How to build a Pinterest research board for your book
Whether your book is fiction or nonfiction, you can use Pinterest to create a better book by creating research boards.
What is a “research board”?
Basically, it is a board or series of boards that have images that link to anything related to your book. Take a look at these amazing research boards created by Alexa Chipman who writes young adult fantasy and science fiction.
You can create a board that takes place in the area your book focuses on: a state, city, park, or building.
Create separate boards for different categories of your book, such as: book cover ideas, characters, food, clothes, time period, places, spaces, weather, history, events, and anything else that will get you into the creative mood for writing your book.
For instance, let’s say you’re writing a mystery story that takes place in Corvallis, Oregon. Create a new board called “Corvallis, Oregon.” Now you can pin images, articles, videos, anything, and everything that happens in Corvallis.
3 benefits of your research board
1. Use your board to write description passages. If you have pinned images of a restaurant, you can look at those to get into a visual sense of the place. Ask yourself questions as you look at the pictures. What is the weather like? What kind of clothes are people wearing? What’s the atmosphere like?
2. Measure interest in your board. Do you have any traffic to your board? Use a site like Pinpuff to measure the popularity of your board. Knowing if anyone is interested in your book location can be valuable information to marketing your book in that area.
3. Build your book platform while collecting information for your book. What attracts people to go to Corvallis? By targeting those areas, you can fill your board with pins that match interest. People who visit one of your boards will likely visit your other boards. Make sure that they know you are writing a book and that it will highlight areas of their greatest interests.
At Wheatmark, our work with authors does not stop once their books are published. In fact that is just the beginning. That is why we place an emphasis on educating our authors about book marketing.
A quick tip to mentally reprogram your brain to write better in ten minutes
Chapter One:
It was a dark and stormy night…
Stuck in a rut? Can’t figure out how to get started with a bang for your opening chapter?
Try this copy-and-paste method:
Find an opening paragraph of a book that you like.
Copy it.
Then copy it again. One more time.
Now, close your work and write your own opening paragraph. It will have the flow and essence of what you just copied but be in your own words.
This is not plagiarism. The only copying you did was as a writing mental exercise.
For instance, let’s say you copied the opening sentence “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Naturally, you don’t want to use the same words, so you change.
In fact, you change quite a bit:
“It was another dark night with the wind blowing as if it determined to beat the hell out of someone.”
It’s quite different now, actually. It’s definitely a take of the “dark and stormy night” bit, but who would know?
Copying writing as an exercise is a time-tested exercise for learning to write better. Some professional writing courses insist that their students copy pages and pages of text to get them into the flow of mastering a new type of writing.
If you find yourself stuck in writing. Pick up a book by your favorite author and give it a try. You will be surprised how powerfully this works!
At Wheatmark, we believe in helping authors with every step of the writing and publishing process. Whether your book is is in the beginning or final stages to tell us about your project, tell us about it.
How to use hashtags to find your first 100 twitter followers
Today we’ll look at how you as an author can use hashtags in your tweets in order to attract followers for your Twitter author profile.
Here’s the basic information to compose your first #hashtag tweet.
Use the hashtag # symbol before a word you want to target. This will enter your tweet into a conversation based on that thread. Don’t put a space between the symbol and your keyword or between words in a phrase:
#mickeymouse #donaldduck #baby #author #bookmarketing
For this exercise, we’re going to use a fictional author named Arthur J. Author, who wants to build a Twitter platform to sell his new book, Frugal Retirement.
He has just started his Twitter account and has zero followers. He knows his target audience is over 60 and worried about money.
He has come up with a word list that he thinks will connect with his target audience: retirement, senior, senior living, frugal, budget, retirement savings, retirement budget, retirement blogs, retirement living, and how to save money.
Since he has no followers, anything he tweets has little hope of making a connection unless he uses a hashtag to break into an existing conversation. Using a hashtag will literally drop him into a traffic flow, sort of like getting on a highway full of travelers already. It will take him from walking barefoot down a cow path to speeding on the freeway in a BMW.
He starts his first tweet:
Arthur Wannabe’s new book, #Frugal #Retirement provides hundreds of ways to save money. Free report at
[shortened link].He hits send and his first tweet is out the door. He writes a couple more “selling” tweets but does not send them out all at once. Spacing them will be more effective. A good ratio is to offer one “selling” tweet for every ten tweets.
His next tweet that he will send an hour or two later might explain a budget tip, share a quote, funny story on retirement, a video to watch, an article to read by another author or anything newsworthy, fun, or inspirational that will be of interest to his target audience.
Watch this funny video! Aging woman fights back. [shortened link] I can’t stop laughing. #seniors #frugalliving
In this tweet, he has not mentioned his book, but is targeting the same audience with a relevant subject and uses a hashtag to stay in the conversation.
Several of the people who like the video will want to follow Arthur to see what he will offer next.
Twitter is all about building engagement. When using hashtags, every tweet should add something to the existing conversation. While not everyone who reads your tweet will automatically follow you, the more interesting and relevant your tweets are, the greater your chances will be.
After ten or so tweets, Arthur will send another selling tweet. This one is close to his first message with just a few tweaks to make it different:
Frugal #Retirement by Arthur J. Author provides hundreds of ways to save money. Free report at [shortened link] #seniorliving
There are a few behaviors to avoid in using hashtags. Using them could cause your account to be filtered from search or suspended. Twitter guidelines recommend using only two hashtags per tweet. Do not add a hashtag to an unrelated tweet.
Also, don’t use the same hashtag repeatedly without adding value to the conversation or tweet about a trending topic with a misleading link to something unrelated.
Writing tweets with hashtags is an important part of building a Twitter following. At Wheatmark, we believe in helping authors with every step of the writing and publishing process. Whether your book is is in the beginning or final stages to tell us about your project, tell us about it.
How authors can effectively use Twitter hashtags for writing research
Twitter is about making connections in short, snappy bits of conversation. You have 140 characters for each message, which includes text, hashtags (#), private connections (@), links, and photos.
In this post we’ll discuss how to use hashtags in a search to find new contacts, conversations, and information.
Twitter Search
Type in a word or phrase in the Twitter search bar and you will get a list of tweets matching what you have entered, e.g., candy, finances, weather.
Use that same word or phrase but add a hashtag (#) before the keyword or phrase and you get a greatly expanded list. This is because the actual tweet may not be using the keyword specifically in the text, but the author of the tweet thought it was relevant enough to that topic and inserted that keyword with a hashtag.
For instance if you type #scifi, #money, or #cat into a Twitter search bar you will be given a long list of tweets around those words. Not all the messages shown will have #scifi in the actual message per se, but will have that keyword added usually at the end of the tweet.
You can easily scroll through the list of tweets that are displayed to connect with the latest information on your subject. You can view the real-time conversation that is going on, compare ideas, and join in.
The conversations shown may not be all positive!
Searching for #obama will bring up tweets from all sides of the political spectrum. Accolades, sneers, news items, name calling, etc. It’s a great way to see both sides of a conversation on any given topic.
Expand your target audience
Another benefit for you as an author is to use hashtags in defining your target audience. Is there a real conversation centered around your topic? If not, you might want to think about your topic before investing in its publication and marketing.
In most cases if your keyword is specific and on target, you will find many new people to connect with. You can create a master keyword list and use it daily or a couple of times a week. In a short amount of time, you will soon recognize the authority key figures to follow and the trending conversations to follow.
Use hashtags for research
Twitter can be a goldmine for behind-the-scenes information, facts, and surprising details for your book. Use hashtags to expand topics you’re writing about, places you want to explore, and people you need to know more about.
Examples:
#digitalcamera
#401K
#alzheimers
#methodone
Twitter can be used to research audience information, background, new books, special deals, coupons, tutorials, free offers, and much more.
Next we’ll discuss using hashtags to build your first 100 Twitter followers.
At Wheatmark, we believe in helping authors with every step of the writing and publishing process. Whether your book is is in the beginning or final stages to tell us about your project, tell us about it.
Break through writer’s block with Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art
Resistance.
No one quite cuts to the bone about writer’s block better than Steven Pressfield in his book, The War of Art. Published over ten years ago it still remains a popular, no-nonsense book for getting writers to write.
It’s not about whether you are good enough writer to call yourself a writer. If you write you are a writer. The more you write the better you will write.
It’s not about how good a writer you should be or want to be. It’s simply: Are you writing now?
While dreams of sitting at home and writing a bestselling book is a common American dream, the reality of it is much more painful.
It’s not about “Are we having fun yet?” so much as are we “Still sticking to it.”
Jodi Picoult, the bestselling author of 16 books (and counting) puts in a solid eight-hour day from 7:30 in the morning until 2:30 pm locked away in her office writing and researching. That takes discipline. But before you whine that you don’t have that kind of time let me explain that for her first books she didn’t either. She found the time in five-, ten-, and fifteen-minute blocks she carved out while in traffic, waiting for a kid in front of the school, or stolen minutes while she ate lunch.
The subtitle for the War of Art is Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.
Turns out the real war front is not finding the perfect publisher, marketing secret or publicity stunt, as it is sitting down and writing each and every day. No excuses. No complaints. No pity parties.
Rationalization is one of the biggest tools in the Enemy camp for Writer’s Block. Every author has their own personal excuses but Pressfield zeroes in on them all and debunks them without mercy.
So how does a book that simply debunks author excuses for writing become such a popular book for wannabe authors?
Because it’s true.
And . . . because it’s not all bad.
Pressfield supplies us with a writer’s mirror that reveals not only the blemishes, warts, and wrinkles of our writing fantasy, but gives us the shield and armor to break through and experience victory. To climb the mountain of our deepest desire and experience the exultation of seeing a dream become reality.
At Wheatmark, we believe in helping authors with every step of the writing and publishing process. Whether your book is in the beginning or final stages, we’d love to hear from you.
How to get book reviews for a self-published book
How important are book reviews for new authors?
The best way to sell books is by word of mouth. The primary way to get that word of mouth rolling is to get your book reviewed.
The more important the book reviewer is the greater exposure your book will have. A book reviewed in the New York Times is going to outperform a book review on a small book blog with 200 readers.
Does this mean you should ignore the small ponds and fish for reviews only in the big ones? Not necessarily. If you are a new author, getting your foot in the door of book reviewers of any size might be well worth your while.
Ten reviews from small-sized bloggers will give you exposure to new readers that would otherwise never find your book. Keep adding to the pot and you will slowly build up your readership. Every book review that is posted online will be one more inbound link to your book and website. That’s good for raising your book and website’s search engine ranking.
To increase your chances of getting your book reviewed, it’s important that you match reviewers with books that fit your genre. There are thousands of blog sites that will review books. Each reviewer has their own preference for what type of book they will review. Fiction has numerous categories such as Thrillers, Horror, Historical Fiction, Romances, Westerns, Mysteries, Science Fiction, and Fantasy, for starters. Business books can be separated by type of business, start-ups, business methods, etc.
An easy way to find reviewers is to use a search engine and type in
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