Why a Cartoon Works as an Erotic Author Persona

THIS POST ReBlogged from Author Marketing 101: Why a Cartoon Works as an Erotic Author Persona

Therese & Morgan Say: Are you still cringing at the thought of doing a photo shoot for an author portrait? Well, here is an alternative for those of you who may be camera shy or otherwise have a specific reason for not wanting to have your picture floating around the internet. We reached out to our dear friend, Sabrina York for her thoughts on why she chose to use a cartoon illustration instead of an author portrait. 'Her Royal Hotness' was an early supporter of our efforts and we will forever love her!

Sabrina Says: For the last century or so, I have worked in government for a very conservative organization. (Well, it seems like a century.) What I write is not conservative in the least. So I knew as soon as I sold my first steamy romance, I would need to use a pen name. It would serve as a tool to keep my personal and professional lives separate and would also allow me to write in other genres under another name if I so desired.

Because this separation between my worlds was so important to me, I hired a company (Visual Quill) to help with developing a branding strategy. We defined a profile for my core customer, and from that designed a logo and tagline, which I would use for all my marketing.

My core customer is, like me, a little reserved on the surface, but with a playful and naughty side. She has a snarky sense of humor and loves bling. These elements are all incorporated in my persona.

What are the hallmarks of an effective persona?

Professionalism

My philosophy as a newbie author was this: “Begin as you mean to go on.” It was my intention to be a bestselling author and I decided to behave like one from the very beginning. My thought was, this is big business. And big businesses have logos. They do not rely on photographs of their CEOs.

“But Sabrina,” you may ask. “How can a cartoon logo be professional?”

And I will respond, “Stop interrupting.” But then I will go on to share that any cartoon can be a professional logo…if it illustrates your brand. KFC and Wendy’s are two that pop to mind, but I won’t mention them because then I’ll get hungry.

Recognizability
A logo is far more recognizable at a glance than a photograph. As we all know, a customer must see your logo three times for it to sink into their consciousness (new studies reflecting our shortening attention spans suggests that number is closer to 17). By using my logo as my “face,” people see it over and over again on Facebook, blogs, marketing material, Goodreads, Pintrest, Twitter…and so on.

It has recognizability. They know, immediately, who I am. And if they’ve read my books, they know my brand. On that note, for those of you who regularly change your profile picture on Facebook, realize you are losing a little chunk of your brand recognition every time you do so.

A Shield
Because I use my logo rather than a photograph in my marketing efforts, it is easier to maintain personal privacy, or at least some distance from my personal persona. This may not seem important when you are just starting to build your fan base, but when 75% of your followers on Facebook (and closer to 95% on Twitter) are people you do not personally know, this becomes essential.

Friends of mine—erotic authors—who use their personal photograph as their profile picture, spend a lot of time fending off advances from individuals who think Facebook is a dating site. Apparently these charming fellows think erotic authors need a date…which is far from the truth. We are all too busy writing to date.

Other authors have shared even more disturbing stories about being stalked (and not in a good way), and fans who “friend” their husbands and children as a way to connect with them. It is an excellent idea to keep your personal business off social media—especially photographs of your children. If this is your business, treat Facebook, and other social media outlets, like a business site.

Advice on how to create your own persona
Think about who you are and what you write. What image do you want to portray? Is there a unifying brand you can apply to your persona? For me, my tagline, Her Royal Hotness, ties into the tiara in my logo. To extend the thread, I do a regular tiara giveaway and my promo pens are festooned with bling.

Everything ties together into a neat package. A package readers can recognize in an instant.

And if you were wondering why I felt the need to keep my private life private from my conservative employers, download a copy of my free teaser book and see for yourself: http://sabrinayork.com/home-2/sabrina-yorks-teaser-book/

Happy reading!

About Sabrina York
Her Royal Hotness, Sabrina York, is the award winning author of over twenty hot, humorous stories for smart and sexy readers, her titles range from sweet & steamy erotic romance to scorching BDSM. Connect with her on twitter @sabrina_york, on Facebook or on Pintrest. Check out Sabrina’s books and read an excerpt on Amazon or wherever e-books are sold. Visit her webpage at www.sabrinayork.com to check out her books, excerpts and contests. Don’t forget to enter to win the royal tiara!

Like my Facebook Author Page
Follow me on Twitter @sabrina_york
Follow me on Goodreads
Check out my Pintrest boards
Like my Amazon Author Page

#WWoW!: Burning the Candle at Both Ends and the Middle with @dochappycamper #MyWANA #amwriting

Welcome to Tammy's Tidbits here at Writer's Words of Wisdom. Each week the four of us share the things we've learned on our journey to become published authors. At times we may discuss the same topic, but never the exact same opinion as our experiences vary. That's what makes our little group unique. We share with you what has and hasn't worked for us so you can find what works best for you.

Today's topic is all about burnout. I've written about this before. As authors we tend to get so involved with all aspects of writing, publishing and promoting, we forget to take time out for ourselves. I know better and still here I am again at the point where I'm simply overwhelmed. I'm over-committed, overworked, and in dire need of sleep.

Sound familiar? Multiply that by four and you have my life. Well, I should say multiply that by six: four pen names, a publishing house, and my "evil day job" as a veterinarian. Just with all that alone, I have very little time to take care of my home, my husband and myself. My health has suffered because of it and now I'm at a point where I'm no longer enjoying the very reason I got started on this journey in the first place—my writing.

What used to be a joyful escape has turned into another drudgery. I want that joy back! I'm not saying I don't want to treat writing and publishing as my job. I just want to be able to wake up each day with a smile on my face, looking forward to what my characters have in store for me.

How did it get so out of control? In all my excitement with getting published, I agreed to do weekly posts such as this one, joined Triberr, tweet teams, blog hops, chat groups, author support groups, started my own publishing house and branched out into multiple genres with my various pen names. As they were published, the demand for the next books from each of them grew. The pressure was on to produce faster in order to keep these new readers coming back for more.

Instead of allowing myself to take the time needed to produce the best books possible, I pressed the deadlines, added more and quadrupled my stress levels. These stresses built up higher and higher and lead to all of my health issues—least of all the high blood pressure and diabetes.

It's time to STOP and re-evaluate my goals as

a writer

a publisher

and a veterinarian

I need see how these can balance with the rest of my life and create the all new, and improved...ME. If I'm not healthy and happy, none of the rest will fall into place.

My advice to myself and all other authors out there is to continually re-evaluate your business plan/career goals to be sure you keep balance with your personal life. If any part of these goals get out of whack, you may find your creativity drying up, your health and well-being plummet, and you'll feel like a failure.

In other words: BURNOUT

So recognize the signs you're burning the candle at both ends and the middle before it's too late. Give yourself permission to walk away and enjoy the life around you. Spend time with your partner/spouse and family. 

Devote only one hour a day or on specific days of the week for promotions. Make sure you designate at least an hour a day where you only WRITE. Nothing else. No Internet, no chat, no Twitter, no promotions, nothing. Only write those tales your characters are dying to tell.

Don't commit to projects that will take you away from your ultimate goal of producing your next book. Not to say you can't do one, but realistically look at your schedule and see if you can devote time to it. If you can't give it your best shot, don't volunteer the time and energy you don't have.

Don't feel guilty about saying NO. You are not a machine. Even if you were, machines require routine maintenance to keep running in top order. You must take care of YOU above all else. Nothing else matters if you're not around to enjoy it.

I'm off to take my own advice. I may not be back here weekly now, but you will see me at least once a month with more advice from the trenches. When we meet again, I'll fill you in on how my new plan of balance is working out!

Until next time my friends,

~Tammy

Learn More About Tammy

Tammy Dennings Maggy is a best selling, multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan and Tawny Savage make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.

Check out:

Tammy's Website

Tammy's Blog

Tammy's Books on Bookstrand, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  and iTunes 

Sassy Vixen Publishing

Friend Tammy on Facebook

Like Tammy's Facebook Author Page

Friend Tammy on Goodreads

Friend Tammy on Pinterest

Follow Tammy on Twitter

Find Tammy's Videos on Youtube

If you'd like to share your experiences in the publishing world, please contact us about setting up a guest appearance. We'd love to hear from you!

Are You EPIC? @EPICorg

EPIC, the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition™ (www.epicorg.com) was established in 1998 and is a global organization of published authors and industry-related professionals who actively advocate continuing education and further enlightenment of electronic publications.

The EPIC eBook Competition™ is the oldest competition honoring eBooks and the ePublishing industry. This is a premier event for authors and publishing houses. The ARIANA Cover Art Competition™ celebrates artwork from imaginative and eye-catching eBook covers with this prestigious award, applauding the finest artwork of eBook publishing.

Literacy is close to the hearts of EPIC members and we are very proud of our New Voices Young Writers Competition™. This competition encourages reading and writing in public, private and home-based schools and is the perfect forum for young people to learn the versatility of eBooks, to experience a taste of the ePublishing world. This competition is open to young writers 11 to 18 years old.

EPIC’s annual conference, EPICon™, invites industry professionals to share the latest eIndustry information, hone writing and editing skills, and explore new markets and promotional ideas. Keynote luncheon speakers range from world-renowned authors to established publishing houses to eBook and print agents. For more information, please visit http://www.epicorg.com.

Now, why should you attend EPICon 2014? 

For the fabulous workshops?

For the entertainment factor?

For the exciting networking opportunities?

For the delightful Texas charm in San Antonio?

Yes! Yes! Yes! & Yes!

We have workshops to help Doctor a Sick Manuscript, Branding in the Digital Marketplace. The ABCs of Social Media and evenTaxes - the Dreaded Monster in the Closet. What about When Opportuntiy Strikes? The Perfect Pitch? Speed Dating with Publishers? The Gritty Details of Prison Life? Oh yes and don't forget Body Language for Writers and Paint the Picture.

All of this while networking with industry professionals, seeing old friends and making new ones at the eFiesta and Gala eBook Awards Banquet. Delight your senses on a San Antonio River Cruise and gear up for a Ghost tour of the historic--and haunted--Menger Hotel

Register today at EPIC.org!

This message was provided by Karen Cote from EPIC.

#WWoW! @dochappycamper Says Always Listen to Your Muse #am writing #MyWANA #BRAVE

Welcome back once again to Writer's Words of Wisdom. I'm Tammy and Wednesdays are my day to share little tidbits of wisdom I've learned during my journey in the wonderful world of publishing. Here I am about to release my fifth and sixth books over the next two months and still many people in my life think it's just a passing hobby.

I've been asked by friends and strangers alike how I got into writing poetry and erotic romance. They seem to think there's some magical muse that determines the specific genre each author has to choose to craft their stories in and that's that. No switching around. Period. End. Of. Story. The End.

Not so fast, Jack.

The magical muse thing is real for me. I don't set out to write for the readers who love a specific genre. I just listen to those inner voices...errr...characters clamoring in my head to have their stories told.  More often than not, none of the characters talking the loudest are in the same tales, subgenres or categories.

For example, the first two books of my Now and Forever series had clear cut M/F pairings, detailed explicit sex scenes, and ended with happily ever afters—definitely contemporary erotic romances.

With the second book I stared adding a little fantasy and paranormal elements with the Guardian Angel characters and the Eternal Siblings known as The Three. These immortals and the angels help the characters of this series find each other through all the adversity thrown at them.  This book turned my erotic contemporary romance into an erotic fantasy contemporary romance with paranormal elements.

But wait! There's more...

With the third book of this series, I've explored more of the paranormal and fantasy aspects but now I've changed up the sexual pairings of the main characters. Instead of just M/F, my heroine is a bisexual and is in love with both a man and an woman. She's also having a hot affair with another man...whew!

Unfortunately, according to the publisher of the first two, the mixed pairings don't go over well with readers(read that as don't sell well) of erotic romance. So not even bothering to ask me to do a revision and resubmit, they decided to use their right to first refusal on not only this book, but any future books in the series.

Now most people would've been a bit upset, but I was relieved. My muse and characters won out. I can write the way I wish without having to keep to rigid guidelines. All the future books in this series will be done MY way with my own publishing house, Sassy Vixen Publishing.  No more "house" rules and I may not follow the traditional rules of romance either.

Why? Because I want to tell the story as it comes to me. The rules be damned. If the characters go to a dark place, I'll go there with them. If the ending isn't so happy, happy, happy, so be it. 

Last week I wrote about powering through writer's block. The times I got stuck with nothing but silence from my characters have been when I tried to mold their story into a specific genre or category. Once I let go of those preconceived notions, their worlds once again opened up to me.

So don't be afraid to tell the stories of your characters they way they're MEANT to be told. If you can't find an agent or publisher that sees your vision, keep trying or go the self publishing route. No matter what you decide, we're here cheering you on every step of the way!

Learn More About Tammy

Tammy Dennings Maggy is a best selling, multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.

Check out:

Tammy's Website
Tammy's Blog
Tammy's Books on Bookstrand, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  and iTunes 
Sassy Vixen Publishing
Friend Tammy on Facebook
Like Tammy's Facebook Author Page
Friend Tammy on Goodreads
Friend Tammy on Pinterest
Follow Tammy on Twitter
Find Tammy's Videos on Youtube


If you'd like to share your experiences in the publishing world, please contact us about setting up a guest appearance. We'd love to hear from you!

#WWoW! Powering Through Writer's Block With @dochappycamper #amwriting #MyWANA

Welcome back to Tammy's Tidbits on Writer's Words of Wisdom. This week I thought I'd discuss the one thing writer's fear more than rejection letters or poor reviews.

Writer's Block.

We all go through it at one time or another. Sometimes it hits us right in the middle of a pivotal scene and other times it stops us dead in the water before we even put one word to the page. One thing for certain, it's frustrating as hell when it happens.




So what do we do to break through it?

• Don't panic! It's not the end of the world if you can't move forward with this particular scene or start a project at the moment you decide to start. 
• Step away from the project for a while. Put it aside and try another one. Sometimes just changing to a completely different story line will get your creative juices flowing. Before you know it, you've plotted out a few more scenes for the new story, and then the characters from the first one will be begging for your attention again.
• Listen to the voices of your characters demanding to be heard. That's your MUSE talking. If you stifle it, the story may stay locked to you for a lot longer than you wish. 
• Give yourself permission to walk away from a project that seems to be going nowhere. Let it go. Accept the fact the rest of the story may never come to you. As soon as you do that, the pressure is off and the words start to flow again.
• Don't be so caught up in your writing that you neglect your "ME" time. We all need vacations from our day to day lives and our jobs. Your writing is your career. Make sure you give yourself down time from that as well. It not only helps you to relax and rejuvenate your health and well being, it will recharge your creative juices and open up your connection with your muse.

If none of the above suggestions work for you, then make it a goal that you write for one hour each day. It doesn't matter what you write, just do it. It can be pages of complete nonsense as long as you keep the words flowing out of you and into something else such as a blog, journal/diary, or even napkins if that's all you have handy. If you commit to that one hour daily, you'll be surprised how often you end up doubling that or even more.

I have small spiral notebooks I picked up in the dollar bins at Target and Michael's Craft store. I make lists, plot points, sketch scenes of future books or those I'm working on now. I work on ideas for blog posts or write my opinion about something in the news or from a book I'm reading.  I carry at least two of these notebooks with me at all times. 

From those writings I've been able to plan out multiple books in several series I wish to write under all of my pen names. I don't worry about which pen name's supposed to write what story.  I just write it down and figure it out later. It's the same reason I don't write a story from the start to the finish. I write the scenes as they come to me. It's in the editing stages where I cut, paste and rearrange the scenes to make the story flow well. 

This year I'm going to do NaNoWriMo. Starting November 1st and running until November 30th, I've committed to write a 50,000 word novel. It's not going to be perfect. That's not the point of this challenge. It's to get all the words down on paper/in a computer file in whatever order the scenes come to you.  When you've reached your goal, THEN you can do the organizing and editing to make it perfect and ready to submit to a publisher or to an editor if you're self publishing.

There's still time to sign up and join me for my first NaNo. With all the book ideas I have already plotted out, this is the perfect challenge for me to buckle down and commit to one. Of course if I feel like I'm blocking, I'll still write my word count goal for the day. It just may be on another book! All those words count. Who knows? Maybe I'll have TWO novels written by the end of November.

Okay, now who's with me? Let's smash all those walls blocking us from achieving our writing goals!

Until next week,

~Tammy

Learn More About Tammy

Tammy Dennings Maggy is a best selling, multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.

Check out:

Tammy's Website
Tammy's Blog
Tammy's Books on Bookstrand, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  and iTunes 
Sassy Vixen Publishing
Friend Tammy on Facebook
Like Tammy's Facebook Author Page
Friend Tammy on Goodreads
Friend Tammy on Pinterest
Follow Tammy on Twitter
Find Tammy's Videos on Youtube


If you'd like to share your experiences in the publishing world, please contact us about setting up a guest appearance. We'd love to hear from you!

#WWoW!: Using Social Media Properly And Not Be Labeled a Spammer Part II #MyWANA

Welcome to Tammy’s Tidbits here at Writer’s Words of Wisdom, WWoW for short. Ever since Paloma Beck came up with the idea, a group of us have been sharing bits and pieces of wisdom we’ve accumulated along our own journeys to become published authors. We may have different experiences and opinions on what worked for us individually, but we do agree on one thing—our need to continue sharing what we’ve learned with fellow authors. 

This week, I’d like to expand a bit on my post from last week. I shared Kristen Lamb’s book Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World. The biggest lesson to learn from that book is social media should be first and foremost SOCIAL. You make connections on those sites by being personable and sharing a bit of yourself to make people WANT to get to know you. If they like you, they’re more than willing to take a look at your books and you never have to ask them. They’ll do it because they want to. If they like it, they’ll tell many more of their friends, and so on and so on.  As authors, our best form of promotion is word of mouth.

The Dark Side of Social Media

As much as this can make your career, it can just as easily break it.  You’ll become a nuisance if you start filling up your Facebook pages and Twitter feeds with nothing but promotions and posts that scream:
• “Buy Me!”
• “Like my page!”
• “Here’s a copy of my book, now write a review.”
• “I liked your page so here’s mine…”
• “Please RT my book link. I need more reviews.”

Don’t get me started on the automatic response messages as soon as someone actually does like your pages or follow you on Twitter! Those are so annoying and impersonal. It basically tells the recipient that you’re way too busy to actually chat with them or comment on any of their posts. If you’re too busy for them, what makes you think they’d be willing to take time out of their busy day to do what you demand of them? 

So what do you do when you have very little time in the day to make your presence known on all your social media sites? 

There are some programs that can help you such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Triberr. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage of them all is they enable you to schedule a ton of posts ahead of time, around the clock, giving the illusion you’re present when in actuality it’s just empty words.

The only way you can connect with authors, readers, publishers and anyone else you wish to “meet,” is to be PRESENT. I’m not saying you need to be there 24/7, but the time you are there, make it count. Comment on posts and tweets before you share them. Comment on things that have nothing to do with books or publishing.  Show people you have other interests that make you a real person to them. 

I’ve bonded with others online over my crafts and cooking. These very same people have gone out and purchased every single one of my books so far and we’ve never talked about them at all. They were interested in me personally, so they made the extra effort to read my books.  Now they’re my biggest fans and cheerleaders and I do the same for them. 

What about support groups? 

There are a ton of them out there and it’s just so easy to join them all and worry about how you’ll participate in all of them later. The BIGGEST mistake you can make is to set up your promotional posts to go into all the groups at the same time. Not only do you run the risk of breaking the rules of when you’re allowed to post promotional material, you will tick off the people in the group you’re trying to connect with in the first place.  

Trust me, I just spent the end of last week trying to be peacemaker between two groups of author friends who were at war with each other because of this sort of “spamming.”  The sad part about the whole thing, all of it could've been avoided if a couple people took the time to read the rules against posting promotions. These same people belonged to so many groups, they used Hootsuite to set up automatic promotional posts in every single one of them. It's no wonder they didn't remember violating any rules. They didn't even remember joining in the first place!

Do yourself a favor and keep the number of groups you join to a few you know you’ll be able to be an active participant and can follow the rules of what sort of discussions are allowed. You never know who may be watching you. If you behave badly, the members of one group are sure to talk to members of other groups. Before you know it, you’re persona non grata. 

Overall, use social media to socialize with others. Build up connections and friendships with people. These folks will in turn tell the world about you and your books all based on how you treat them. If you’re personable and show people you’re real and care about them, they’ll sing your praises. If you flood their inboxes with buy me links, and take over their personal social media space to proclaim your new release, you’re going to be labeled as rude and yet another author behaving badly.

So go on! Meet and mingle on Facebook and Twitter. Join a few Yahoo groups and be active in them. Follow all the rules and guidelines for each group you join and NEVER, EVER forgo sending personalized responses in favor of the impersonal automatic message.  Above all else, don’t spend so much time on these social sites or setting up promotions that you forget to do the most important thing of all—your writing!

Until next week,
~Tammy

Learn More About Tammy

Tammy Dennings Maggy is a best selling, multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.

Check out:

Tammy's Website
Tammy's Blog
Tammy's Books on Bookstrand, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  and iTunes 
Sassy Vixen Publishing
Friend Tammy on Facebook
Like Tammy's Facebook Author Page
Friend Tammy on Goodreads
Friend Tammy on Pinterest
Follow Tammy on Twitter
Find Tammy's Videos on Youtube


If you'd like to share your experiences in the publishing world, please contact us about setting up a guest appearance. We'd love to hear from you!

#Wwow - Premade and Custom Made Book Designers

Since I've been thinking about self-publishing a novella, I've been asking around for good Cover Artists or Book Cover sites.

Bellow, find a list of resources for simple premade book covers -- some sites have other services for more extended service. This is by no means an endorsement of any of these artists or sites. I haven't used any personally at this time. However, it's a good idea to check them all out before making a final decision!

Cover Your Dreams - Premade Book Covers

Erin Lark Designs - Premade Book Covers

Go On Write - Premade Book Covers

Hot Damn Designs - 

The Killion Group - Custom Book Covers

LFD Designs - Custom & Premade Book Covers

Rae Monet, Inc. - Premade Book Covers

Safari Heat Author Services - Premade Book Covers

Seductive Designs - Premade and Custom Book Designs

Self Pub Book Covers - Test out how your book title would look!

Suzannah Safi - Custom Book Covers

Taria Ried - Premade Book Covers

The list could continue. In fact, have you had any great experiences with a designer? Have any resources to share? Leave a comment below!

Melinda Dozier is a contemporary romance author. Her first four novels were released in 2013: The Boy Next Door, Time Changes Everything from Entranced Publishing, Breaking the Rules from Crimson Romance and Love and Other Games: Trouble with Gold from Swoon Romance.

#WWoW! Do the Banner Swap!

Here's my piece of advice for the week. 

Don't Blink because you'll miss it!

SWAP BANNERS.

That's it. It really is that simple.

Seek out authors who write in similar sub-genres or heat levels. Maybe this includes authors in facebook groups with you, authors who publish with the same publisher or authors who participate in the same weekly memes.

Check out their blogs. Do they include information on other authors? If they already do, they're more likely yo be interested in swapping with you.

Contact them. Email, tweet, facebook message.

Ask if they'd be interested in placing your banner on their site in exchange for having their banner on your site.

DON'T BE DISCOURAGED if some aren't interested. Authors have different rules for banner displays. When I did this type of banner swap, I asked authors of similar heat level and had a comfortable working knowledge of them. Nearly all jumped at the opportunity.

You Want Your Banner On Our Blog?

Just comment below and send your banner HERE.

We'll post your banner as a WWoW! supporter.

Hurry Up! Get swapping. Then get back to writing!

Have a great week,

Paloma

WWoW! Use Tweepi!

Tweepi is my favorite tool to use with Twitter.

Tweepi helps you make sense of your Twitter social graph with stats. You will be able to learn about the number of people you haven't followed back, the number of people who aren't following you, search people who your friends follow and much more. It makes it simple to manage your account by doing the following things much easier than manually through twitter...

FLUSH UNFOLLOWERS

This tool allows you to unfollow users who aren't following you back.

RECIPROCATE

This tool helps you find all the users that follow you, but you don't follow back. Then you can follow them back with a click of a button.

CLEAN UP INACTIVE FOLLOWERS

This feature allows you to unfollow users who no longer keep active twitter accounts. It's likely that you're following more than a few hundred people on Twitter. You must've noticed that many of these users either don't engage in conversations, never retweet anybody, or simply just ramble about nonsense stuff all day long (no links to useful content whatsoever!). You can use Tweepi cleanup tool to filter these people out and unfollow them. The Clean-up tool enables you to filter out those inactive and unwanted tweeps by letting you check out their details and decide for yourself!

FIND NEW FOLLOWERS

This feature gives you a resource for finding users with similar interests. The most common way to find and add people with the same interests as you, is to find a popular user within your area of interest and add people who follow these known users.

Tweepi helps you analyze and filter tweeps out -the geeky way,

with numbers in a table- based on their activity and sociability. 

How do you start using Tweepi?

It's only 5 simple steps.

1. Go to http://tweepi.com/
2. Choose "login" (to start using Tweepi for free which is all you need)
3. Enter your username/email with your password and click "Authorize app"
4. Create a Tweepi account with your first and last name and your e-mail
5. Start using Tweepi!

The first time you go through your account, it may take awhile but as you then update it every few weeks, it

becomes less of a chore. You'll find it worthwhile to create a SAFE LIST so you never accidentally unfollow someone you want to follow regardless of any stats. For example, you might be following a celebrity who doesn't follow people but you won't want to unfollow them. You might be surprised though at how many people you follow that aren't  following you and vice versa. Tweepi gives you the tools to make your Twitter account be exactly what you want. Make it work for you using Tweepi.

Then, get back to it...

Keep Writing!

Paloma

#WWoW! Street Teams make an Impact!

Let's Talk About Street Teams.

Likely, you've heard this term before. They're popping up all over the place as authors take advantage of their most valuable resource - their readers. Readers -especially bloggers/ reviewers- are vital to a book's success because their opinion goes a long way. Some have an established reputation as being a person to turn to for book recommendations. Why not partner with them if they love your books/ series?

That's exactly what creating a street team is... partnering with readers who like your books so much, they want to share them with other readers. A Street Team is a group of readers/bloggers that are fans of a particular author and want to spread the word about books they love. They're just doing what they already do - reading what they like and telling their friends. There's no recipe as to how many members per street team, benefits to offer or rules to follow. Each author has their own style.

Here's a list of links to some author's street teams for ideas on how to begin your own:

Cat Johnson  |  J. Kenner/ JK Beck  |  Heather Hildenbrand  |  Donna Grant

A Street Team is an indie author's secret weapon. In this article at Kobo Writing Life, an in-depth description of one author's experience puts it all into perspective. Read it here.

You might already have bloggers sharing your books with other readers. A Street Team just makes it all more official with “target tasks” such as hosting a blog stop, liking books at on-line sites, placing reviews on goodreads, sharing cover reveals, pinning on Pinterest, posting updates on facebook or tweeting about new releases. Most authors design a street team that works best for them. Typical perks to being part of a street team include an exclusive facebook page, yahoo or google+ group, swag, earliest available ARCs, blog badge, link back to blog, sneak peeks at WIPs, and "personal" on-line access to the author. Some authors even choose to have incentives and/ or prizes for participation.

.

It's Your Team - You Make It What You Want!

There are a lot of books in the world and authors need help to spread the word. A street team is a fun way to interact with fans while asking them to do what many already do … and it has added perks (for you both).

CLICK on the ROMANCE BECKONS STREET TEAM BADGE to the left to read about my Street Team.
Check It Out... and then... Keep Writing!
Paloma

#Wwow - Creative Online Promotion Tools #2 #promotion

Creative Online Promotion Tools

Last week I shared Online Promotion Tool #1 (Powtoon). This week, I have another three favorite tools to create original, fun promotion for your books.

Tool #2: Animoto (www.animoto.com)

Animoto is a fun tool to create videos of photos and/or videos. The best part is you can create a 30 second video FREE. You can pay for the more advanced version. Tammy posted about that HERE.

Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

Just to show you what you can do in 30 seconds, here’s a video I created for release day of my debut novel, Time Changes Everything.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Tool #3: Jib Jab Freebies (www.jibjab.com)

Creative tool to create hilarious videos/ecards/minimovies. You add in your photos to people’s bodies and it makes for a great laugh. Here is a video to promote ST Bende’s Elsker and my books, Time Changes Everything, Breaking the Rules and Trouble with Gold. Our heroes become Chippendales!

Tool #4: Face in the Hole

This is another funny way to promote your characters or book. Face in the Hole allows you to place your “character” photo onto any photo you want. Here are a few ways I’ve used this:

This is ME with Jake (aka Matt Bomer) from Time Changes Everything.

As you can see, I have a rather strange sense of humor, yet I’ve found these tools to be different than the regular blog post or FB post. Something different catches attention.

I’d love to see what you’ve put together! Share your links below!

Melinda Dozier is a contemporary romance writer. Her three debut novels were released in 2013: The Boy Next Door and Time Changes Everything from Entranced Publishing, and Breaking the Rules from Crimson Romance. Her next release, Love and Other Games: Trouble With Gold will be released in October from Swoon Romance. You can find more information at her website:www.melindadozier.com