice

I am seriously geeking out about Google's new Voice service. I signed up to be part of the early testing period and after about an hour, I am hooked and amazed.

First of all, notice at the top of the right-hand column on my Blog homepage the new "Call Me" link with a phone icon. You can type in your name and phone number, Google Voice will call your phone, and when you answer you will be connected to my voicemail (or my phone if I had it set that way). You don't even have to dial the number!

I was able to choose a phone number in my area code and to search for a phone number with a word or series of letters that I would like to appear in my phone number. The Google Voice page does a search to see if a number with that word is available and if so, it appears on the screen. I tried "hugh" and "jhthomas" but finally I found that "thom" was available, so now I can use the phone number 205-677-THOMAS, which is really just THOM but it looks better with my whole last name. Pretty cool.

You get voice mail which can convert your received messages into text and email the text of the messages to the email address of your choosing. I tested this and it works surprisingly well. You can also make outgoing calls to anywhere in the continental US for free. That's right, FREE! You just initiate the call from the website, it calls your phone, and when you pick up it connects you to the other party with no long distance charges.

I can call my phone number from any phone to check messages, to call another phone number, check Google411, or change my settings.

I would recommend getting a Google Voice account as soon as you can even if you just use it like I plan to use it, for connecting with my blog readers, fellow writers, and future fans.

On the writing front, I have almost reached 10,000 words in my Novelette so I am getting there.

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com

www.facebook.com/jhughthomas

Novel Writing Contest Due September 1st

If you have a novel ready to go, check out this contest.

http://www.anderbo.com/guidelines.html

The winning author retains all literary rights and receives a $300 honorarium upon publication.

Changing Directions... Again.

For anyone following this blog, I have been slammed with work and it does not seem to be letting up. I will blog when I can, but it may not be weekly at this point.

Regarding my "Changing Directions" title, I am in fact shifting any time I do have into a short story. I know, I should focus in, finish the novel. But don't judge so quickly.

The reason I am writing a short story is there are current events that nicely tie into the ground work for my novel. The short story I am writing is actually a lead in to the beginning of my novel. Due to the current events tie in, I decided it makes more sense to try writing this story first, polish it, and get it on the blog/website/etc as quickly as possible.

In my mind, it has the potential for free advertising and/or Google Search hits on my story that people will stumble upon. Will it really help me? Who knows. I'll find out. And of course, as always, I will let you know if it is a success or failure.

In addition, I can submit this short story for publication. If I am able to get it published, it will be another boost to my book marketing and potentially a boost to getting my novel published.

Once it is done, I will post more about it here, including where you can go and download it. I may try my first Podcast with this story as well. We'll see about that one.

Until the next time I can squeeze out a few minutes, let's keep writing.

http://www.jhughthomas.com/

How to Start Marketing Yourself While You Write Your First Novel

We all have those dreams of great accomplishments from time to time. Of climbing Mount Everest, skydiving, or writing the great American novel. Maybe that is you, the writer who is ready to break out. Or maybe you just want to give it a shot. Regardless of the setup, you are reading this article because you are either writing a novel or you want to write a novel. I understand you because I am you. I am on the journey of writing my first novel and hope to finish my first draft soon. However, the pages I have written in my novel only account for a portion of my writing over the last year.

It is just as important to study the current methods, techniques, and technology of marketing novels as it is to write your novel. Why? Because once you are published (think positive), your publisher is not the primary push behind marketing your novel or you as an author. You will be the primary marketing department for all of your creative work. This is a shock to many writers once they become published authors, and probably results in many one time novelists who sell five hundred copies and fade away.

But knowledge is power, and now you know.

So what do you do about it? Read and learn. There are literally hundreds of free online information sources dedicated to online marketing and the more narrow discipline of marketing fiction, both online and through other mediums. I will just lay out a few of the things I did for starters as a baseline.

1) Choose your author name
I know, sounds silly. But if you try Googling your name, you may quickly find that it is very serious. Most people have at least three names, first, middle, and last. You want to find the combination of those names and/or initials least represented in a web search. This will allow people to find articles and websites about you with much less competition from others. For example, I searched for Hugh Thomas and found a well known historical writer by that name listed for pages on end. Then I searched for "J Hugh Thomas" and found no writing competition. Therefore, as a writer I am always J Hugh Thomas.

2) Buy your domain name
It is cheap and in today's world, it is pretty much expected. This also factors into your decision on your author name, because ideally you want to choose that name as your domain, in my case jhughthomas. It is best to get the .com domain, but if it is not available you can always go with something like .net or .info instead. Buy the domain from a company that will allow you to put up a simple website without a hosting fee. This means that for less than $10 per year, you can have a searchable presence on the web with some basic information about you and your novel.

3) Start a blog
In the past you could write a great novel and either academics or media figures would fall in love with it causing old style viral marketing. Today, users are coming to expect a new level of access and interaction with the producers of fiction. This combined with the fact that blogs are probably the single best way to develop a web presence makes your blog critical. My recommendation is to blog about writing your novel, or blog about parts of your novel. The reason is to keep you from being overwhelmed going in too many directions at once. Just write about what you are learning and doing. And post regularly. The best way to lose followers is to post sporadically. Once a week is usually a good schedule. Many free blogging sites exist but I use blogger.com.

4) Feedburn your blog
Now we are getting into some real marketing. By using feedburner.com, you are optimizing your blog to be delivered through RSS feeds to whatever platform the user chooses. In addition, you can give users the option of subscribing to your blog by email. You can setup feedburner to ping Google every time you post a new entry causing it to be instantly indexed for search. There are more features than I can cover here, but I think you can see that this step will go a long way to making you very searchable on the internet. Remember, every skill you learn now will be applied in new ways once your novel is complete. This is a time of education with some side benefits.

5) Blog or podcast some free fiction
I have not reached this stage yet, but I think it is the next logical step. When you are trying to sell a $10-$15 soft cover or a $25-$30 hard cover book, why will a reader choose your novel? Once you are established you have your brand name, like Stephen King or James Patterson, and the brand is what attracts the buyer. The reader does not see a Stephen King book as being a big risk. You do not have that luxury. If you are willing to write some great fiction and give it away, you have a bigger chance of developing readers who will buy your books. The key here is "great fiction," not just your leftover ideas. Spend as much time, if not more, writing multiple drafts and editing your free fiction as you do with your novel. This is your first impression so dazzle your readers so they will come back for more.

This only scratches the surface of all the ways you can market yourself while writing your novel. I hope that these ideas will help you as you complete your novel, get published, and market like crazy to drive up sales.

J Hugh Thomas is a database developer and a programmer who is writing his first novel. Read his blog http://onwritingmyfirstnovel.blogspot.com to see all of his writer's resources and free advice.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=J_Hugh_Thomas

My novel title is taken!

It's OK, just breathe. Breathe... there you go. Don't freak out. Let's just calmly talk about what it means.

If you find that the "perfect title" for your novel is already taken, first consider the legal side of things. According to the copyright.gov website, some items not eligible for copyright protection include "Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans" which means you are in the clear on legal grounds.

Next ask "Is the other book similar at all?" If you have a fiction story called "The Snake" and a plumber has published a how-to book on cleaning your pipes called "The Snake," you aren't likely to have much inadvertent bleed over. But if the other book is in a similar genre and or is simply another work of fiction, you have to decide if it works for you or against you.

I'm just guessing here, but if you have a book called "The Firm" it is possible that you might get some sales, particularly online sales, from readers who think they are getting the John Grisham novel. I would not recommend this as a strategy for book sales because rather than developing a following of readers, you will most likely develop a following of haters, annoyed that they got the wrong book.

As long as it is branded properly and the cover art is distinct enough, you are probably OK with a title that is already used. If it is a very popular title, I would recommend looking long and hard to make sure you can't find another choice for your book.

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com
Facebook Account

What is the podcast/podiobook business model?

OK, let me start by saying this is a loaded question. All I can do is give you one take on it. What I will present is based on listening to and reading podcasts, interviews, and blogs featuring many different authors taking this approach. I welcome and encourage anyone with opinions to share with all in the comments.

I see the business model as more of a progression, a set of building blocks that you assemble over time. Here are some of the steps involved in this progression.

Step 1: Write some great fiction - It may seem obvious, but until you have some fiction to offer up, you will be stuck at step 1. The beauty is that because you are planning to podcast, you can write short story length, novella length, or novel length. You will probably be podcasting in fifteen minute segments, so you longer source material just means more episodes. It may even be preferable to start with a shorter story to cut your teeth.

Step 2: Reformat for a podcast - In the same way that you can't just act out a novel in front of a camera and get a movie (thus, the screenplay), you may want to do a mild once-over on your story to make it more suitable for audio. Consider how narrative and dialogue will play out in the spoken word by reading your story out loud to yourself. I'm guessing that just as with story writing, the more you do it, the better you get at hearing what works best.

Step 3: Record the episodes and post them - I'm not going into all the details on recording or where to podcast your podiobook in this post, but this is where you really put yourself out there. You are now putting your fiction out into the universe to see what happens. It is important to note that you are giving your fiction away for free. Many people also offer their fiction in PDF format along with the podiobook. More ways for people to consume your fiction. Which leads to the next question. What if no one listens?

Step 4: Market yourself like crazy - This is where you have to spend most of your education time. Learn how to use combinations of social networking, blogging, interviews, podcasting, newsletters, and many other methods to increase the profile of your podiobook and your name. Your goal is to become a recognizable name and a very searchable name on the Internet.

Step 5: Repeat Steps 1 through 4 - The first podiobook is just the gateway to your second podiobook, your first novel, your online collaboration, etc. I won't pretend to know how many times you need to do this to "arrive." The goal here is to build a fan base. With each podiobook you release, you are developing this fan base. Once they are posted, they are there forever so people finding you one year down the road will find a year's worth of content. The growth of free, quality content over time combined with a unique level of customer content is how you will develop a following.

Step 6: Publish you novel - This should probably be one of your podiobooks or a new story taking place in one of your podiobook worlds. It could come in the form of traditional publishing supported by the strength of your online following, or in the form of self-publishing leveraging your online fans who are willing to pay for more of your fiction.

Think about it logically. With the millions of books out there, how do you choose what to read? You read authors you know you can count on for good fiction because you have read their work before. The podiobook approach allows a large group of people to hear your fiction without risking anything but the time to listen. If they like what they hear, they don't think of buying one of your books as taking a risk.

It is a whole new way of thinking. A radical change from traditional publishing.

I'm not saying one way or the other what I will ultimately do, but I know this is a viable model that can produce results if you have the talent and are willing to put in the hours.

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com

Podcast your novel. The new face of publishing.

Often in history, innovation causes a shift in the direction of business. The telegraph industry gave way to the telephone business. The horse and buggy were replaced by the car industry.

That's not what we are seeing in publishing.

It is a new age where people operate in a new way. In the last ten years, the ipod, audio books, podcasts, and blogs have come into their own. People consume entertainment and information in the midst of a busy day, on he fly, or on-demand. On an average day, most people read less on the written page than on the computer screen. Increasingly, people hear less on a CD than on their ipod or computer streaming.

It isn't a replacement of a previous industry, but a change in the way we operate, and therefore the way the publishing industry must operate in order to keep up.

I still think it is a valid pursuit to seek traditional publishing, and probably the best place to start. Just don't stop there. And depending on how small a market you expect, you may even want to start with the "non-traditional" approach.

You should study the pioneers of the podcast novel including J.C. Hutchins, Scott Sigler, Tee Morris, Mur Lafferty, and so many more. If you listen to interviews or personal podcasts by these individuals, you will quickly find that the podcasting route requires a lot of work... I mean a lot. But it can pay off in the end.

Check out the selection of Podiobooks that are available. You could be next on the list.

This is a good article about the brave new world of podcasting fiction.
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1872381,00.html

I will probably do a more in-depth blog on the podcasting option in the future. Until then, let's all keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com
www.myspace.com/jhughthomas

More free website monitoring

I've been sick for the past few days so this will be a short post.  I want to thank one of my readers for commenting with more website monitoring options, two specifically.

GoStats.com is a free monitoring site similar to statcounter.com, but this one has unlimited log size where statcounter limits you to 500 log entries.  I signed up and tested it out, and found it to be a very easy setup and browsing experience.  The reports are extensive, although there are many links that don't work with the free account.  The paid version is $8/month or $90/year, but I wouldn't pay for a service like this until you are making good money on the site.

Alexa.com is a public website information company. You add a web page that they provide to your site, and they monitor your traffic. In this case, the traffic stats are available to anyone who wants to check through alexa's website. This would be useful if you are trying to get sponsors and advertising for your website once you have a decent amount of traffic. Send potential advertisers to this site and let them check your public stats for themselves.

One more thing I wanted to comment on is the new posts that recently started to see if you are a subscriber to this blog.  What I am referring to is posts with Delicious in the title.  I have setup my blog feed to include bookmarks that I add to Delicious on a daily basis.  Therefore, if you subscribe to this blog you will also get links that I find interesting through the week, but that I don't have time to specifically blog about. If you are not familiar with Delicious, I highly recommend it as a "portable favorites" list that is always available to you, no matter the PC, Mac, or web enabled device that you are browsing from.

That's all for this week. On the writing front, I finished another scene in my script. I believe I'm about six or seven scenes away from completion and then back to the book.

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com
MySpace Account
Facebook Account

Join A Writing Group: My musical diversion

I may have mentioned before that I enjoy all forms of writing, including song writing. For the last few months, I have been attending the monthly meetings at the Birmingham chapter of NSAI (Nashville Songwriter Association International). In the meetings, the leader brings us experts on various aspects of the music business, from songwriting to publishing. We also have the opportunity to present our songs to the group for critique.

As scary as it may be, presenting your writing to a writing group is a very helpful and important process. It can help your writing, but more importantly it prepares you to handle criticism. One thing is a fact: if you are a writer, your writing WILL be criticized if you want to do anything other than keep it in a drawer. It is great practice to learn how to receive constructive criticism, reject useless criticism, and develop the discernment to distinguish the difference. This can only be accomplished with practice.

On the fun end, this Monday night I performed in front of the songwriters group at Java and Jams which represents my first live performance of music in about fifteen years. It was simultaneously terrifying and exciting. You may not be a musician, but I recommend that you put yourself out there in a way that is uncomfortable to you. It may mean presenting your writing to a writing group for critique. Or just talking about your writing in front of a group. If you are published, do you think you are ready to be interviewed or are you afraid of public speaking?

Stretch yourself, because if you aren't developing your weaknesses, they will never become strengths.

Monitor your writing website and blogs

Last time I mentioned using feedburner.com to burn your blog, which gives you easy RSS subscription management, email subscription management, and some statistics on how people are using your blog. I want to build on that post with some more ways to monitor how your blogs and websites.

The first requirement for me is the price... FREE! Because I am not making any money doing any of this, it is important that the services are both free and useful. Here are some options to consider.

Statcounter.com is a great website for tracking standard statistics such as number of unique visitors, number of page loads, or search phrases that were used to find your blog or website. It is easy to sign up for a free account, and place a small snippet of HTML on each of the web pages you want to track. You can track the path that users take through your site grouped by user which makes it easy to find what is working well in your site and what users are not finding. Another neat feature is tracking the city/country of all your visitors. I love seeing the list of visitors to this blog from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain, Indonesia, France, New Zealand, and dozens more. And by the way, thank you all for your continued support.

Quantcast.com is an interesting site that tracks demographic information about your visitors. I have not started using it, but I read about it in Randy Ingermanson's ezine through his website advancedfictionwriting.com. Through quantcast, you can get a visitor breakdown on gender, age group, income, and more stats that are not commonly available through site trackers.

Start simple. If you only have time to do one thing online, I recommend setup one blog, feedburn it, and setup statcounter to monitor the results. That's what I did, and it is a great learning experience. If I ever get to the point of being a published author, the idea is to have already mastered the online marketing world so I don't have to hire it all out to others.

Because if there is one thing I have learned from the experts online, as the author, you are the one that will be most responsible for marketing your book.

And for my writing update, I only finished one scene this week. I'm a self-declared slacker, but I'll make up for it.

Until next time, let's keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com
www.myspace.com/jhughthomas

Setup your writing website.

Last time we covered several areas of online marketing. It seems like a good time to talk more about the most important item, your website. I'll go over what I have done and then talk about other options.

I went to GoDaddy.com and did a domain name search for hughthomas.com and found that the .com domain was taken, but the .net, .info, etc... domains were available. Since I searched for "hugh thomas" and found other authors popping up quickly in the results, I tried including my first initial, "j hugh thomas." Fortunately, I did not have much if any competition with this name.

Before I bought the domain, I also checked MySpace.com and Facebook.com to make sure the jhughthomas account was available, and they were. I don't know if this is important, but I figured it was easiest for anyone trying to find me to have the same exact name presentation across the Internet.

I had purchased domain names through GoDaddy.com before, and it was a good experience, but I decided to search around for options. I ended up buying jhughthomas.com from 1and1.com for two reasons.

One, they offered the first year of domain registration for just $3.99, and $8.99 for each year afterward.
Two, they offered a basic SiteBuilder online software that allowed you to setup a basic five page website under your domain... WITHOUT A HOSTING FEE!!!

The free monthly hosting for a basic website sold me. I knew I wanted to establish my website and submit to search engines, but I had no idea I could do all this without the cost. One day when I'm published (knocking on wood) I can always buy a hosting package and use real website design software to make something fancy to promote my novel. But for now, it is perfect.

If you are unsure what you should put in a basic website, take a look at what I did at jhughthomas.com and you will see it does not have to be much. And it is good practice to write blurbs about yourself and your book(s) because you will need to do this for your back cover and inside cover copy for your book eventually. In addition, I welcome any suggestions you may have about ways to do more with my basic site.

I hope this has helped some for anyone who does not know where to start with their website. If there are any of you who have specific topics you would like to see covered here, please feel free to make requests in the comments section, or email me directly at jhughthomas@hotmail.com

Until next time, lets keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com
www.myspace.com/jhughthomas

Marketing my book online... before the book is finished?

In case you are not sure from my title, I have not completed even the first draft of my novel. And yet I brazenly state that I should be marketing now. Am I completely insane? Possibly, but I will explain why I think that regardless of where you are in the writing process, your marketing should already be in the works.

There are many facets to marketing: advertising (print/TV/online), interviews, podcasts, blogs, book signings, etc. I only know a little about marketing because I am unpublished, but I am convinced that the earlier you begin one portion of marketing, the better off you will be. What is this portion?

Your online presence!

You don't need a published book or even published articles to begin establishing an online presence. You just need some time and the will to explore your options. Here are a few of the areas that I am exploring during my writing process.

1) Buy your domain name. In today's world, this is a no-brainer because it is cheap and expected. Most importantly, it takes time for your domain name to be crawled by all the search engines, linked to by other websites, blogged about, etc. This time translates into quick and easy search results when you do get published and someone is Googling your name. Which leads to point number two.

2) Choose your author name wisely. May sound silly, but in my opinion, this is a big one. I go by Hugh but I choose to use J Hugh Thomas as my author name in part because the domain name jhughtomas.com was available. In addition, when I Google Hugh Thomas, I get many results for a history writer named Hugh Thomas. To prove my point, Google the name "j hugh thomas" and you will see my website and this blog right at the top. That is what you want... to be easily found if someone is looking. Not to mention, many people will start by typing in the URL of the person's name before they even Google. Every advantage counts.

3) Write a blog. Since they are free to run, this is another given. What do you blog about? I'll answer with the question, what are you interested in? What is important is that you are writing regularly in a communicative way, not in fiction style, and you are establishing more of a web presence with every post. Don't forget to link back to your domain name in every post which also helps boost the ranking of your primary site. Have many interests? Write several blogs. But make sure you can post at least once a week. If you post less than that, you will loose any loyal readers. I recommend blogger.com because it is what I use, but I'm sure the other free services are just as good.

4) Feedburn your blogs. If you don't know what this is, go to feedburner.com and read all about it. Bottom line is you have a distribution option for people to subscribe by email or RSS feed to your blog, you can track your subscribers, see when your blog is web crawled, tell the service to notify the search engines every time you post a new entry, etc. It is a free marketing and management plug-in to your blog, and all it costs is your time to set it up.

5) Social Networking. If you don't already have them, setup Facebook and MySpace accounts at a bare minimum. Once again, you will link between your blog/domain/facebook/myspace which helps your web presence. More importantly, you can join writers groups for support and reading groups for future marketing opportunities. The more friends you add over time, the more people you can directly market to once you are finished with your book. One important note here. DO NOT OVER MARKET TO YOUR FRIENDS OR GROUPS!!! This is a big no-no and you will be shunned if you take advantage. However, an email/message blast when your book is launched is perfectly acceptable. You would also be surprised how many professionals are lurking in these groups... agents, marketers, editors... so you may end up with a great support network to boot.

That's enough to start with, but it is just the tip of the ice burg. Don't get overwhelmed by it all. Just do something now so you aren't rushing to appear online after your book is on the shelves.

Resources:
Writing Excuses is a fun podcast that is entertaining and informative on the writing process. It holds to a short 15 minute format which is perfect on the go. You'll find yourself laughing and learning in the process.

Here's an article on How to get your first novel published by Jackie French. Since she is a published author many times over, better to follow her advice than mine.

Oh, and I forgot my weekly writing update last time. Over the last two weeks, I have finished another three scenes for the screenplay. The story is coming along nicely and I think I have reached the half-way mark. I believe that by the end of the year this will be done and I will be back full-time on the novel.

Until next time, lets keep on writing.

www.jhughthomas.com
www.myspace.com/jhughthomas

Book Title Reminder

I know I already covered this, but time for a reminder.

The closer I get to the end of my book, the more I realize that the title reveals itself... sorta kinda maybe. I guess a more accurate statement would be that the wrong titles become more obvious and the right ones emerge from your text.

For example, early on in my writing process, I was convinced that I had the perfect title for my book. It was just so cool, it had to be right. I ignored the fact that my wife did not care for it (first mistake), and I generally fell in love with the title (my fatal mistake).

Remember this. Highlight it. Put it on the refrigerator.

Never fall in love with an idea to the exclusion of objective logic. In other words, be willing to take the axe to anything and everything about your story, including the "perfect title," to make the book better.

When you start editing the book, you will be a surgeon, cutting out the cancer and tumors that burden the good body. How much more important is the title?

The title is the first, and maybe only, marketing that most people will see since your book's spine will most likely be all that book browsers will see on the shelf. The cover art is important, but I believe the title is even more crucial. Here comes the tough part. I have said it before and I will say it again.

You must turn off the artist and turn on the marketing guru within, assuming you want to sell books to more than friends and family. And unlike editing, which I think should not start until the end of the first draft, I think you should revisit the idea of your book's title throughout the writing process.

Why? You will have different ideas as you write different parts of the book. What I do is list them all in a Word document and bold all the ones that seem like the best possibilities. I prioritize the list in order based on my current preferences.

When I finish the book, I will have a great head start on choosing a title. Right now, I have about fifty possibilities, ten I consider good possibilities. Why hold the other forty? They may help me come up with another great title idea, a different take on a title that did not quite work. Start now on your list, if you have not already, and you will have a head start when you finish your book. At the very least, you will have a good list of words that summarize your story. That is a good beginning.

Then, after taking a break on the list, get back to writing!

http://www.jhughthomas.com/
www.myspace.com/jhughthomas

Resource: Social Networking for Writers

I'll quickly skip over the obvious "big two" but it is a good idea to have both a myspace and a facebook profile. And these are things you should start NOW. Why? Because you can join many groups of writers, readers, friends, and family. When you launch your book, you can directly market to all the friends you have accumulated over time. You don't want to overdo marketing to these people, but it is a perfect place to push your book launch.
http://www.myspace.com/
http://www.facebook.com/

Another great site is http://www.nothingbinding.com/. It is a social networking site built exclusively for writers. Take advantage of free book reviews, writer's forums, and you can even embed book trailers and audio into your profile on the site.

Social networking can help you meet publishers, promoters, industry insiders, and other writers. Hard to beat. Now start signing up and add your friends and family. Then move on to writing groups. See what happens.