You've sent out ARCs or did a giveaway, and inevitably, there are readers who can't leave reviews. Amazon does a good job laying out the guidelines, but few people take the time to read them. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201929730 and various subsets.) Here are the top reasons your readers can't leave reviews: They are trying to leave a… Continue reading Why Can’t Readers Leave Reviews
Author: Kari Holloway
How Much Social Media Do You Need?
From websites to social media, writers are pulled in dozens of directions. It can be confusing and time consuming. So what do I need? The answer might surprise you. If you're confident in having a social media presence the first thing you should do is make sure your username is available on all the big… Continue reading How Much Social Media Do You Need?
Critique Groups Away From FB
Social media has a lot of perks, but it also comes with a downside. It's a rabbit hole of information and various interests, and it's easy to get caught up in various things. To help reduce that itch to explore when you're supposed to be working on your WIPs, here are some recommended critique groups.… Continue reading Critique Groups Away From FB
5-Alarm Heat for Romance
Romance works have long been on the forefront of changes in the writing world. The readership is one of the largest by genre, and that hunger functions in books as porn has for the evolution in film. Romance books are a spectrum of heat from sweet and clean to 5-alarm and spicy. There isn't a… Continue reading 5-Alarm Heat for Romance
Increase Counts Like A Champ
Why do writers feel like it's a competition when it comes to how many words they write in a day, a session, an hour, and every other measurable standard? Perhaps it's because we feel like we're standing still while others are accomplishing their dreams. Maybe that's not your reason. I see it every day in… Continue reading Increase Counts Like A Champ
Self Edit Hacks 101
In a previous post, I took self editing and broke it down to revisions and edits along with what things should be looked at in each part. If you missed that post, you can find it here—http://bit.ly/WwDSelfEditing. In this post, I will cover some of my go-to hacks to make the revision and editing process… Continue reading Self Edit Hacks 101
What the Plot
What the Plot?! created by Writing Prompts This was a limited-run crafted game from the social media icon Writing Prompts (FB, Instagram, Tumblr). For those who aren't familiar with writing prompts, they are ideas for stories. It really isn't much more complicated than that. https://www.instagram.com/p/B_H142pH06M/ They're not always so creepy. Some are downright adorable, like… Continue reading What the Plot
How Important Are First Lines?
As writers, we hear frequently how "important" that first sentence is. Examples of what are passed around as "first line musts" Must be unique and memorable.Must be vivid.Must be truthful, funny, scary, etc any emotion.Tells the reader the genreIntroduces all the main characters.Make the reader care. It's the magical key that keeps a reader reading… Continue reading How Important Are First Lines?
Typesetting aka Formatting aka Look Pretty
What is typesetting? Typesetting is also known as formatting. People and some programs take your completed story and handle the layout. This could be for submissions to magazines, agents, publishers, or as many do, for self-publications in e-Book and print. What formatters don’t do. They aren’t editors, though I know some editors who also do… Continue reading Typesetting aka Formatting aka Look Pretty
Newsletters of the Future
Not so long ago, followers signed up for things like "clubs" to learn information about their favorite anything. Some of you might be too young to remember the Jonathan Taylor Thomas clubs of the 90s. I didn't get into such things, but they were a way of staying connected. The rise of the internet gave… Continue reading Newsletters of the Future