Monday, June 30, 2014

Book Reviews: Resources



http://www.rtbookreviews.com/magazine/editorial-submissions


http://www.fantasyliterature.com/contact-fanlit/
OUR REVIEW POLICY: We will consider for review any speculative fiction novel published in an SFWA Qualifying Professional Market or analogous UK market. If you are an author, agent, or publicist with a qualifying house and would like to send us a review copy, please use the form below to contact Kat. Queries which do not qualify or do not include publisher information and a description of the novel will be ignored. We accept print, audio, or digital galleys/ARCs for review. Our preferred method of receiving e-galleys is through NetGalley, where we are a listed Review Organization Accepting NetGalley Titles.


http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118048/william-pattersons-robert-heinlein-biography-hagiography

http://www.resilience.org/tag-search-results/94907-book%20review/79236


Using RSS or AtomFeeds To Publish Your Content



Atom is a simple way to read and write information on the web, allowing you to easily keep track of more sites in less time, and to seamlessly share your words and ideas by publishing to the web.
If you’re new to Atom, you can find out more about what Atom can do for you. Or if you just want to get started, tools and services which work with the Atom format are listed in the AtomEnabled directory.
Created by leading service providers, tool vendors and independent developers, Atom is designed to be a universal publishing standard for personal content and weblogs. Technical information about working with the Atom format is available at the developer information page, and publications or weblogs that are interested in the benefits of being AtomEnabled can find out more about the benefits of Atom for publishers.
http://atomenabled.org/

Using Rich Snippets On Web Pages to Enhance Your Search Results


You can mark up either individual reviews (for example, an editor's review of a product), or aggregate review information—for example, the average rating for a local business or the total number of user reviews submitted.

Use the individual Review format for pages containing a single review. For pages containing a collection of reviews, use the Review-aggregate format. If your page contains both (for example, an editor's review plus a set of user reviews), we recommend picking one format. Use the individual Review format to mark up the editor's review OR you can use the Review-aggregate format to summarize the set of user reviews. If a page contains both types of markup, Google will use the Review-aggregate markup for display.
Note: There are many possible ways to indicate review ratings—for example, stars, percentages, and various rating scales. More information about how to convey review ratings.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/richsnippets/

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Marketing Your Ebook: Forum Posts

Source:

http://www.boardtracker.com/

THE AMERICAN TERRORIST - Book One: Vengeance Rising - By R. Carl Irwin

http://www.wattpad.com/54447757-the-american-terrorist-book-one-vengeance-rising

Sneak Peek - Release Soon! _____________________

THE AMERICAN TERRORIST By R. Carl Irwin

The Birth of an American Terrorist -- Enemies of the United States have moved frightfully beyond idle threats of terror; US homeland security forces are overwhelmed while citizens demand accountability and a secure nation. The family of an iconic nanotechnology company founder is targeted. What if this tech visionary dedicated his life and resources to wage war on jihad? Armed with his technology, the pioneer becomes the hunter and the terrorist the prey. Gone are the terror tactics of yesterday… Changing the rules of this deadly game forever! Read the global political thriller of Thom Spencer, an American bio-nano technologist, on his quest for vengeance. By: R. Carl Irwin

Advance Copies Available For Review - Please Contact: csturm(at)TARPC.com All rights reserved. Copyright © 2014 R. Carl Irwin - Copyright © 2010 - 2014 The American Renaissance Publishing Company, LLC

"TRICK" YOUR WAY INTO GETTING BOOK REVIEWS

HOW SELF-PUBBERS CAN "TRICK" THEIR WAY INTO GETTING BOOK REVIEWS

This fantastic article was originally a blog post by best-selling romance author Stacy-Deanne.  Intead of letting it die a slow death in a forum somewhere, I thought I would put it here to live on for everyone to see! Reprinted with permission. 
I'm not self-published but I was very active in seeking reviews for my books. By doing that, I came across a few sites that do SP books as well as traditional. The best bet for SP authors is that they should contact individual reviewers and NOT waste time with folks they know don't review SP books.

A lot of reviewers on Book Blogs will give SP authors a chance. Some reviewers will not agree to review your book unless your SP book has had professional editing or if you contacted them beforehand. I wouldn't send books without speaking to the reviewer first though. Some folks do.

The main thing I see about SP authors is that instead of promoting their books as SP books, they should try promoting the genre. Sometimes you've got to trick people. You might laugh, but it works. I've known several SP authors who "tricked" a reviewer. Okay-- reviewers don't get mad at me, I'm not encouraging this, just sharing.

Some SP authors ended up getting blasted by the reviewer but some had their books professionally edited and had taken the process seriously and the reviewer was surprisingly pleased.

When you are SP, you gotta think out of the box. Stop promoting your books as "self-published" -- promote by its genre and that will open more doors. Sometimes SP authors shoot themselves in the foot for nothing. Heck if I was self-published and a reviewer of my choice didn't specify if they reviewed SP books or not, you think I'd ask? No, I'd send them my book. If they discovered it was self-published fine, but I wouldn't lend the information. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

If the reviewer doesn't say offhand... then send in your book if it fits what they read. If they come back and ask if it's Self Published, and they say they don't accept them, well respect it... and move on.

You'd be surprised how many reviewers don't post specific guidelines. Take advantage!

Don't forget Dear Author. They are a huge review site and I believe they take SP books.There are some popular places that are being a little more open. But I know Dear Author must because I read their reviews and some of those books look self-published. I also know they review e-books too.

But people should be aware that Dear Author is a very honest site. If they don't like a book, they will tell you in a heartbeat. I love that site.

But it's hard for all authors in terms of promotion-- but SP authors are gonna have to start being more creative to get more results. There are ways because obviously some SP authors are getting book reviews.

JUST NEVER PAY FOR A REVIEW!

Saturday, June 14, 2014

No Rule About Spying On Your Competition!



It has been used internally in all the search giants for a long time and gave them immense market intelligence. How do they do it? Why do they do it? And most of all, why is it important for you as an SEO or marketer to understand?


NetComber

Web Analyzer


http://netcomber.com/

Find their sites fast
  • Get notified about secret sites as soon as competitors register a domain
  • Find out what top affiliates and SEOs are working on now
  • Be aware of trends that high end affiliates are using
  • Discover new ways of making money online
Make their business 
your business
  • Reverse-engineer experts' systems
  • See the work history of a potential partner
  • Work out who their suppliers are
  • Start doing deals: one click to contact site owners
  • Learn when they're playing dirty
Find connections 
you never considered
  • 2500 services' account IDs extracted and tracked for Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter and more
  • 10 million whois records. Match sites based on a single detail
  • Discover the web of links for your niche
Good SEO / Research Resources:
as-seen-in

Facebook Advertising



 longer have an excuse to NOT advertise on Facebook.

Facebook’s advertising targeting options have become so incredibly robust in the past few months.

Unless you’re attempting to target life form on Mars, Facebook’s got you covered.

Are you an insurance broker? Nail salon owner? Dog trainer? Marketing expert? Auto dealer?  Fitness expert?

Yes. You’re covered.

Don’t believe Facebook has a targeting option that fits your needs?  Maybe this will convince you…

You can target people who eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…



…Or people who have shopped for and are most likely to buy a Chevy Camaro in the next 180 days.



The issue is that you (and most people) may not know the possibilities that lie under the “Audience” section of your ads manager.

What looks like six form fields (the ones with arrows)…



…is actually a gold mine of hundreds of thousands of different targeting options. You just have to look.

This article’s purpose it to inform you of the vast targeting options available on Facebook that you didn’t even know were there.

Before we discover the targeting options, it’s important for you first to establish your customer avatar.

Who is the person you’re targeting? What do they read? Where do they hang out? What age are they? Gender? Where do they live? What sites do they search online? Do they have children? (I could go on and on… you get the point)

You must do research about your audience before you take a swing at advertising.

When we begin to develop a new customer avatar, I not only answer the questions above, I also use Alexa and Similar Web.

These tools are free and allow you to collect data from competitors or influential sites in your niche.

If I was in the fitness niche, I would look at data for sites like FitnessMagazine.com.

Want More?
Check out this video from Ryan Deiss showing you EXACTLY how we grew engagement and email subscribers using a simple contest on Facebook.

Using Alexa and Similar Web, I would find that the site is visited heavily by females, with some college education, from their home, and the majority living in the United States.



Similar Web also shares similar sites, so that allows me to find sites most like the competitors or influencers I’ve already determined. You can collect data from their pages, too.



This exercise allows you to have a customer avatar in mind for your target audience based on hard data, not just what you THINK they are.

I usually collect data from 4-5 sites. You will notice that the data for the sites are usually congruent with one another because they are in the same niche.

Write down this information and keep it in mind as we move into Facebook targeting.

Now, let’s go back to our color coded audience section of the Facebook ads manager. Everytime you create a Facebook ad, you’ll have these options:



Here’s what lies beneath each category…

Locations:
Where do they live? (city, state, zip code or country)

Age:
What is their age/age range? (it’s best to segment this down to a 20 year range or less if possible/applicable)

Gender:
What is their gender? (all/men/women)

More Demographics: (third party data)
Who are they interested in? (Men, Women, Men & Women, Both)
What is their relationship status? (Single, In a Relationship, Married, Engaged, Unspecified, Civil Union, Domestic Partnership, Open Relationship, Complicated, Separated, Divorced, Widowed)
What’s their education level? (College Grad, Doctorate Degree, High School Grad, In College, In Grad School, In High School, Master’s Degree, Professional Degree, Some College)
What was/is their field of study? (Marketing, Business Marketing, Finance, etc.)
What school did they attend? (High schools, colleges, etc.)
What years were they in undergrad? (Select a range of years people graduated)
Who is their employer? (Apple, walmart, etc.)
What is their job title? (Sales representative, doctor, etc.)
What industry do they work in? (Administrative, Architecture and Engineering, Arts, entertainment, sports and media, business an financial operations, cleaning and maintenance, community and social services, computer and mathematics, construction and extraction, education and library, farming, fishing, and forestry, food preparation and services, healthcare and medical, IT and technical, installation and repair, legal, management, military)
What is their income range? ($40-50K, $50-75K, $75-100K, $100-125K, $125k+)
What is their net worth? ($1 – $100,000, $100,000 – $1,000,000, $1,000,000 – $2,000,000, $2,000,000+)
What type of home do they own? (Multi Family, Single Family)
Do they rent or own their home?
What is their homes value? (17 different price segments from $50k to $2 million)What is their household composition? (Children in home, empty nesters, grandparents, new teen drivers, no children in home, veterans in home, working women, young adults in home)
What is ethnic affinity? (Hispanic US-All, Hispanic US-Bilingual, Hispanic US – English Dominant, Hispanic US – Spanish Dominant)
What generation are they a part of? (Baby Boomers)
Are they a parent? (Expectant parents, all parents, parents of children 0-3yrs, parents of children 4-12yrs, parents of children 13-15yrs, parents of children 16-19yrs
Are they a mom? What type? (Big-city moms, corporate moms, fit moms, green moms, soccer moms, stay at home moms, trendy moms)
What are there political views? (Donate to conservative political causes, donate to liberal political causes, US active, US Conversative, US Liberal, US non-partisans, registered democratic voters, registered republican voters, registered independent voters)
Life events? (Away from family, away from hometown, long distance relationship, new job, new relationships, newly engaged (1 year), newly engaged (3 months), newly engaged (6 months), newlywed (1 year), newlywed (3 months), newlywed (6 months), recently moved, upcoming birthday)
Interests Targeting: (target related Facebook pages… this is the perfect place to target your competitors and sites you found from similar web)
What do they read? (magazines, blogs, books)
Who are the influencers in the niche? (Mari Smith, Ryan Deiss)
What tools do they use? (For twitter marketing, FB marketing, building websites, etc.)
What events do they attend?
What are other pages liked by people who like the above pages? (use graph search to find)
Behaviors: (third party data)
Automotive

What kind of vehicle do they own?
When did they purchase it? How did they pay for it?
What cars have they shopped for?
Charitable Donations

Did they donate to charitable donations? (Animal welfare, Arts and cultural, Children’s interests, Environmental and wildlife, Health, Political, Religious, Veterans, World relief)
Digital Activities

Are they console gamers?
Event creators?
Online spenders?
Photo uploaders?
Small business owners?
Technology early adopters?
Technology late adopters?
Financial

What month do they renew their car/home/health/life insurance?
Are they highly likely to invest? (Likely full service investors, Likely self direct investors)
What are their spending methods? (active credit card user, any card type, bank cards, gas, department and retail store cards, high end department store cards, premium credit cards, primarily cash, primarily credit cards, travel and entertainment cards)
Mobile device user

What brand of mobile device do they use?
What mobile device do they used based on operating system?
Purchase behavior

What kind of business purchases do they make? (business marketing, maintenance, repair, and operations, office and corporate gifts, training and publications)
What’s their buyer profile? (DIYers, fashionistas, foodies, gadget enthusiast, gamers, green living, healthy and fit, luxury brands and services, outdoor enthusiasts, shoppers, skiing, golfing and boating, spa enthusiasts, sportsmen, trendy homemakers)
What type of clothing do they buy?
What type of food and drink do they consume?
What health and body products do they use?
Are they interested in home and garden?
What kind of household products do they buy?
What kind of kids products do they buy?
What kind of pet products do they buy?
What are their purchase habits?
What outdoor sports are they interested in?
What store types do they shop in? (Furniture, high-end retail), home improvement stores, low-end department stores, membership warehouse)
What subscription services do they have? (Auto insurance online, higher education, mortgage online, prepaid debit cards, satellite TV)
Residential profile

Likely to move, recent homebuyer, recent mortgage borrower, recently moved
Travel

Do they travel? (all travelers, business travelers, business travel international, business travel US, casino travel, commuter, cruises, currently traveling, family vacation, frequent flyers, leisure travel, personal traveler international, personal traveler US) (Planning to travel – returned from trip 1 week ago, 2 weeks ago, tie shares, used travel app in the past month, used travel app in the past 2 weeks)
Impressed? Now you can target big city moms in New York City who have children between the age of 0-3 that are likely to move and donate to animal welfare J.

Notice that you can type whatever your heart desires into the interests field. You don’t have to choose from Facebook’s list. You can target other Facebook pages and keywords.

For example, you’ll see below that we targeted 4 different brands (Bally Total Fitness, Planet Fitness, Lifetime Fitness, and Gold’s Gym).



We also targeted two authorities in the niche (Fitness Magazine & Shape Magazine) – this is what they READ!

Lastly, we targeted a keyword (womens abs workout).

The possibilities are endless.

Find your competitors, authority figures, and brands in your niche and target them in the interests box

How do I know how big of an audience to target?
It would be terrible if you selected every behavior, or if you entered 200 different interests for one ad. Your ad wouldn’t be targeted as narrowly as you need it be.



You need to sift through Facebook’s “More Demographics” and “Behaviours” for any related targeting options to your niche.

You also need to find brands, authority figures, and keywords to target under “interests”.

Don’t forget that you have the option to target based on location (local marketers!), age, gender, etc.

There isn’t a perfect formula as to how to mix and match the different options to find your target audience.

When starting a campaign, we begin by targeting anywhere from 500,000 to 1,000,000 people. This can be done by entering a list of interests and then selecting males, 55-65 to really narrow the audience and decrease the size.

If you’re a local marketer, don’t worry about hitting 500,000 people… that will be difficult. The location is going to decrease your targeting, just worry about the interests, behaviors, and demographics of your customers.

For example, if you’re a local contractor who does home remodels, you could target people in a zip code with the behavior of “Home renovation”.



You could also target people in the zip code with interests of “Lowe’s, Home Depot, HGTV dream home, home improvement, home improvement tv series”.



You get the point.

More isn’t always better. The name of the game is to do your homework and discover Facebook’s targeting options, see which ones apply to your niche, and TEST.

The data will tell you which of the vast targeting options convert best for you.

Get out there and utilize these interests.

Have questions or comments?  Let’s talk about them below.

If you have any Facebook targeting tips, please share them in the comments below.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

GREAT RESOURCE!! savvybookwriters.wordpress.com


SBW (below) Has Resources and Articles Galore! Or, simply stated on their site:
"WRITING & PUBLISHING, E-BOOKS & BOOK MARKETING"
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/06/08/the-secret-to-find-readers-wattpad/


http://www.thebookdesigner.com/free-10-things-you-need-to-know-about-self-publishing/

https://www.dailylit.com/ - 15 minutes of fiction daily

http://plympton.com/

Plympton. Curated mobile reading service


http://www.amazon.com/America-Imagine-World-without-Her-ebook/dp/B00G1SM2QU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1402621286&sr=1-1&keywords=dinesh+d%27souza

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help?topicID=200649600

Editorial Reviews

In the Editorial Reviews section of your book's Product Detail Page, you can update Product Description, About the Author, From the Author, From the Inside Flap, From the Back Cover, and Reviews.
Important: Once you make a change to a section, your publisher will not be able to make any further changes to the same section. Your publisher can still make changes to other sections, but not to that one. If you believe this may cause your publisher concern, please consult them before making changes.

How to update Editorial Reviews

To update the Editorial Reviews for your title:
  1. Log in to Author Central.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Read: America - Imagine the World Without Her - Dinesh D'Souza
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Monday, June 9, 2014

Wordpress Author Themes - Using WordPress for Authors and Writers websites.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes
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Wordpress Author Themes - Using WordPress for Authors and Writers websites.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Stepping_Into_Templates
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