Posts Tagged ‘book’
Saturday, October 22nd, 2011
Usually it takes motivated parents to get a kid to read.
For example, Monica has four boys and she started reading to them when they were babies. (more…)
Tags: 13 Reality, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Alexander Key, Alexandre Dumas, Anna del C. Dye, Bobbsey Twins, book, Brandon Mull, Brothers Grimm, Carolyn Keene, Charles Dickens, Chris Heimerdinger, Daniel Defoe, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Ella Enchanted, Emerine's Nightmare, Enid La Monte Meadowcroft, Escape to Witch Mountain, Fable Haven series, Franklin W. Dixon, Gail Carson Levine, Gertrude Chandler Warner, Hardy Boys, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Dashner, Jill Ammon Vanderwood, Jules Verne, Kathryn Kenny, Kenneth Grahame, kid's books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Laura Lee Hope, Little House on the Prairie, Little Women, Louisa M. Alcott, Maria Augusta Trapp, Mark Twain, Oliver Twist, Patricia C. Wrede, Paul Genesse, reading for kids, reading tablets, Rebecca Shelley Nancy Drew, Robinson Crusoe, Secret Railway, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Boxcar Children, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, The golden Cord, The Little Lame Prince, The Lord of the Rings, The Prince and the Pauper, The Red dragon Codex, The Secret Life of a Teenage Siren, The Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, the silent warrior trilogy, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, The Tennis Shoe (series), The Three Musketeers, The Wind on the Willows, Through the Rug, Trixie Beldon, Wendy Toliver
Posted in Book Reviews, For Writers, Writing and Literacy | No Comments »
Sunday, July 31st, 2011
This book has a brilliant theme and great reading. I was surprised by this romance and the way it was laid down on the pages. It is based on a theme of re-incarnation or the existence of more than just one life that hasn’t been overdone yet. This author picked a great theme, one that many adults wonder about and would love to read. (more…)
Tags: book, fantasy book, life after dead, love story, paranormal, re-encarnation, relationship, romance
Posted in Book Reviews, For Writers, Relationship tips, Writing and Literacy | No Comments »
Saturday, July 9th, 2011
To promote or not, that is the great dilemma. If you are an author, you have to promote your book or no one will know it is there. Besides, even if you are traditionally published you are expected to promote your book. If you ask me, promoting is the least fun thing you do as an author. After all, you want to move on into your next book, not spend hours convincing people that they should buy your book.
Most of the time, promotion is the last thing an author thinks of, and in many cases, they publish their books and have no idea that they should have started to promote it a year before it came out of the oven. Â Here you will find some ideas to get you comfortable with the thought and you won’t freeze in stupor when you get there.

- Send out free PDFs, or ebooks, to bloggers who have tons of followers. If your book is non-fiction, send out digital copies to influential journalists. Ask the bloggers to review it in their blogs.
(Some bloggers or reviewers need a month to read the book. Always ask way beforehand.)
- Pull out excerpts of the book to use as articles. Post them on free sites.
- Create videos. Keep it short and sweet (under 10 m.) In one, talk about you. In another, talk about your book. Then in another, read an excerpt from it, etc.
- Create a book trailer. Find pictures that reflect the content of your book and then use excerpts from the book to tease people to read more. Never tell the ending and make it short.
- Schedule a launch day and make sure plenty of things are planned that day. Notify your email list, facebook, goodreads, twitter, a week before and then the day of. Don’t forget to post the different links to your videos and trailer’s one at the time.
- Offer a digital copy as a prize on other websites and blogs. Offer the blogger or website owners a free paperback book for their help. You can have a goodreads giveaway…
- Ask other bloggers to do an interview and send them lots of questions you made up, with their answers. (You can send the same list to all of them and they can pick how long and what to post from it.)
- If you assign these bloggers to do your review on a different day of the week each, this is called a Blog tour. Make sure every day has one blogger or more assigned to it. You’ll gain maximum exposure for minimum costs. Select other authors or readers to do this…other authors, will get you in contact with other readers.
- Offer a chapter as a downloadable PDF. Encourage readers to share it with others.
- Publish the book’s table of contents on your website. Include a small overview of each chapter. (Really short) Optimize the page for search engines. (List many pertinent tags to attract new readers looking for your genre.)
- Encourage people to write a five-star review of your book on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, GoodReads.
- Publish reviews and testimonials of the book on your website. Include links to the reviews from Amazon.com and other sites.
- Makes sure you always say thank you to all that help you and join their sites to show that you appreciate their help.
- Make bookmarks to pass along. They are more usable than cards which are easily thrown away. (Check online for cost-effective sources.) Make sure they contain your website and email.
- Always have copies of your book and bookmarks with you or in your car.
- Be creative, persistent and grateful for the help of others and you’ll see your book sales go up. It isn’t their obligation to tell others about your book, so help them back.
- It isn’t a bad Idea if you have authors or readers friends to ask them for a review, so you can use a small insert on the back or in the first page of your book.

I hope these ideas help you start your great future as a writer. Don’t forget to share your success with others and help them get ahead too. Is called pay it forward. Is always sweeter when you get to the top and your readers, friends and family are cheering you on. Happy promoting to you.
Anna del C. Dye was born in Chile. She has received six awards for her stories. She is fluent in Spanish & English and lives in Utah, with her husband of thirty-nine years. The Silent Warrior Trilogy belongs to her Elf Series that includes, seven stand-alone high fantasy books. Also, her A Royal Romance series includes, Once Upon Two Kingdoms, A Kingdom By The Sea & A Golden Princess. She has also authored The Chancellor from Connier and a middle-grade book, Emerine’s nightmare, published digitally.

Tags: audience, bloggers, book, book trailer. Post, contests, critique group, edit, email, facebook, feedback, Google alerts, Internet, LinkedIn, manuscript, nonfiction, professional cover, promotion, social media sites, testimonials, twitter, website, writers group, YouTube
Posted in For Writers, Writing and Literacy | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
This author of high fantasy writes with warmth and in a way that preteen and teens will find friendly. The descriptions in this book are beautifully written. They paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind.
The story is that of a sixteen-year-old young woman by the name of Halith. She has grown up partially with her mother, then in a convent with a superior priestess that really cares for her and finally with her uncle, who wants to marry her to a fat merchant.
To the exasperation of her tutors, (more…)
Tags: battles, book, descriptive writing, Fantasy, forest, magic, medieval weapons, New author, review, teen books, teens, weapon, ya, young adult book
Posted in Book Reviews, For Writers, Relationship tips, Writing and Literacy | No Comments »
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Characters tell your tale; if they are boring, flat, or common your story will be, too.
- Characters need personality (thus the designation character) and a name that will cause that your readers to remember and relate to them throughout the book.
a.    The way your character dresses also adds personality and can make him/her very distinctive in the reader’s mind. A personal eccentricity or oddity or a mysterious quality is also a good personality trait.
b.    Some sort of skill or power, a special experience, a history or past, humor or the lack thereof adds character.
c.    These characteristics could also be mannerisms or physical traits. Examples: (more…)
Tags: 28th century, A teenager, antagonist, astronomer, book, cartoonist, evil, five senses, goal, handlebar mustache, history, humor, killer characters, king, kiss, lisp, mannerisms, meadow, memorable, moon, mysterious, oddity, patch in his/her eye, peasant, personality, personality trait, power, skill, traits, wild flowers
Posted in For Writers, Writing and Literacy | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
Get out your fishing pole, and I’ll give you the juiciest worm ever… but really: Many times you only have the first paragraph of a book to hook your reader into the story. If you fail to hook them, they won’t continue reading or buy your book. Does that mean your book is no good at all? No, it just means that you need to change the starting or move another scene to become your first paragraph. (more…)
Tags: battle, book, paragraph, perspective, protagonist, story, writing hook
Posted in For Writers, Writing and Literacy | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
What should you do when you want to write a book?
• First thing “Keep your day job.†To publish and promote your books takes money and sometime lots of it. Promotion may include travel, business cards, bookmarkers, renting tables at fairs, posters, and free copies for reviews, etc.
Now that that is out of the way, let’s get down to writing. (more…)
Tags: articles, author, blogging, book, bookmarkers, business card, character, comment, critique, fair, grammatical error, habits, magazine, newspaper, poster, profile, promotion, publish, research, reviews, story, writer's chapter
Posted in For Writers, Writing and Literacy | No Comments »
A check list for aspiring authors
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009What should you do when you want to write a book?
• First thing “Keep your day job.†To publish and promote your books takes money and sometime lots of it. Promotion may include travel, business cards, bookmarkers, renting tables at fairs, posters, and free copies for reviews, etc.
Now that that is out of the way, let’s get down to writing. (more…)
Tags: articles, author, blogging, book, bookmarkers, business card, character, comment, critique, fair, grammatical error, habits, magazine, newspaper, poster, profile, promotion, publish, research, reviews, story, writer's chapter
Posted in For Writers, Writing and Literacy | No Comments »