MFRW September Newsletter

The Business of Writing: When should I edit?

Writing is a lonely business and there are times when we are our own worst enemy. How many times have you been working on your rough draft and found yourself searching for the right word? I have one question, Why?

When writing that rough draft you shouldn’t be worrying about the perfect word. Your goal is to get words on the paper. That’s it. When you go back to polish/edit your WIP is when you look at the words to see if they convey what you want them to.

Writing Tip: 
Don’t sweat the small stuff – don’t edit while doing that rough draft. Who cares if you use the same word twenty times on a page. That is something you can fix later. Just write. Let the passion take you over.

Bio: Writing for Barbara Donlon Bradley  started innocently enough, like most she kept diaries, journals, and wrote an occasional letter but she also had a vivid imagination and wrote scenes and short stories adding characters to her favorite shows and comic books. As time went on she found the passion for writing to be a strong drive for her. Humor is also very strong in her life. No matter how hard she tries to write something deep and dark, it will never happen. That humor bleeds into her writing. Since she can’t beat it she has learned to use it to her advantage. Now she lives in Tidewater Virginia with two cats, one mother in law – whose 87 now, her husband and son.

Author Sites:

Website: http://www.barbaradonlonbradley.com/

Publisher: http://www.phaze.com/author.php?author=21

Blog: http://barbaradonlonbradley.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Barbara-Donlon-Bradley/118673448173249

Twitter: https://twitter.com/barbbradley

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/barbaradbradley/

#MFRWauthor Monthly Quote - August 2014

"Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway."
-Robert Henri





Emerald
Emerald is an erotic fiction author whose short stories have been featured in anthologies published by Cleis Press, Mischief, and Logical-Lust. She serves as an assistant newsletter editor and Facebook group moderator for Marketing for Romance Writers (MFRW), and she selects and posts the monthly inspirational quote on the MFRW Marketing Blog. Find out more about her at her website, The Green Light District.

What Authors Should Blog About. #MFRWorg talks Blog Content.

So you have a blog but don't know how to fill your days. That seems to be the most difficult obstacle for most authors as they begin their blog. First, know that you do not have to blog every day. On average, writers blog three times a week. Second, remember to participate in memes - I mentioned these in one of my last Blogging Posts. And most importantly, keep your blog true to you and your brand. No two blogs should be the same.

1. Share updates on your books.
2. Serialize your writing by putting out a few chapters of a "free read" monthly.
3. Share interesting information on your research.
4. Provide character summaries.
5. Host your characters for guest posts.
6. Share inspiring or funny observations.
7. Create a personal column to give readers insight into you as a person. For example, I write "Queen of my Kingdom" monthly about my family.
8. Announce personal appearance, book signings and conferences.
9. Share books you've enjoyed reading... or movies, if you're a movie buff.
10. Host other authors in your genre. Make these more than promos. Perhaps a theme authors can participate in. For example, I do BOOKSauthorsREAD and invite authors to be my guests.
11. Partner with other authors for a group blog if you don't want to manage your own.
12. Participate in memes.

This is just a short list. Help us make it longer... what do you blog about that might inspire other authors?

Keep Writing!

Paloma

Paloma Beck is a Romance Author living a life of contradiction... she's a happily married carpooling mom writing sexy romance. It's almost naughty! Paloma writes full-time and has three series in the works with others on the fringes. Her books span both the contemporary and paranormal romance genres.

Paloma serves as MFRW's Blog Director.

#MFRWorg Newbie's World: #SEO for Authors @AuthorErinMoore

SEO for Authors

What it is, and Why it matters

As Newbies, navigating the internet can be one of the hardest things we have to tackle. And one thing that we can really use to our advantage – without doing any (well, much) work at all – is Search Engine Optimization. Put simply – we want people to come to us through Google.

Of course, there are the obvious searches – someone searching for us under our name or pen name. And we definitely need to make sure that the right “me” is being found. (See my other article on blogging and  Google + Authorship.)

But less obvious is how we come up in the organic results. We want our names, and more importantly, our books, to come up first (or second, or third – as long as it’s on that first page of results) when someone searches for, say “shaman romances”.

So how do we best set up our website for search engines?

First, we need it to be active. That means changing something every so often, even if it’s just the “updates” or “news” page.

Blogs count.  And, as we all know, we need to be producing great content for those blogs. But did you know that you should consistently be linking to other sites within your blogs? Or that you should be linking back to other blogs you have written? And, of course, it’s even better if a higher-rated site can site your blog. All of these things earn us higher rankings in the might search engine. For more information, try this great article on blogging for authors.

And, if you are writing blogs, make sure to name them something catchy. There are a bunch of tools that you can use to research this. Unfortunately, Google no longer lets you use its tool without an Adsense sign-in, but here are some other great tools for finding keywords.  

Privacy Policy: Here’s one that most of us don’t know about. You will have to drop in a little bit of code onto your website. The way I did mine was to just add in a small link to a hidden page on my home page.

There are a bunch of different (and free) sites out there that will provide you with one. The one I used was: http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/free-privacy-policy-generator.php. It’s probably a bit more in-depth than most of us need it to be, especially as we are probably not actively selling anything on our website (processing credit cards, for instance).  Or, alternatively, an easy one:

This blog does not share personal information with third parties nor do we store any information about your visit to this blog other than to analyze and optimize your content and reading experience through the use of cookies.

You can turn off the use of cookies at anytime by changing your specific browser settings.

We are not responsible for republished content from this blog on other blogs or websites without our permission.

This privacy policy is subject to change without notice and was last updated on Month, Day, Year. If you have any questions feel free to contact me directly here: xxxx@xxxx.com.

[Source: http://john.do/privacy-policy/]

Disclaimers:  These are yet another layer of trust for Google. It can be something simple like: The views and opinions on this website are solely those of the author. Any advertising on this site should not be considered an endorsement.

                [Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, so don’t trust anything I write, either.]

Why does any of this matter? Because when our website comes up first, and people land on our page, then they have a higher likelihood of buying something – i.e., our books! It’s just another way to find readers, and if we haven’t done these things already, then it should only take about 20 minutes to implement them.

Let me know if you have any SEO best practices!

Posted by Erin

Erin writes paranormal romances as Erin Moore and contributes to the MFRW Marketing Blog with her monthly column, A Newbie's World. Her latest book is a sexy minotaur shifter story set in Crete.

She manages two monsters and one unruly husband in Atlanta in between writing and main-lining chocolate and tea. Look her up on www.AuthorErinMoore.com or, of course, on Twitter: @AuthorErinMoore.