You Are Powerful And Important

Posted on May 1, 2012 by

You’re important. Did you know that? I just wanted you to know that. Give yourself a pat of the back and a hug too.

Why are you so important? Well, first of all you’re reading this and if you’re reading this then you must be awesome. But more importantly, you’re you. You have a unique perspective on this thing we call life. You have memories and emotions and opinions.

You have the opportunity each day to make the world a better place. Yeah, major cheese warning needed. We’re headed into sappy territory. But it’s true.

How could you possibly make the world a better place? By sharing. When you review a product online you’re offering up your opinion. Sharing your knowledge with the world. You’re helping the rest of the world make more informed decisions.

You have power, now more than ever before in history, to give companies a pat on the back or let them know when they’ve messed up. You have the power of word of mouth. And Twitter. And Facebook. And Amazon. That’s a lot of power. That’s a lot of eyeballs you can reach. That’s a lot of help you can offer.

With that power comes responsibility.

1.     Make sure you offer constructive criticism. Don’t be harsh, mean or abusive.

2.     Find something good to mention, even if it’s just the price point.

3.     Let your review sit a while and then come back to it with fresh eyes. Does it say everything you wanted to say?

4.     If you’re dissatisfied, what could the company or product do better? Mention that. People and companies can’t improve unless they know they need improvement.

5.     When you go to give a product a glowing review and personal recommendation stop to ask yourself if you would want your friends and family to heed your suggestion. Would you want them to spend their hard earned cash on the item/service you’re recommending?

6.     Don’t forget to offer praise where it’s due. Don’t just pipe up when you have a complaint. Remember to show your support and appreciation too.

Just some food for thought. Now go forth. Share your experiences.

PS. If you liked this article, why not share it with your friends? :)

Alice Anderson writes novels when she’s not creating book covers or writing articles for authors. She lives in the Southeast and co-owns a web development and marketing firm with her husband. Their Golden Retriever provides company security. For more articles and a copy of her free ebook, 55 Tips for Authors, visit her website at http://www.alice-anderson.com

Alice can also be found on  Facebook and Twitter.

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Facebook: Page or Profile?

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

If you’re an author trying to grow your social media presence, it won’t be long before you’re asking the question do I need a Facebook page or profile. Or both.

When I first signed up for Facebook, I barely understood any of it and definitely didn’t have a clue how a page worked. Over the years they improved the pages and I did ultimately create one. And then promptly ignored it.

Until I hit 5000 friends on my facebook profile…

At that point I had no choice but to learn how to use facebook pages but I also had to start the monumental task of switching or convincing my facebook friends to like my author page.

Now a lot of people will tell you to do both but if I was just starting out and knew what I know now, I would keep my profile private for real life friends and I would do everything author related under a page.

Here’s why:

Once you hit 5000 friends, Facebook does not stop people from sending you new friend requests. So while you are constantly in the process of trying to move your facebook friends and post on two active pages, your friends requests are coming in as hot and heavy as always, thus adding another step of messaging each and every one to tell them that your profile has hit its limit and that you’ll be chatting on your author page. A cut and paste message might not sound too bad but sometimes that’s 20-30 messages a day.

I don’t know about you but that’s time spent that I really should have been writing.

Then there’s the stress of trying to keep two pages active while converting to a page. (Facebook does have a way to convert your profile to a page but if you’ve already started a page you have to delete that one and start all over again. And it’s a tricky process with a high learning curve.) Sound complicated yet? IT IS. That’s my point.

Today 5000 friends may seem like an unlikely probability but take it from me it happens and pretty darn quickly. Don’t get caught in the quagmire like me. Do as I say not as I do. Get a facebook page pronto. ;)

For some great tips on how to snazz up your Facebook author page, hop on over to this post by Julie Ortolon that I found very helpful when Facebook recently switched us all to the new timeline feature. (ugh)

Eliza Gayle writes paranormal and contemporary BDSM romance. Her experience includes both traditional publishing as well as a good bit of self publishing. She lives in the deep south where she spends most of her time in her beloved writing cave writing stories, dreaming up new ways to promote her author brand, or working at her day job as a marketing manager for an online bookseller. When she needs a break from work, you’ll often find her on the back of her husband’s motorcycle with the sun on her face, and the wind blowing in her hair.

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Revisions Are Hard

Posted on December 21, 2011 by

Maybe I should have called this post Writing Is Hard. Although there are probably some out there who may disagree with me as their fingers fly across the keyboard while they produce 10,000 words a day.

One of the things that I have been doing for the last year is changing and/or fixing old stories that I got the rights back to and republishing them.

I remember clearly how I thought when I got 13 sets of rights back that it would take me just a few months to re-edit them for re-release and self publish them. God, that makes me laugh now. It’s been a year and I’m still working my way through that thirteen while I also produce new books.

For me it simply was not the case.

As my PA says, “You writers like to polish the polish.”

I’d like to think that as the years have passed my writing has changed and improved. At least I am always trying to learn from my own mistakes as well as from books I read and critique. But the one thing that isn’t easy for me and many writers I know, is going back to something you’ve already finished and finding a way to tear it apart and make it better.

The easy inclination is to keep moving forward and not look back. I’ve even heard writers say they don’t republish old books because they simply can’t go back. Their muse forces them onward. I can understand this. However, for me those old stories are always in the back of my mind whispering to me, taunting me that they too are good stories that deserve to be out there.

Today I am working on one such old book and likely will be for the next few weeks. And I’m still torn between working on it or a new book. So when I came across a motivational line in a blog that clicked with me I thought I would write a quick post to not only share that line but to remind myself and others that some facets of writing are harder than others but make the end result well worth all of the effort.

Revisions are my weakness. Yet I will prevail.

What was the motivational line I read? It was something at http://www.norulesjustwrite.com that CJ Lyons offered as a piece of advice given to her from a literary agent.

“Write a book so good they can’t say no.”

For me that meant I needed to stop whining do what I know this book needs no matter how hard it is. Or in my traditional train of thought…

SUCK IT UP!

Revision on!

Eliza

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Attend A Writer’s Conference In Your Jammies

Posted on June 27, 2011 by

Not Going to Conference?
Attend Romance Divas’ Annual Not Going to Conference Conference June 28-July 1

Romance Divas’ annual virtual conference features workshops, publisher spotlights, pitch-your-book opportunities, fabulous doorprize giveaways and more.

It’s FREE!

And nobody says you can’t wear fabulous shoes while you’re recharging your writer batteries from home.

LIKE the NGTCC on Facebook for future updates in 2012 and beyond.

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The Wild West Is Here!

Posted on March 12, 2011 by

The new wild west has arrived and it’s called eBook self publishing. Thanks to Amazon kdp and Barnes and Noble Pubit, Smashwords, All Romance and many more the tide has turned and authors are loving it.

This isn’t exactly shocking news at this point because it’s almost all anyone’s been talking about for months now. But it’s fairly new for me and I haven’t done much talking about it at all. In all honestly it has been a scary road.

Back in September 2010 after months on end of watching new authors every day trying their hand at self-publishing and reading blogs like J.A. Konraths, I took the plunge myself and published Slave To Pleasure on my own. And got the shock of my life. Okay maybe not the biggest shock ever, but still… StP took off like a rocket and before I knew it, it was on the Amazon erotica best seller list and in a mere thirty days it became the best selling title of my career.

Four years after I wrote my first book things began looking up.

In November, thirteen of my backlist titles went out of print. I wasn’t expecting that so it’s set me back a little. (it’s hard to rework backlist, maintain a new writing schedule and keep working full-time) Since then I’ve been able to revise and edit six of those works and republish them. With seven more to go it’s probably going to take me a good chunk of the next 3-6 months to get them done. I also really want to get more new work out.

In December I was able to pay my daughter’s college tuition and all of Christmas from royalties alone. I cried.

January was an amazing month in terms of sales and left me feeling more motivated than ever.

One of the things I had to do before I started this venture was decide what name I would publish under. Many just list their name/pen name as the publisher while others created a business oriented publisher name.  After a lot of back and forth and what would work for me, I chose a publisher name that could be an easy way for me to broaden my horizons down the road. I already like to write in multiple sub genres and I’d say its a pretty safe bet before long I will branch beyond those as well.

I already have two non fiction books in mind, a YA book, and a non romance action/adventure suspense series that I would love to tackle. (which would require at least one new pen name) With all of that to consider I chose Gypsy Ink Books as the company name I would publish under.

The one question that I get on a regular basis, mostly from other writers is will I continue to publish through my publishers and the answer to that is yes. Although I can’t guarantee I wont change my mind. Who knows what the future will bring. For now I am working harder than ever and enjoying almost every minute of it. (there are times I might have pulled my hair out over some formatting) I’ve found a new editor I’m excited to work with, a copy editor who is obsessive in the best way possible, and some of the best cover artists I’ve had the pleasure to work with. In fact this cover, that I just got, is one of my favorites. See more work from this artist here.

I hope to have Magick Ignited (this is book 2 in the Purgatory series) out in a couple of weeks with the final installment of my black cougar trilogy, Malcolm to follow in late March. I’m about to take off for a week to the SxSW conference in Austin, TX then I will be in Los Angeles in early April for the RT Convention. After that I hope to be back online with a bang and a blog tour. See what I mean about busier than ever?

Any questions? If you’ve got any please leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Eliza

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Introducing the Cave!

Posted on January 16, 2010 by

Welcome to Writing From The Cave. Often I want to blog (maybe rant) about writing and never feel like the main blog on my website is the right place for it. Unless my readers are aspiring writers or other authors I don’t think they want to hear about the nitty gritty details. So… enter this blog. Now I have a place just about writing. I like it. :)

And since I decided I wanted a blog to write about anything writing related and chose to call it writing from the cave, it only seems fair to show you the actual “cave.”

Our house has a room above the garage that had been used over the years as various things. Playroom, junk room, video game room, etc. But a few years ago when my working at home turned into practically two full-time careers I kicked everyone out and claimed the room as my own.

I tried decorating it as is and it kind of lived as a hodge podge for a while until last year when I watched an Ellora’s Cave author get her dream office on HGTV. (My DH runs in fear when I watch HGTV, lol)

So I set out on a new plan and conned the DH into gutting half the room and starting over. Me and the kids painted and he built the shelves. (the desk he originally built was the only thing we didn’t change. The result: An awesome office I enjoy spending my time in that has lots of room for the things I love.

It’s not a huge room but it was big enough to section into two areas. A work area and a sitting area. It’s been a while since we did this transformation but I never did get around to showing anyone.

I tried videotaping the area with my android phone. Unfortunately my video skills suck. But I’m posting it anyways. When my DD gets home (she of the great photographer skills) I will have her take better pictures for the permanent cave page I’m working on.

Until then here’s a peek…

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