Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

A weekly roundup of the best writing links from around the web.

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 30,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

3 tips for newsletters:  http://ow.ly/pG4w300Bv6P @austinkleon

What makes bad writing bad?  http://ow.ly/T2Se300F2g4 @GuardianBooks  @tobylitt

6 Cases: How to Write Infrequent Phrases:  http://ow.ly/Nk5F300F2CJ @ZoeMMcCarthy

Top 10 fictional houses with personality: http://ow.ly/UcIW300EZlu @TomEaston @GuardianBooks

Knife or Gun: Which is Better in Close Quarters? http://ow.ly/qoEd3016GCD @benjaminsobieck @JChaseNovelist

Infusing Emotion into Every Scene and Chapter: http://ow.ly/En5L300F2A6 @JordanDane               Continue reading

From Trad-Pub to Self-Pub–Tips and Observations

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

facebook_da6ac5aea2

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This is the second time I’ve gotten the rights to my characters back from a publisher and taken a trad-published series to self-pub.  The last time I did this was five years ago.

There were some big differences between this time and last time.  The first time I’d had only one book released in the series before taking it to self-pub.  This time the series had five books in it.

This latest series had a nice following but I found that many of my readers for the Penguin series  seemed unaware of my self-published series.  They would email me asking when the next Southern Quilting Mystery was coming out and I would tell them…and then ask if they knew about my Myrtle Clover series.  Many times they didn’t.

One reason they didn’t is because Penguin didn’t want any non-Penguin books included in my author bio.  I can understand this.  So not only were my self-published books not included in my bio, the original trad-published book in the series (from Midnight Ink) wasn’t, either.Continue reading

The Danger of Responding to Reviews

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

The Danger of Responding to Reviews

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Last week I read a Washington Post article about doctors who were angered by bad Yelp reviews from patients.  They fired back at these patients, revealing confidential information in the process. (“Doctors Fire Back at Bad Yelp Reviews–and Reveal Patients’ Information Online” by Charles Ornstein.)

The crux of this particular piece was that doctors who responded angrily to the patients were violating patient privacy.  But to me, it was just another reminder of the inherent danger of responding to reviews.  Any reviews.

It’s very difficult for me to imagine a time where an author comes out looking good after responding to reviews.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The Secret of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë : http://ow.ly/Qpzb300rvhY @JudithShulevitz @TheAtlantic

Do Overused Words Lose Their Meaning?  http://ow.ly/4kUg300rvqw @asap_jonathon @flavorwire

3 Marketing Fallacies That Writers Should Be Wary Of:  http://ow.ly/afs1300rvyB @DanBlank

Instagram is changing the way we buy and sell books:  http://ow.ly/7OvA300rvDp @jopiazza @dailydot

The Ultimate Guide To Using Trello As A Writer:  http://ow.ly/to13300oXW7 @misfitalexa

5 Easy Techniques to Bulk Up a Paper-Thin Character:  http://ow.ly/3O38300p1xd @ZoeMMcCarthy               Continue reading

Evaluating Our Website’s SEO

Tools for Writers

Evaluating Our Website by Elizabeth Spann Craig

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve recently become very interested in how my site, books, and bio show up in Google searches.  This interest in search engine optimization, or SEO, has led me to make some changes on my site.

I read about a free tool called the SEO Site Checkup tool in Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed newsletter (click here for the archives to see if her newsletter might work for you).  I typed in my website name, clicked ‘checkup,’ and it delivered a list of issues that I should resolve to improve my SEO.

The way it was set up was very informative.  It provides passed checks (what I’m doing right and why it’s right,  failed checks, and warnings.  Each area that my site performed poorly on had a red, clickable box with ‘how to fix’ on it. I learned both from what I was (accidentally, I’m sure) doing right and what I was doing wrong from the fix it offered.

I read a lot of articles on the importance of search engines being able to find our books, our sites, and our bios. But frequently, the articles don’t outline ways to improve what we’re doing.  Even increasing the image size to optimize it for Google (and so that the post will stand out when being shared on social media) helped the SEO…and that was a minor, easy tweak.  Other tips involved creating a favicon for the site (icon representing the site in a bookmark or browser tab).  Others might get tips to make their site easier to read on mobile devices, etc.

It only takes about a minute for the site to check your SEO (and it’s free to check a single site):  SEO Site Checkup tool .  How does yours fare?

Evaluating our website's SEO: Click To Tweet
Scroll to top