Polite Gophers of Twitter - Raise Your Hand

My mother always taught me to be polite, but she also told me that once someone said ‘thank you,’ there was no need to take the conversation any further. Oh, you could say, ‘my pleasure,’ or ‘it was nothing,’ but really that was not necessary. And, you certainly did not reply to a Thank You Note with another note. It just wasn’t done.

We used to make fun of the Looney Tune characters Mac and Tosh, two endlessly exuberant, incessantly positive and unfailingly polite gophers. “Thank you. Oh no, Thank you!”

Goofy Gophers and Marvin The Martian "Be Polite"

I feel like Twitter has reached the point of 'polite saturation.' The majority of us use bots if we have gained a following beyond 10,000. When you reach 30,000 it is impossible to keep up with the “Thank Yous” you would really like to say individually.

The Knotty and Nice of Indie Publishing #8 - Platforms Part 2

Audio Creation Exchange (ACX) is the audio book arm of Amazon. They seem to be “the only kid on the block.” Everyone uses them because they make it so darn easy. When you are the writer, formatter, publisher and marketer, it is good to take it easy when you can.

With this site, you set up an account and post a few manuscript pages you think would give a good example of the voice you would like to hear read your work. You can request male or female, kind of accent, character voices, and so forth.

ACX has a stable of narrators. If one or more have interest in your piece, they do a recording of it and send it to you. You listen and choose. The lovely thing about this is that once you make your decision and have a 4×4 cover design made, you are out of the picture. The narrator uploads his or her work and posts it for you.

The Knotty and Nice of Indie Publishing #7 - Platforms Part 1

Okay, so you have your book written. Several people have beta-read it and you have proofed it to the 10th power. Now it is time to format and post it to a platform for sale.

It seems everyone posts to Amazon. There are good and bad aspects to this. The bad: everyone posts to Amazon. You are a minnow among sharks.

Once you are on Amazon, you can choose to join its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program, which locks you into giving Amazon total rights for 90 days. If you have had your books posted on other platforms, you will have to pull them down. If you do not go KDP Select then Amazon does not offer your work in India, Japan, Brazil or Indonesia. Many folks in those countries crave books in English, meaning you will miss all those sales.

The Knotty and Nice of Indie Publishing #6 - Giving, Receiving, Promotional Items and Random Acts of Kindness

I have always been a giver. As a very young child, the arrival of company sent me scurrying off to my room for a crayon drawing, a toy repainted with mother’s newest color of nail polish or a short poem (which no doubt would have made any Hallmark Cards writer wince). I continue to be a giver. Hopefully, my gifts have improved.

If I give a gift of one Twitter follower’s work to another follower, both benefit. For example, I purchased a photo from a photographer follower (her first sale). I gave the photo to a musician follower. Now both remember me.

The Knotty and Nice of Indie Publishing #5 - The Importance of Personal Blogs, Profiles & Author Sites

Getting your name out there is a major key to an author’s success. It is paramount that you create and maintain an author blog and website. There are several tools you can use to push readers to your sites.

I have had a blog for years. I enjoy blogging and appreciate the 97,000+ folks worldwide who support it by reading. When I first started, it was just a story blog that I faithfully posted to on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Posting regularly and with something of interest is one key to building a consistent following. From the beginning, I have alternated between posting a scifi story, paranormal and a fantasy. I am pleased to say that every month or so it picks up 1,000 new hits.

The Knotty and Nice of Indie Publishing #4 - Reviews, Interviews, Podcasts and YouTube

Let’s talk about reaching out to your readers and potential readers.

Remember once the reader reaches your author page on Amazon or Smashwords, they look at the book’s cover, the description and then the reviews.

Reviews are what authors crave. We indie authors do not have a publisher to tell us how great our current book is and most of us do not want to hit you over the head with the “please read me” tweets. It is so wonderful when someone reviews you and you can quote them as saying you are well written, clever, prolific, a multi-genre genius, whatever.

We live for reviews and are thankful to those who give them. A tip I picked up by reading other indie authors’ books is to insert an “author’s note” in the back of each book, calling for a few words and a sprinkle of stars on any social, media or platform site. It works.

Lexi Miles Tagged Me *grins*

I was scrolling through my twitter stream last week when I saw I was tagged by Lexi Miles (@leximilesbooks). I love being tagged for short little interviews - gives me a chance to chat more than 140 characters. For those of you who know me better, you understand why. I can be as longwinded as my dragon friend, Farloft. I am so pleased Lexi thought of me.

Speaking of thinking of people, since I got caught by the tag I now have become the tagger. So, *grins* I get to introduce you to some of my favorite authors on Twitter. These are folks you should take a minute to get to know and as I always say #FRR (follow-read-review).

By tagging them, it will then become their chance to answer the same questions, as seen below, within their blog and to also become the tagger. With that said, please stay tuned to see if you have been tagged at the end.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, grab a cup of your favorite beverage, kick up your feet and have a read.