Tools

Quick Link: Schedule Your Time in 4 Simple Steps

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Trying to find more time in the day seems to be every adult’s desire. I don’t know if I could follow Janalyn Voigt schedule personally, but I thought it was very well written and that there are some of you out there that would like more structure in your day. So head on over to the newly redesigned  Live Write Breath website, and let us all know of any time scheduling tips you have. For me, as my kids are older, I have a pair of noise cancelling headphones. Everyone knows when they are on, I am not to be disturbed unless there is fire, flood, or blood.

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Schedule Your Time in 4 Simple Steps

And no, cat barf doesn’t count as fire, flood, or blood.

Have you ever pictured what living a perfect life would look like for you as a writer? Perhaps you would exercise regularly, eat right, take time for hobbies, engage in recreational activities, travel, complete your household duties, keep up with family responsibilities, and ace your job — all while having plenty of time to write.

The divide between what you want and your actual lifestyle is never more apparent than at the beginning of the year. There’s something about turning that calendar with a fresh new outlook that gives all of us a boost toward attaining our dream lives. That’s why we devise New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, exercise, and you name it. The writing version of that can look like a push to increase the number of novels you write this year or simply to finish the first one.

You start with the best of intentions every new day but time escapes you, distractions waltz by, or you rebel against your own schedule. Overcommitting your time is a common mistake. I know about this firsthand, let me tell you. It’s no fun to stay up past your bedtime when you want to sleep in order to meet a deadline.

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Quick Link: Top Time Savers for Social Media and Blogging

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

A really great post from Elizabeth Spann Craig on how she saves time with her social media responsibilities. Worthy of a bookmark!

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Top Time Savers for Social Media and Blogging

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The biggest complaint I hear from writers is that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all that we need to do.

Tasks facing writers include reading publishing-related news, doing research, promoting, updating websites and social media…on top of working on our books.

And most everyone is doing the above in addition to a day job, parenting, or caregiving.

It’s a lot, for sure.  The only thing that I can recommend is that we save time where we can.

With that in mind, I’m sharing my own biggest ways of saving time.  With these methods I give myself more time to do…whatever.  It could be more time to write, more time to do housework/cook/run errands, more time to spend with my family.

I started to include all of my tips in one post, but realized it was far too long for a post. I’ve divided them up by category: social media and blogging, writing, book production, and general tips.  I’ll run this series on Fridays for the next month.

Social Media

It’s commonly referred to as a time suck and it certainly can be. For this reason, I keep myself off of social media as much as I can. If I spent as much time on Twitter as I appear to, I’d never get anything done.

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Quick Links: What Goes in a Press Kit?

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Do you have a press kit? You should. Where else can people find pictures you will let them use and more information about you. If you don’t have a press kit or just want to make sure the one you have is up to snuff, check out ‘s post at Digital Book World!

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What Goes in a Press Kit?

By:

As a self-published author (and these days, even if you’re a traditionally published author), you’ll likely be spending an insane amount of time on marketing. Having a robust press kit—specific to the needs of online marketing for authors—done in advance of your marketing push means maximum efficiency!

Sample Press Kit

Think of a press kit as a compilation album of your marketing materials, plus a few more goodies.

A sample press kit would have the following:

• An author photo at 300 dpi (high-resolution)
• Cover art at 300 dpi (high-resolution)
• Your book excerpt
• A sheet providing the various descriptions of the work (the one-line, the synopsis, etc.)
• An author bio (short and/or long, depending on the situation)
• Positive reviews (if you have them yet) and copies of any positive articles about you as an author or about your work

A digital press kit might “zip” all of these files into one folder for easy emailing and download. All of the above items are also things you will find in a typical list for a well-thought out author website, so you’re getting extra value out of assembling these materials and putting a press kit together.

About Those Marketing Descriptions

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Quick Links: Ultimate Guide: Structural Editing For Your Novel

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Can you over edit a manuscript? I mean I am sure it is possible but most of the time the problem is not enough editing, and not enough of the right kind of editing. Author Helen Scheuerer from Writer’s Edit helps with the ultimate guide for structural editing.

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Ultimate Guide: Structural Editing For Your Novel

If you’re an author who has finished a manuscript, chances are, you may have seen the term ‘structural edit’ floating around. Perhaps you’ve even been told to have an editor look over your book for ‘structural’ issues.

In this extensive guide, we’ll take you through: what is a structural edit, why your book needs one, and what you can do yourself to identify and address structural issues in your fiction.

What is a structural (or developmental) edit?

It may come as a surprise to those of you who are new to the industry, but there are actually three different types of editing: structural (or developmental) editing, copy editing (also sometimes called line editing), and proofreading.

In this article, our focus will be the structural edit.

The structural edit is the process that comes first, after a manuscript is completed. It involves looking at the ‘big picture’ elements of the narrative and characters, and examining which of these elements are working and which could be improved, cut or changed altogether.

A structural edit focuses on literary devices such as:

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Quick Link: Critique Groups: 6 Ways they May Hurt Your Writing…and 6 Ways they Can Help

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Are you a member of a critique group? Anne R. Allen thinks they are a great resource for all writers. She also has a few cautions as well so whether you are in a group or not, go check out her article. 

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Critique Groups: 6 Ways they May Hurt Your Writing…and 6 Ways they Can Help

Critique groups have their pros and cons.

Wine helps…

by Anne R. Allen

I often advise new writers to join critique groups. Groups are usually free and they’re a great way to learn the basics of the writing craft. They can get writers out of their “writing garrets” and help newbies navigate the treacherous waters of the ever-changing publishing industry.

But I also warn writers to be wary. Never take what you hear in critique groups or workshops as gospel. Groupthink can be dangerous. Petty tyrants often hold sway and the Dunning Kruger Effect can demonstrate itself on a regular basis. (That’s the scientific theory that the most ignorant people are usually the most confident.)

Even when you’ve found a wonderful critique group that seems knowledgeable, helpful and kind, they can sometimes steer you wrong, simply because of the nature of the group set-up. If your group reads work aloud, you’ll run into one set of problems. If you send copy ahead of time and red-pencil it, you’ll have another. The simple time-lapse can cause hassles too.

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Quick Link: Podcast – Marketing Your Book All the Way to the Bestseller Lists, with Jay Baer

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

We are offering up something a little different today, a link to a podcast instead of a post. It is an interview between Chris Ducker and Jay Baer about book marketing that I thought was very interesting. Let me know if you like this or not.

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Marketing Your Book All the Way to the Bestseller Lists, with Jay Baer

In this podcast episode, Chris Ducker sits down with Jay Baer to learn exactly how to become a New York Times bestselling author! Get your notebooks ready!

Book marketing is a topic that has come up a lot for me lately. As many of you know, I’ve just wrapped a book, that has been traditionally published a while back.

Earlier this year, I interviewed Farnoosh Brock about her book on juicing, and her grassroots approach to marketing it – which worked very well for her. This time you will hear a different approach – a mix of old and new techniques, with some long-term brand building as the backbone.

In this interview, I talk with Jay Baer about his well-planned book marketing campaign, and we delve deep into how to become a New York Times bestselling author.

This is some very useful stuff, so get your notepads ready!

In this 50 minute episode, Jay and I discuss:

  • Why using unorthodox book marketing techniques can work in your favor.
  • How you can build awareness long before your book is released.
  • The criteria for hitting the NYT bestseller list.
  • How to utilize your community to make your book go viral.
  • Why hiring a publicist is still a good idea in the new business economy.
  • How to use re-targeting to your advantage.

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Quick Link: 7 Ways to Find Beta Readers and Reviewers for Your book

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Beta readers are a great tool for success. They provide a fresh set of eyes to look over your manuscript and hopefully provide great feedback, so you can polish your story before putting it in front of agents or customers. But where to find them? The wonderful Shelly Hitz has got your back with a great post and podcast to tell you where to find these literary angels.

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7 Ways to Find Beta Readers and Reviewers for Your book

by Shelly Hitz

When you are publishing a new book, creating a Beta Group can be a great idea. But where do you find beta readers and reviewers for your book?

In today’s training, I’m going to share with you 7 ways to find beta readers and reviewers for your book.

Why We Need to Find Beta Readers and Reviewers?

Recently I was sharing how I’m using a beta group for this project, and it’s really been super helpful for me. You can find it here: 3 Ways to Use a Beta Group.

After I posted this on my YouTube channel I received a question.

“These are great tips and tricks, thank you so much for sharing, but I have a question. How do you find beta readers?”

My previous training was all about three ways beta readers can help you when you’re publishing your book, but it didn’t cover how to get the beta readers.

So, I thought in this training I would answer her question and share with you seven ways to find beta readers and reviewers for your book.

First I’m going to tell you what I did. I simply asked those that are already following me on Facebook if they wanted to be part of my beta group. I set a page where they could sign up to an email list.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: 6 Ways Grammarly Can Improve Your Writing And Editing

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Have you tried Grammarly? I read about it from over at The Creative Penn. It is a program that is supposed to help your writing by checking your grammar as you work. There is a free and a paid version and both come with browser plugins and even a download to work with MS Office. If this works as advertised it would be quite useful. Nothing replaces a professional editor for eBook work, but perhaps you could at least cut your costs a little by fixing what you can first.

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6 Ways Grammarly Can Improve Your Writing And Editing

Cause you don’t want your editor to need a red pencil this big.

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We rarely see the errors in our own writing, which is why I’m a super fan of using professional editors to improve my own books.

But there are things we can do to improve the manuscript BEFORE sending it to an editor.

Grammarly is one of those useful tools that can sort out the basic errors, enabling you to improve your writing and learn as you go. It can also help with emails and online writing, where paying a pro editor isn’t cost effective.

Why consider a tool like Grammarly?

As indie authors, we are 100% responsible for producing books that are not only readable and entertaining / informative but also ones that are mistake-free. When readers are distracted by misspellings and grammatical errors their reading experience is going to suffer. And that means your reputation as an author is going to suffer as well.

The Kindle also has a function for readers to report typos and if you get too many of these in a book, you’re going to get a quality notification.

For this reason, we always want to use professional editors and proofreaders when we’re publishing our books. Nothing can replace the editing and proofreading of a human being, especially one who specializes in your genre.

However, the messier a manuscript is when you send it to a professional for proofreading or editing, the more it’s going to cost you to improve and fix.

This is where the online app, Grammarly, steps into the picture.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

 

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Author Tools: How to Change the Price of Your Kindle Book in KDP

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Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done

Want to change your price in KDP but struggling? Shelley Hitz has a video to show you how, along with a step by step process.

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How to Change the Price of Your Kindle Book in KDP

kdp-selectAre you having difficulty changing the price of your Kindle book on Amazon?

This tutorial will walk you through the simple and easy steps on how to change the price of your kindle book in KDP.

The Step-by-Step Process

Today, I want to share with you how to change the price of your kindle book in KDP.

Here are the easy and simple steps on how to do it.

Step 1: Log in to your Amazon author account.

You can click on this link and you will be directed to sign in on your account: https://kdp.amazon.com/.

Step 2: Choose the book that you want to lower the price of.

So you simply have to scroll down the page and click on the title of that book that you want to change the price of.

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Author Tools – Track Your Word Count and Progress with Scrivener

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Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done

  at Writer Unboxed, gives us another helpful Scrivener post. Perfect timing for counting up those 50k words for NaNoWriMo!

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Track Your Word Count and Progress with Scrivener

Scrivener

June 30, 2016 By Gwen Hernandez

2016 has been a busy year. My youngest son graduated from high school, my husband retired from the Air Force, family flew in for the big events, and we recently moved from Boston to Sacramento. By recently, I mean we drove into town on Sunday, and I’m writing this blog post from a hotel room.

This is pretty much the only writing I’ve done since May, but now that we’re waiting to close on a house, I finally have time to get back to my book. (Yay!) Which means new word count goals.

Luckily, Scrivener makes setting goals and tracking progress easy. No math required. Whether you want to see your progress toward a word count target for a manuscript, a writing session, or a single document, Scrivener has you covered.

Setting a Manuscript Target

Here’s how to use Project Targets to set—and track progress toward—your manuscript word count goal. This applies only to text written in documents or folders within the Draft/Manuscript folder.

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Quick Links: How to Create a Link on Amazon for Book Reviewers

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Who doesn’t want more reviews! The awesome Shelly Hitz has a great way to add a direct link to the Amazon review section of your book, making it oh so easy for readers to review your title.

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How to Create a Link on Amazon for Book Reviewers

abstract_110006583-1013int-011314intAll authors love to get new reviews on their books in Amazon, right? Reviews give more credibility and social proof to your book.

Therefore, in this post I decided to share with you how to create a direct link on Amazon for book reviewers to post their reviews.

How to Create the Link

Today I have a question from Paula Moldenhouer. She recently saw me share my Amazon presentation at a conference and loved the ninja tip I shared for creating a custom review link. However, she needed a little more help setting it up and so sent me this question through my “Ask Shelley” page.

“I love your idea of putting the link for reviewing your book in newsletters, blogs, etc., but as I’m on Amazon I’m not sure which link that is. I’m assuming you don’t want all the extra letters that would connect stuff to my account, but at the same time, when I take them away I only get a blurb of how to write a review, it doesn’t seem to be connected to my product.”

First of all, I would like to thank Paula for asking that question. I’m sure a lot of you will benefit from it.

So here is the step by step process of how you can create a link for your book reviewers.

Before we go any further, I would like to recommend that you optimize your book on Amazon for selling more books.

There are actually two ways that you can do it.

In the “Write a Customer Review” Block

The first technique is to go to your Amazon book page and click the “Write a Customer Review” block.

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Quick Links: What is the Kindle “Delivery Cost” and How Does it Affect Me?

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If you upload your eBook to Amazon you will be faced with a “delivery cost” which is based on the digital size of your manuscript. Thanks to RJ Crayton at Indies Unlimited for going into detail about this cost. Just so you know, there are ways to shrink the file size, so if you end up with a big enough delivery cost you might want to talk to someone about reducing the file size.

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What is the Kindle “Delivery Cost” and How Does it Affect Me?

Author RJ CraytonPosted on June 27, 2016

CostsFor those new to Kindle publishing, questions often arise about the Kindle delivery cost. Some people aren’t sure what it is, who it affects, and if there’s a way to make it go away. Today, I’m going to give a quick overview of the fee and what it means to authors.

What is the fee? It’s the amount of money Amazon charges you to deliver a book to customers. The amount is determined by the size of your book and is based on a dollar per megabyte rate. You can find the exact rates here. However, I’ll offer up the rates for the four largest English-speaking markets. The US, Australia, and Canada are $0.15/MB in their countries’ respective currency; and the UK is £0.10/MB.

Will the fee be expensive? That depends on the kind of book you’ve got. Most books that are primarily text will come in under a megabyte. However, once you start adding images to your books, you will really increase the file size and start incurring a large delivery fee. So, if you’re selling a photo book, a cookbook, a comic, a children’s picture book, or anything that’s image heavy, you could end up with a large delivery fee.

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Author Tools – Scrivener for iOS Means You Can Write Your Zombie Novel Anywhere

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Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done

Hey Scrivener fans and owners of an iPhone or iPad, NanoWriMo is coming soon and the new release of Scrivener for iOS is great news!  Hopefully, there will be an android version soon – hint hint Keith Blount! You might be thinking that writing on your phone is crazy but I know that when I am in the midst of Nano I write everywhere I can, which means on my phone, cause every little word counts towards the 50K goal! Anyways, David Pierce has the scoop at Wired.

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Scrivener for iOS Means You Can Write Your Zombie Novel Anywhere

By David Pierce Gear   07.20.16

Scrivener
Scrivener

Every November for the last 17 years, thousands of people have participated in National Novel Writing Month, which is more commonly and less pronounceably known as NaNoWriMo. In 2015, 431,626 people signed up to try and write 50,000 words in a single month. One guy apparently wrote more than a million.

NaNoWriMo has been very good to Keith Blount. Blount is the creator and primary developer of Scrivener, an app made specifically for writers wrangling huge word counts. Scrivener’s first public launch came via the NaNoWriMo forums in 2005, and now Blount and his company, Literature and Latte, sponsor a camp for aspiring novelists every year. A huge group of writers, at all levels of acclaim and wealth and prolificness, rely on Scrivener to do their work on Macs and PCs. And today, after years of development and even more years of user requests, Scrivener’s also available for the iPhone and iPad.

Read the full post (and get the free worksheet!) on Wired

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Author Tools – Adopting the Micromovements Strategy to Build Your Author Brand

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Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done

Today’s post from Live Write Thrive reminds me of the old question “How do you eat an elephant?” The is answer is, of course, one bite at a time.  C. S. Lakin explains on how to use this strategy to move forward on your writing career one word at a time.

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Adopting the Micromovements Strategy to Build Your Author Brand

June 24, 2016

Micro can be very beautiful.
Micro can be very beautiful.

Today’s guest post is by Kait Fowlie:

Personal brand-building activities usually take the backseat for writers who work full-time jobs or want to spend as much time as possible actually writing. Many of the writers I know “should” themselves into being active on social media, writing blog posts, and the like, and this makes the job an energy sucker.

One solution I’ve found helpful here is the micromovements strategy, a tiny-step by tiny-step approach that’s helped me create momentum (and stave off overwhelm) in my own efforts, while also making sure I’m spending the majority of my time and focus on writing.

What Micromovements Are

The concept was introduced by SARK in her book Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper: Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories, and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It. According to the author, micromovements are small actions that take as little as five seconds or up to five minutes that accomplish part of a big project.

For tracking movements, the author recommends creating a “micromovements wheel” that shows the ultimate goal in the middle, and surrounding it, the small, simple micromovements that (ideally) require daily action over time to “amount to” the goal.

Doing and tracking daily micromovements can help to gradually complete any creative project, but I’ve found this strategy especially ideal for the goal of growing an online presence, which requires a lot of time to be spent on social media and other writers’ blogs, and can be a slippery slope where productivity quickly becomes pure distraction and self-comparison.

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Author Tools: Improving Your Writing With AutoCrit by Pat Haggerty

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Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done

Any tool that can help authors refine and edit their writing is a good thing. AutoCrit isn’t free but it is designed to help authors self-edit their work. I don’t think it would take the place of a professional editor, but it would be a good thing to help get your draft ready for a professional editor and save you time and money in the process. Any users of AutoCrit out there? Let us know how you liked it.  Pat Haggerty at Romance University has the scoop.

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Improving Your Writing With AutoCrit

autocriticby Pat Haggerty

Every time I think Pat Haggerty can’t out-do his last post on RU, he comes up with another amazing article. Ever heard of AutoCrit? Check out what this software can do for you and your writing!

Have you ever heard the term Meatware? Yea, well that’s you. In a computer based system the hardware is where the computer software runs, the software is the set of instructions telling the hardware what to do and how, and you’re the meatware, running the show. At least for now

One never ending problem for writers is self-editing. It never ceases to amaze how many times I can read the same piece of work only to allow any number of mistakes to slip right past my notice. With training, and there are good books and classes on self-editing, you will improve, but some things are just hard to catch. We can, and eventually should, turn to a professional proofreader and/or line editor but wouldn’t it be nice if we could get a little more out of our self-editing cycle?

Enter AutoCrit.

AutoCrit is a web based, automated proofreader which does an excellent job helping you spot common problems in your drafts. The AutoCrit website says it well: “How do you get unbiased, knowledgeable feedback on your early drafts quickly, easily, and without spending a ton of money on an editor?” AutoCrit, that’s how.

Read the full post (and get the free worksheet!) on Romance University

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.