RT Retweet Pay it Forward -- Holiday Version #MFRWorg #MFRWauthor

It's Retweet Day for MFRW on Twitter. All Marketing for Romance Writers are invited to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg You can now share up to 280 characters per tweet -- twice as many as before.

Once the tweet has been posted, click anywhere in the white background of the tweet. This will open it and allow you to highlight and copy the URL.

Now, navigate back to here and paste the URL in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until Wednesday of the same week.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of each month. Retweet everyone on the list.

To help people find your tweet, click the the white background and then the down arrow (found on the right side). Choose "Pin to Your Profile Page." This will keep it at the top of your Twitter feed so more people can find it.

Retweet Day Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link in the comments.

4. Click the heart on the tweet and then the retweet symbol and the Retweet button.

5. Click the G+ symbol on the comment so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

6. For best results, limit hashtags to three (3) per post.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Tina Gayle enjoys writing contemporary romance and stories featuring strong women, as well as tales that touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created stories to put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dream.

Find her at www.tinagayle.net or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

Thankful for #MFRWauthor #MFRWorg #Author Retweet Day

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg

Once the tweet has been posted, click the ... (three dots) in the right hand corner.

This will give you the option to copy the link to the tweet. Copy the link and put it in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until Wednesday of the same week.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of the month.  Retweet everyone on the list.

Also in an effort to help people find tweets to share of yours, click the ... (three dots) again and pin your tweet to your profile page. This will give you an easy way to find and count how many people retweeted your post.

Don't forget the Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexually explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link and share everyone's post on Twitter.

4. Click the G+ symbol on the tweet so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

5. No more than 3 hashtags in a post.

Remember to make sure to retweet everyone on the list.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Writing contemporary romance, Tina Gayle enjoys writing stories that have strong women fiction elements as well as touching the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created stories to help put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dreams. 
Find her at www.tinagayle.net  or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

Celebrate #MFRWauthor with Retweet Day - #Authors Promoting Authors @MFRW_ORG

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRW_org

Once the tweet has been posted, click the ... (three dots) in the right hand corner.

This will give you the option to copy the link to the tweet. Copy the link and put it in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until Wednesday of the same week.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of the month.  Retweet everyone on the list.

Also in an effort to help people find tweets to share of yours, click the ... (three dots) again and pin your tweet to your profile page. This will give you an easy way to find and count how many people retweeted your post.

Don't forget the Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRW_org in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link and share everyone's post on Twitter.

4. Click the G+ symbol on the tweet so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

5. No more than 3 hashtags in a post. Any more than this and Twitter might believe it is spam.

Also, if you did it last month you might want to check that you retweeted everyone. Some people do it near the end and are not being retweeted.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Writing contemporary romance, Tina Gayle enjoys wring stories that has strong women fiction elements as well as touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created storied to help put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dreams. 
Find her at www.tinagayle.net  or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

Good Keywords for Author SEO by Kayelle Allen @KayelleAllen #author #tips

Authors need good keywords for blog posts, books, marketing, even writing newsletters. SEO, which means Search Engine Optimization, is all about writing and content searchable by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. After all, if no one can find you, what good will it do to write material anyway? To be found, authors need good keywords and good SEO.
Included in this post is a shot of the Yoast SEO Wordpress plugin used on my personal site. I use this plugin on each post. This is one I used for a post called How to Leave A Review (which I'll mention again below).

A focus keyword.

For ex, a phrase that includes the genre, book or character name, or a descriptive phrase. On one of my posts, titled "How to Leave a Review" I used "leave a review" and repeated it in the title, url, H2 heading, and the body. By the time I'd finished it was there 13 times total. Anyone searching for info on how to leave one, when to leave one, where to leave one, etc. would be likely to find it.

Slug

The slug is what the words at the end of the url are called. Mine was leave-a-review (after the kayelleallen.com/ ) Making it the same as the focus word strengthens the SEO.

Meta Title / Meta Description

I use Wordpress, and a plugin called Yoast SEO allows me to choose the meta title and description. When you Google something, you know the words in bold that come up and show you a title? That's the meta title. The words beneath it are the meta description. If you can't specify, then Google (and other search engines) pick up the post title and about 150 characters of the first paragraph.

Yoast SEO shows a green line (meaning good) when a title is more than 54 characters but no more than 94 characters. For the meta description, use a minimum 120 characters but no more than 156 characters. Remember, if you don't have a program that will provide this info for search engines, write posts with this type of information right up front.

More SEO for Authors

Title and hashtags

I try to match the focus keyword and then research the best hashtags on https://ritetag.com/

H2 Header

Match your focus keyword somewhere on the page in an H2 heading.

Video

Because it owns YouTube, Google loves videos from there. Use the focus word in the description and/or header of that.

Call to action

Generally, I plan my call to action first, and then write the post to showcase that. I want people to leave a review of my book, so I pulled it in as examples in the entire post about how to leave a review. Then I asked if they had left one no matter who's or where, to share the link. It got a ton of views, but no comments. Typically, I get far more views than comments, so it wasn't a surprise.

Image alt tags

On my personal site, I highlight the title of the post and paste that into the alt tag line of each image in the post.

Featured Image

In Blogger, you usually see the first image when you post a url on Facebook or Twitter. With Wordpress, you can pick the exact image you want, even if it isn't in your actual post. When the meta title and description go up on Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc., that is the image that goes with it.

Other minor things to watch:

Use one category only. This is like the folder in the filing cabinet. It can only go in one at a time. Exception: On RLFblog, I use two categories when the author does an interview. One for the type of interview, and one for the type of book. This lets readers search for both.

Use keywords that are genre specific, book specific, topic oriented. Keep keywords simple so readers can easily click the tag and find everything in the topic. For ex, don't use the word book plus the word books. One or the other.

That's pretty much what I do. It's working very well.

If you use Wordpress, get the Yoast SEO for Wordpress plugin. It will teach you these very things. If you do them, your article is going to be much more findable by search engines. Use the checklist, and write good content that contains information people want to find. It's that simple.

About Kayelle Allen

Kayelle Allen is the founder of Marketing for Romance Writers. She writes Sci Fi with misbehaving robots, mythic heroes, role playing immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. She's a US Navy veteran and has been married so long she's tenured.

https://kayelleallen.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/kayelleallen
Facebook https://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author
Join the Romance Lives Forever Reader Group Download four free books and get news about books coming soon. You can unsubscribe at any time.

A #RetweetParty at #MFRWauthor and #MFRWorg - Find New Authors

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg

Once the tweet has been posted, click the ... (three dots) in the right hand corner.

This will give you the option to copy the link to the tweet. Copy the link and put it in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until Wednesday of the same week.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of the month.  Retweet everyone on the list.

Also in an effort to help people find tweets to share of yours, click the ... (three dots) again and pin your tweet to your profile page. This will give you an easy way to find and count how many people retweeted your post.

Don't forget the Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link and share everyone's post on Twitter.

4. Click the G+ symbol on the tweet so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

5. No more than 3 hashtags in a post. Any more than this and Twitter might believe it is spam.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Writing contemporary romance, Tina Gayle enjoys wring stories that has strong women fiction elements as well as touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created storied to help put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dreams. 
Find her at www.tinagayle.net  or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

Join the Fun Retweet with #MFRWauthor and #MFRWorg

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg

Once the tweet has been posted, click the ... (three dots) in the right hand corner.

This will give you the option to (copy link to tweet). Copy the link and put it in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until Wednesday of the same week.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of the month and retweet everyone on the list.

Also in an effort to help people find tweets to share of yours, click the ... (three dots) again and pin your tweet to your profile page. This will give you an easy way to find and count how many people retweeted your post.

Don't forget the Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link and share everyone's post on Twitter.

4. Click the G+ symbol on the tweet so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

5. No more than 3 hashtags in a post. Any more than this and Twitter might believe it is spam.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Writing contemporary romance, Tina Gayle enjoys wring stories that has strong women fiction elements as well as touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created storied to help put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dreams. 
Find her at www.tinagayle.net  or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

10 Reasons Why Not to Read Romance @kayelleallen #humor #romance #MFRWauthor

After careful consideration, and much placing of tongue in cheek -- no, not French kissing, get your mind out of the gutter -- I have decided that Romance books are not good for me and have decided to give them up. (yeah, right!) Here are ten reasons why.

1. Reading Romance might lead women to believe men can be more sensitive and caring, and this unrealistic expectation could lead to unhappiness. I might think that I could find a perfect love and have a happily ever after, and that isn't realistic. Just ask a psychiatrist.
2. In fact, living happily ever after probably isn't good for the economy. You wouldn't need anti-anxiety medication or drugs for depression, and since this is a huge market in the United States, living happily ever after could actually cause a loss of jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.
3. Realism is better for the world. The sooner we face the fact that life is tough, the better we can deal with it. Best not to get your hopes up.
4. Women are in danger when reading these books. I read that "...marriage therapists caution that women can become as dangerously unbalanced by these books’ entrancing but distorted messages as men can be by the distorted messages of pornography." (Shaunti Feldhahn quoting another source)
5. If I read Romance novels I might end up being dumb. According to at least one blogger, these kinds of novels are children's stories with adult themes, and don't deserve any real attention anyway. They are not "true literature." (referenced tongue in cheek by Leia Shaw, on Susan Hanniford Crowley's blog)
6. Romance books about ménage partners, same sex partners, and other non-one woman/one man Romances might destroy the fabric of America. I mean gee, aren't those kinds of stories somehow wrong? (don't look at the books I write, by the way. Just go with it. *cough*)
7. Women have better things to do than sit around reading Romance books. There are kitchens to clean, floors to scrub, and there is laundry to be done. In fact, reading anything other than cookbooks or articles about child-rearing and being a good wife is probably just a waste of a woman's time.
8. Taking a Romance novel to the beach to read might lead me to make bad choices. (Eryn Brown, LA Times quoting Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care)
9. Hunky male models on the cover of Romance novels might make me less than satisfied with my own husband. I might be unable to differentiate between a photo of a man on the cover of a novel and a real man who's sitting beside me.
10. While we're talking about hunky male models, looking at the covers of Romance books with hot models on them might cause me to engage in lust. *crickets chirping* Okay, you got me. That one's true!

I hope no one has taken any of this seriously. Please do not write letters, folks. This is humor, okay? Thank you. :) So... do YOU think Romance is bad for you? Please tell me about it in the comments.

---

Kayelle Allen is a a best-selling American author. Her unstoppable heroes and heroines include contemporary every day folk, role-playing immortal gamers, futuristic covert agents, and warriors who purr. When you're immortal, Romance Lives Forever.
https://kayelleallen.com
Join the Romance Lives Forever Reader Group Download four free books and get news about books coming soon. You can unsubscribe at any time.

When We Self Sabotage #MFRWAuthor

I met her in the Sprout's parking lot, the Summer sun blasting down on me. Intense heat and I are not the best of friends but I would face even worse for what she was bringing me. My heart beat harder as

 I took the package, covered in a plain brown bag, end stapled shut. At last, I could satisfy the craving she had created in me.
Mushrooms, folks...what the heck did you think I was blathering on about? Oyster mushrooms, to be precise. So much flavor, with such an amazing texture. This was the second bag she'd delivered, and this time she said the grower was happy to keep me supplied if I would just blog about them, get the word out among my various contacts.
Well...yeah of course I would! Share recipes? You betcha. Just send me the contact information...address of the farm, the website, the Facebook page. In preparation I took pictures of my bounty, and of some of the ways I used it (did you know good mushrooms make amazing hash browns? Seriously!)
My friend gave me a business name, and I turned to my good friend Google. To find...nothing.
Not one thing about this person, this farm. Heck I couldn't even bring up the farm address. I knew they had to exist, I had the proof in my fridge. Well what was left of the proof, anyway, after my 'shroom binge. Mmmmm.
Eventually my friend did get in touch with the farm owner, who said she'd have something up soon and was I able to get the word out? Well, not really since, except for the fungilicous 'shrooms there was no word to get out. When that information is available I will definitely swing into action. I've already primed my friends to descend up her for their own oyster mushrooms.
These people had a fabulous product but they were sabotaging their business.

Pretty picture to break up the text

How often do we do that to ourselves? How often do we have a fairly successful book release, or, heck, any book release, and we're caught flat footed without sufficient information about us, our other books (current or future) or any information about us which might attract potential readers. Yeah I know, we writers are a solitary sort. If we wanted to interact with people we wouldn't have selected such a solitary occupation.
When we find out people want to KNOW us we get that deer in the headlights feeling. However, unless we want to write books for giveaway, we need to get ourselves OUT THERE. That means a website, a blog, a Facebook or Twitter or whatever presence. We don't want to be winking in the dark, do we?
Confession time, I have my ups and downs about doing this for myself but I'm trying to overcome that problem. Resistance is, after all, futile! And with MFRW's own guru (AKA Kayelle Allen) we have no excuse, do we?

So I'll stick in a bit of promo for myself. The second Stormhaven book, A Question of Faith, is out and the third, A Questions of Trust, is well underway.
Stormhaven is a ranch in northern New Mexico that welcomes veterans not quite ready to move back into society. My heroes have put others first for so long, they've begun to think they don't deserve their own happiness.
Silly guys, they're actually just waiting for their perfect mate!
I'm available through Black Opal Books , on Amazon, and at Mona's Blog

When not clandestinely acquiring mushrooms or pounding the keyboard, Mona helps monitor the MFRW discussion group. Yeah, she's the one who begs you to PLEASE trim and remember to promote your fellow writers, not yourselves. Which makes for a stronger writing community, don't you think?

Do The Retweet Day with #MFRWauthor and #MFRWorg

Retweet Day for #MFRWauthor - Join the fun

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg

Once the tweet has been posted, click the ... (three dots) in the right hand corner.

This will give you the option to (copy link to tweet). Copy the link and put it in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until the second Wednesday of the month.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of the month and retweet everyone on the list.

Also in an effort to help people find tweets to share of yours, click the ... (three dots) again and pin your tweet to your profile page. This will give you an easy way to find and count how many people retweeted your post.

Don't forget the Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link and share everyone's post on Twitter.

4. Click the G+ symbol on the tweet so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

5. No more than 3 hashtags in a post. Any more than this and Twitter might believe it is spam.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Writing contemporary romance, Tina Gayle enjoys wring stories that has strong women fiction elements as well as touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created storied to help put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dreams. 
Find her at www.tinagayle.net  or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

Difference Between KDP and KDP Select by Kayelle Allen @kayelleallen #writerslife #MFRWauthor

Have you ever wondered what the difference between KDP and KDP Select is? Authors who self publish on Amazon use Kindle Direct Publishing. Once you upload, you're asked if you also want to join Kindle Select. This is an exclusive contract with Amazon and will place your book into Kindle Unlimited (KU). The contract runs 90 days from signing and auto renews unless you cancel prior to that date. It will put your book in Kindle Unlimited for readers. Members pay $9.99 a month and can read as much as they want of all books in KU system. In addition, you will get paid by the page count of pages read.

Breaking it down

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) - all self-pub authors on Amazon

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) + Kindle Select (also called KDP Select) - exclusive contract, no sales outside Amazon (except print), includes Kindle Unlimited

I sell my books on my own site but only the print books for the ones on Select. It's exclusively exclusive. No ebook sales anywhere else.

My recommendation is to go with "wide distribution" for your first book Sign up at these sites:

Amazon
Smashwords
CreateSpace

Here's what you'll get with each.

Amazon - total reach across all of Amazon

Smashwords - reach across all venues (you can publish from here to Amazon but why would you? You'd be cutting out your own royalty base b/c you'd share it with Smashwords.) You will get Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple iTunes (iBooks), plus many others.

CreateSpace - you'll be in print on any and all sites where you want to share it. You can go exclusive on Amazon and still sell the print on Smashwords.

If, after six months, you don't see awesome sales at non-Amazon distributors, consider going KDP Select and advertise as "free on Kindle Unlimited" (KU). You will get paid for purchases as well as pages read by those who only "borrow" the books.

What I Do

I have a number of books in that system. I make more in one month on Amazon than I do in a year on the other venues combined. It's different for every person. Be sure to advertise and include places where readers can buy your books. Don't say "I'm on Amazon" when you have an opportunity to write the actual URL to the book's page. Notice the banner above shows the icons for Amazon and CreateSpace, plus the hashtags #ScifiRom and #KindleUnlimited. These are cues to the reader what your book is about and when shared, gives them a way to know what hashtags to use on Twitter or Facebook.

Try everything with your books. They're yours. What works for others might not work for you. Whatever you decide, good luck with sales!

If you've used KDP Select, please share your opinions and tips in the comments.

---

Kayelle Allen is a best-selling American author. Her unstoppable heroes and heroines include contemporary every day folk, role-playing immortal gamers, futuristic covert agents, and warriors who purr.

Homeworld/Blog https://kayelleallen.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/kayelleallen

Join the Romance Lives Forever Reader Group Download four free books and get news about books coming soon. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Can You Tweet? Then You Can Retweet with #MFRWauthor and #MFRWorg

Retweet Day for #MFRWauthor - Join the fun

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg

Once the tweet has been posted, click the ... (three dots) in the right-hand corner.

This will give you the option to (copy link to tweet). Copy the link and put it in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until the second Wednesday of the month.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of the month and retweet everyone on the list.

Also in an effort to help people find tweets to share of yours, click the ... (three dots) again and pin your tweet to your profile page. This will give you an easy way to find and count how many people retweeted your post.

Don't forget the Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link and share everyone's post on Twitter.

4. Click the G+ symbol on the tweet so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

5. No more than 3 hashtags in a post. Any more than this and Twitter might believe it is spam.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Writing contemporary romance, Tina Gayle enjoys wring stories that has strong women fiction elements as well as touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created storied to help put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dreams. 
Find her at www.tinagayle.net  or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

10 Ways to Make Readers Happy by Kayelle Allen @kayelleallen #amwriting #MFRWauthor

I host 350+ authors every year on my Romance Lives Forever blog. I'm the founder of Marketing for Romance Writers. Authors talk to me. I hear a lot of stories about readers who are unhappy and about ones who are ecstatic. There are some things in common. Here are ten of the best ways to make readers happy. Some are from personal experience, many from other writers.

1. Write well. If you don't do this, it doesn't matter what else you do. Triple check your spelling. Punctuate properly. Readers today have been exposed to a wide variety of writing due to the internet and have learned to be discerning. A poorly written, misspelled book will be passed over in short order. For blog posts, spellcheck and/or use a site like Grammarly or SmartEdit. For books, hire an editor.
2. Use proper formatting. Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, Lulu, CreateSpace, etc. each has its own requirements for formatting. Follow them to the letter. Whatever the requirements say should be done -- do it. These services know what the programs will do and what it takes to make them work best. Follow their advice. A hard to read book gathers no interest.
3. Along those same lines, when posting quotes to the web, in email, on Yahoo Groups, and so on, never use "curly" or "smart" quotes (the type that curl toward words on the left, and away on the right). Many programs, blogs, and sites cannot read the code that word processing programs use for these, so they substitute code to try to make sense of what they see. Instead of your quoted text appearing as: "I didn't do it." The reader sees:  tm&*I didn#@*$t do it.98cm&  Imagine an entire page of this. Trust me, this does not make reaaders happy. Go into the autocorrect features of your word processing program and turn off these types of quotes (and look at all the tabs -- they are in more than one place), then, using the Replace command on your editing toolbar, replace all " to ", and ' to '. It will look no different to you in the replace command dialog box, but the computer will change all the codes and the formatting on the other end will come out right. Your readers will thank you.
4. Use only a simple serif or non-serif font (like Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri.). Readers who do not have a special font loaded on their computers will see plain text (such as Courier) because their machines will substitute the fancy font for a default one.
5. Provide good content. If you have interesting information to share with your readers, they will come to you. Whether you use blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or other services, content is the number one reason people will follow you. "Getting your name out there" is a byword. Everyone wants to know how to do it. How do you gain friends on Facebook and so on? How do you get people to read your book? The answer is to give them solid content, well written.
6. When promoting your book, provide a "set up" -- a few lines so people know what the scene or excerpt they are about to read is about. Help them understand the characters, so they don't feel they walked in during the middle of a conversation.
7. Share your work on more than your website and your blog. Yahoo groups, Facebook, other authors' blogs, Goodreads, and other places are good sites to share your material with readers.
8. Use Twitter to generate interest in your books by sharing tidbits and snips of dialog or scenes. Believe it or not, there are Twitter accounts that post entire stories, each less than 140 characters long. Try delivering your hero or heroine's lines in successive tweets. Not all of them, mind you -- just a few to create curiosity.
9. Share promos with other authors. If you and another author have similar books (say vampire romances) hold a contest together. You promote your book and hers to your readers, and vice versa. You will both gain. I've done this with friends over the years and gained not only readers, but best friends who will promo with me at the drop of a hat. You can't beat that.
10. Tell people you meet that you're an author. Carry your business cards or bookmarks. When I'm at a bookstore, or looking at books at the grocery store, I invariably start talking to the woman who's standing next to me. Especially when she picks up a book I already own, or am about to buy. Or she's buying an author I've never heard of before. I ask questions. Somehow it always leads to sharing my own story. I hand over my card. I once got an email from someone who said she'd met me in a doctor's office several years before, and wanted to let me know she'd bought one of my books and loved it. Made my day.

If your goal is to make readers happy, show them you are a wellspring of stories to whom they can go. If you can meet that need and do the things above, you are well on your way.

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Kayelle Allen is a best-selling American author. Her unstoppable heroes and heroines include contemporary every day folk, role-playing immortal gamers, futuristic covert agents, and warriors who purr.
Homeworld/Blog https://kayelleallen.com
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Who’s Your Target Audience? Do You Know? #MFRWauthor #WriteTip #Writers #Authors

It’s been a while since I posted. I’m sorry for disappearing and apologise for the incredibly long absence. Life got in the way, but I’m back now and ready to help you to level up!

I remember when I first decided to pursue a writing career; one of the first aspects I had to understand was who my audience was. Of course, I immediately thought: easy-peasy. My audience is the same as every other romance author out there. Women between the ages of 18 and 100. If she is able to read, she’s my audience. Rich or poor, it doesn’t matter, so long as she enjoys reading romance. Nor does it matter where she lives. Romance is world-renowned and everyone loves it, right?

I’m betting some of you have boiled your marketing aim down to that same wide margin. What would you think if I told you you’re looking at this thing all wrong? My light bulb moment came once I realised my target audience wasn’t who I thought it was. If you don’t know who your readers are, you can’t effectively market to them. How are you going to target everyone? Impossible. And here’s the rub—not everybody will love your amazing, beautifully written story. What? Yep! So you need to know your audience. Take the time to figure it out. It’s like trying to understand your main character’s internal conflict—you need to dig deep.

Your real audience.

As an example, my target audience looks a little like this. Yes, I have readers who are in their

Created by Crystal Swan

early twenties and readers who are well into their seventies. These are the ones I know of so I will say my readers are between the ages of 20 and 80. Notice I say readers and not women because there are men who also enjoy romance novels; I have a few of those, too! So that’s the age and gender of my readers.

S/he has Christian views. Most of them go to church and read the Bible, but are not religious. They love God and have a strong relationship with our Saviour. Abhors profanity, blasphemy, and gratuitous sex and violence. But while this is the case, my target audience are open-minded and enjoy the gift and pleasures of lovemaking with their husband/wife. Yes, lovemaking is in the Bible and not only Song of Solomon. Read the various books and see for yourself if you don’t believe me. Anyway, back to my target audience. They are gentle-minded and long for a world filled with love and not hate. S/he prefers the lighter side of life and loves to laugh. So fun, feel-good, saucy stories are perfect for them. 

My stories are not marketed as Inspirational or Christian romance, but my characters believe, pray and even go to church off stage. If you look at my author brand, you’ll see I market my books as sweet ‘n’ spicy romantic comedy. That’s because they’re like the sweet romance, but the bedroom doors are wide open. You won’t find foul language, but you will get super-spicy love scenes. And my audience will enjoy my brand of emotional conflict and humour. 

You can't please everyone.

In the same way that we don’t all enjoy the every book, not everyone is our audience. It’s our job as authors to pinpoint our readers and market our books to them. Do you know your audience? Tell me all about it in the comments section below.

Until next time, write with clarity and style!

Monique xx

Monique DeVere is a full-time author of Sweet 'n' Spicy Romantic Comedy and Contemporary Romance. She also writes Christian Supernatural Suspense movie scripts. She is married to her very own strong-silent-type hero and has four children. When Monique isn’t writing or spending quality time with her family, she likes to armchair travel to distant and exciting parts of the world and considers herself to have the best job on earth. 

You can visit her at moniquedevere.com where she invites you to join her exclusive Sweet ‘n’ Spicy Readers Club packed full of goodies for her members. Monique loves to hear from her readers, do contact her at monique@moniquedevere.com.

When Seasons aren't Seasonal #MFRWAuthor

HOT HOT

On Easter Sunday I had to leave the Agility practice area after ten minutes because it was so oppressively hot. Practice time shifted from 10 AM to 8:30 AM since summer was obviously here. The next weekend it was damp and chilly and no thank you I’ll stay home this Sunday. The weekend after that I watched snow pile up around my new plantings. After that Easter Sunday I washed my heavier sleeping sweats and put them in totes to store for the next few months. Back out they came since these are also my go to writing clothes.

Welcome to Spring in New Mexico.

Kinda Cold

Why am I blathering on about climate anomalies? Don’t we all from time to time have to deal with weather oddities? Of course we do. Since we generally know at least a few days in advance we can prepare by opening or closing windows, and by wardrobe awareness. This time of year I keep my furnace turned very low but not completely off, to maintain at least minimal comfort in the house. All these adjustments address immediate needs and can be handled pretty much in the moment. The same as we can adjust our writing to reflect a new plot idea, a new turn of phrase.
The early spring, after a milder winter, followed the pattern of no real pattern one becomes accustomed to in the Southwest high desert. One deals with it by being flexible, prepared with a wide range of clothing options.Yes there is a parallel to our writing world. We dress to the immediate need, not automatically to the calendar. In that same fashion, we write, or should be writing, the story we need to share. Not the story we think people might want to be reading in six months and certainly not the story people are reading now. That would be similar to pulling out your bikinis (yours, not mine, I gave up on those a long time ago) because by glory the calendar says May even if the sky says gotcha and do you want snow or hail or both? We can’t know for sure purple aliens in chain mail will still be popular by the time our book is done. And do we really want to write about chain mail purple aliens?
Write your book. Not anyone else’s.
BICHOK, y’all

Pretty Much Perfect

Mona Karel, list moderator

Mona Karel is the writing alter ego for Monica Stoner, who gave up life in Southern California to

retire with her husband to New Mexico. Not a great sacrifice except between the sunsets, the gardens, and the Salukis it's harder than ever to find time to write! Her Stormhaven series is set in New Mexico, telling about strong men and the women who understand them. A Question of Faith