#reader magnet

10 insider tips to make your book signing successful

Planning your first book signing can seem overwhelming. At least that’s how I felt just before my first book signing for ‘Light from a Dark Night‘. Prior to my big day I read lots of articles on how to price my book and talk to people as they passed by. However, after the event I realized there was one thing no one ever told me… Finish reading this article at…

Some thoughts on how to Row, Row, Row, Your Social Media Campaign Boat for a successful book launch & a SciFi book recommendation for spring time reading!

Contrary to popular belief, self-publishing is not as easy as 1-2-3! There’s a lot of social media based marketing to be done to build up a following to your book. Not a simple task, especially for nerds who would rather just write than communicate. But, this marketing thing is a critical success factor as they say in the corporate world. A necessary evil for the introverted, a barrier that must…

A short story followup to Shadow of the Swan. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JJV5H61 Free for newsletter subscribers

Ever find yourself doing a ton of stuff completely unrelated to the thing you need to do? Maybe there’s a big assignment or project you need to work on. Procrastinating on said project makes you feel bad, so instead, you kick into overdrive on something else. You clean the house, fold the laundry, reorganize your desk! You do everything except the thing you need to be doing.

That’s me today. I’m supposed to be writing chapter two of book two. Last week I wrote a bunch, but halfway through realized I was using the wrong point of view, so now I have to go back and rewrite as a different character. So what am I doing instead?

Catching up on email. Brainstorming about writing a reader magnet (freebie that’s used as incentive to get people on your mailing list). I came up with a great one–backstory that can be made into a short story. It’s briefly referenced in Dark Apprentice, as “The Bread Incident.” Harper found Nikolai doing something embarrassing with bread, though what is never specified (it’s probably not what you think). I just need to write it. I sat down at my desk, all pumped to write…

…and immediately went to Canva to make covers.

Granted, this didn’t take long and it was fun, but it still isn’t writing. But covers are done now, time to write, right? Well, no, because it got me thinking about my own procrastination, which led to this blog post idea, which lead to me making another Canva graphic, which led to me talking to you here. It’s not all bad, I did need to queue a blog post for next week, so this will be it.

Hooray for quiddling. As they say on Writing Excuses, I’m out of excuses, now I need to go write.

Let me know which bread cover you like best.

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