Social Media Metrics: What do they mean for authors?
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April 28, 2012

If you are an author who seeks an agent or publisher, you know that it is important to have an audience platform. What’s an audience platform? Historically we think of the soapbox a speaker stood upon at a busy intersection of streets hawking one’s ideas or wares. Print advertisers have long based their rates on the size of their circulation, or the “reach” of the… [Read More]

Gated Grief by Leila Levinson
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April 24, 2012

How does one combine memoir, ethnography, self-discovery, and history, while contributing to two important bodies of literature—Holocaust and psychotherapy—in an eminently readable book? Do what Leila Levinson has done in Gated Grief: The Daughter of a GI Concentration Camp Liberator Discovers a Legacy of Trauma (Cable Publishing, 2011). The breadth of her project is evident even in the awards it has won—one for women’s memoir… [Read More]

The Biggest Secret in Web Browsing is at Your Fingertips
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April 21, 2012

The biggest secret of the best web users is not a browser, or a program, or a web site.  The biggest secret is two keys that have been on your keyboard from the very moment you got a computer – Ctrl-f. To those in the know about Ctrl-f, the idea of not knowing might strike you with surprise and pity.  How, you may ask, is… [Read More]

Reading Non-Fiction for Pleasure
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April 17, 2012

I’m going to ‘fess up: I don’t read enough nonfiction for pleasure. Fiction has always been more compelling to me. The fantasy, the adventure, the imagination, the characters – this is the stuff of storytelling. But there are some exceptional books of non-fiction and memoir that trump my fandom of fiction. Here’s my top 4 picks for NF and memoir. These books are not only… [Read More]

Something for Nothing: Snagging Free Stock Images
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April 14, 2012

Even the most poignant blog post is virtually unreadable without a little visual appeal. On one hand, text matters most because content is KING of SEO. However, the queen in this strategic game toward publishing flanks the important part of your content – key words, headings, and links generate your SEO. Your ideas are what will make people keep coming back and your visitors come… [Read More]

Using Bit.ly for Twitter and beyond
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April 7, 2012

Twitter will automatically shorten any link you put into your tweet for you, but how do you know if anyone actually clicked on your link? Facebook will translate a link in your status update to make it clickable, but how can you track who actually clicks? Neither Twitter nor Facebook can tell you that.  You can get a “read” receipt from an email you send, but… [Read More]

When a book is bad: a pained review of The Whipping Club
by,
April 3, 2012

Have you ever disagreed with someone (friend, family member, stranger, bookseller) about a book? Have you ever hotly argued over the quality, or lack thereof, of one? No way! You couldn’t possibly love Freedom! What do you mean it’s a must-read? You say you couldn’t put it down? I loathed picking it up! It was awful! The characters aren’t likable, the ending sucked, and the… [Read More]