Blogging for Your Local Newspaper

Reading the Local NewspaperWhat’s a writer’s biggest challenge? Apart, that is, from writing great books? Bringing those books, and the name of the author, to the public’s attention. It’s a never-ending job. We not only have to keep writing, keep putting out new (and better) work, but we have to get our names out there so people will notice. Yes, that means social media; that means online forums, that means book fairs and book signings and radio and TV interviews. But there could be a local outlet that’s right under your nose: blogging for your local newspaper. Continue reading “Blogging for Your Local Newspaper”

Using Surveys and Forms on Your Website or Blog

Taking SurveysI first used Google forms to set up the Indies Unlimited 2015 Self-Published Production  Process Survey. If you’ve self-published at least one book and haven’t taken that survey yet, it’s not too late. You have until February 23, 2015. Go do that now. We’ll wait.

Welcome back. Thanks for doing that.

If you have a website, chances are at some point you have or will want to conduct a survey of some kind. (I’ve used one to get opinions from my readers on what they like and dislike about one of my sites.) Or maybe you want to set up a form to collect data of some kind. (Don’t forget, survey results are a favorite of the news media.)There are several alternatives for accomplishing this task, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Continue reading “Using Surveys and Forms on Your Website or Blog”

Plugins Every Author Can Use

toolboxAs authors, it’s important for us to have a website or blog devoted to our work. A common and easy way to do this is to use WordPress or Google (via Blogger or Google Sites). Neither method requires HTML knowledge, so they’re easy to use and manage. While these sites are pretty basic, we authors can use plugins (for WordPress) or widgets (Blogger) to add fancy features that would normally require us to know all sorts of programming languages (XML, HTML, JAVA) if we had to create them on our own.

So, today I’m offering up some cool plugins/widgets all authors should consider for their sites. Continue reading “Plugins Every Author Can Use”

Comment Courtesy

Out of the frying pan into the fireMercury is in retrograde. I don’t know what that means, but that is what someone told me about why people seem to be a little touchier than usual.

Sure, there are always some dark alleyways on the internet where you can count on seeing or participating in some sort of cyber-brawl. Indies Unlimited is not one of those places.

We like civil, even-spirited debate, and there is no reason it can’t be respectful debate. We have a comment policy that spells it out pretty well. Nevertheless, I’ve seen a couple of weird things going on of late that I want to bring out in the open: Continue reading “Comment Courtesy”