Monthly Archives: September 2012

Unleashing the Discipline of Creative Writing

Posted on by
1

 

 I have a raggedy yellow piece of paper that my father gave me about 30 years ago.  Written on it are these words, “Nothing great was ever accomplished without discipline.”

Today, you might be feeling fearful about how to finish a manuscript, find readers for your book or come up with something worthwhile to say in your blog.  Take a walk. Get out of familiar space and allow your mind to wander. Find your joy in simple things. Be thankful. Reflect on goals that you have accomplished in the past. Remember, you have a choice to make. You can listen to the excuses or you can get busy doing something great. Continue reading →

Woohoo! My e-book’s available for e-readers everywhere. Now what?!

Posted on by
Reply

Congratulations! Becoming a published author is a great accomplishment. You’ve done something few people will do in their lives. At the same time, more and more books are available for sale in the marketplace than ever before, including books that went out of publication and are now coming back as e-books. In my experience consulting with authors, creating a marketing plan is often one of the most overlooked disciplines when it comes to thinking about how to build an audience for their book.

I’ve also found that there is never a shortage of ideas for what an author could do to build an audience. The trick is selecting the best ideas that will work for your book. 

Here are three keys to help you build an audience for your book: Continue reading →

Building a Platform: Lessons from author Marisa Treviño

Posted on by
Reply

Building a Platform

As the author of the new e-book A Simple Start to Blogging with Social Media and publisher of Latina Lista — one of the premier news sites with a focus on Latino culture and viewpoints — Marisa Treviño possesses a great deal of knowledge on how to write and distribute content for a wide base of readers.  

Last week, we talked with Marisa about how she started a blog from scratch and developed it into a full-blown news site that has a large, dedicated readership. Today, we find out more about how she uses social media and an understanding of her audience to continually expand her reach and grow her platform:

Continue reading →

Start Blogging: Lessons from author Marisa Treviño

Posted on by
1

In 2004, Marisa Treviño was working as an editor for a monthly trade magazine and was routinely published across the nation as a freelance opinion editorialist. Even though she was living off her writing, Marisa wasn’t completely satisfied. She was churning out columns more quickly than they could be published by outside media outlets, and she grew frustrated by her lack of control over the publishing processes for her writings.

The cure for Marisa’s frustration? To start a blog. 

She had heard about blogs; and the more she learned about them, the more she knew this was the answer. Finally, she would be able to control how often she published and could write whatever she wanted. So, she started writing daily blog posts about issues she cared about; and now, that little blog has evolved into a full-blown news site with an ever-growing readership.

Today, Marisa Treviño is a blogging expert. She recently published an e-book with Booktango — A Simple Start to Blogging with Social Media — to share her knowledge and experience with others. We talked with Marisa to learn more about her story and the advice she has to offer fellow writers: Continue reading →

WINDFALL CONTEST: Publish Your Way to 10K

Posted on by
Reply

There are plenty of reasons an author might be tempted to publish an e-book with Booktango: there’s the freedom to publish when and how you want to, access to the biggest online retailers, and the highest author royalties in the industry. And if that wasn’t enough … for the rest of September, we at Booktango are making e-book publishing downright irresistible.

A Windfall of Prizes this September

Booktango is giving one lucky author over $10,000-worth of marketing services to help them promote their e-book:

Total prizes – worth $10,454

All you have to do to be considered is publish an e-book with Booktango by the end of September and send us a Tweet about it. It’s really that easy.

How to Enter the Windfall Contest

  1. Submit a manuscript for publication anytime from Sept. 10-30, 2012.
  2. Let the Twittersphere know about your upcoming e-book.
  3. That’s it! Just be patient and wait for us to announce the winner in October.

Why not go for it?

Simply by entering our Windfall Contest, you’ll end up with a published e-book you can be proud of. And if you win … well, then you’ll have all the tools you need to launch an effective online marketing plan to help your e-book reach its full bookselling potential.

Check out the contest terms and conditions, and enter the contest today.

 

Writing Quotes: A Quest for Information

Posted on by
1

If there’s one thing I know about writers, it’s this: writers spend a lot of time talking and thinking about writing. They read books, articles and blog posts about writing. They talk about it in workshops, at conferences, in online communities and over coffee with friends and mentors. Much of the conversation is a re-hashing of the same basic set of issues, ideas and writing fundamentals. I think this constant dialogue among writers is some type of personal quest — a search for an idea, phrased just so, that will spark a breakthrough in their own writing process. It’s all about finding the right advice at the right time. It’s a search for a phrase that jives with your writing style and opens your eyes to the type of storyteller you really want to be.

To help you on your own writerly quest, we’ve put together some of our favorite quotes on writing. We hope you discover something useful and inspiring in these little nuggets of wisdom from great writers:

On getting started:

“You don’t need to wait for inspiration to write. It’s easier to be inspired while writing than while not writing.”

– Josip Novakovich in Fiction Writer’s Workshop Continue reading →