While I cannot speak for other bloggers on this topic, I suspect that similar advantages may be gained by using the following tips and suggestions when invited to appear as a guest on any blog:

1.

Always read any conditions and/or requirements pertaining to the host blog, follow them and check everything before you send your submission. Especially any hyperlinks you provide.

This will minimise any research and correspondence time between you and your host.

Some blogs (like mine) schedule their posts in advance (up to two months in advance in my case), so requests to change your article, even only slightly, can be problematic.

2.

Never forget that a guest post is your opportunity to touch base with potential readers, other authors and even possible future friends (WordPress visitors are especially friendly and I have found them to be always willing to help other authors and bloggers…

Always wanted to write a romance novel? Well here is your chance. With this amazing contest from Harlequin you now have the opportunity, along with the ultimate author’s publishing prize up for grabs. Check out the information below and then go to the so you think you can write website to join up.

You can see the itinerary for the Harlequin boot-camp, online conference, events here.

Rules and regulations for the contest can be found here.

Ready to take up the gauntlet? Then click on the image below to join up now. Good luck!

I am very pleased to introduce Katja Blum, the person who did such a lovely, professional job translating Maids of Misfortune into the German edition: Dienstmädchen im Unglück.

She graciously answered some of my questions in my quest to get to know her, and I think you will be as charmed as I was with her answers.

1. Please tell the readers about yourself and how you got into translating.

I began working as a translator (English into German) while I was studying at Hamburg University in Germany – sheesh, that was almost twenty years ago. My major wasn’t translation, by the way, but American Literature and Women’s Studies. For my first job, I translated Harlequin romances into German. I’m fluent in English, I’m a writer – how hard can it be? The answer: Very. I learned many important things from working with those romances and my extremely strict…

Today we’re talking about dialogue tags! I already rambled about them in a previous post, but I’m going to ramble some more about them now, so prepare yourself.

What is a dialogue tag?

It’s the short phrase you stick after a line of dialogue — i.e., “he said”, “she said”, etc.

Simple dialogue tag

Observe the following sentence:

“I love your socks,” he said.

That’s a simple dialogue tag — sentence of dialogue, followed by a dialogue tag. Here are some more:

“Your face is on fire!” she said.

“Are you sure?” he said.

Note:

• You have to use a punctuation mark at the end of the sentence of dialogue that’s not a period — i.e., comma (most common), question mark (for questions), exclamation mark (for excitement!) — Using a period is effectively ending the sentence, so if you put a period after “I love your socks”, you’re ending…

As someone who makes online contact with authors on a daily basis, there are a few things that actually IRK me (not a pretty sight), so please excuse me while I arrange this soapbox more comfortably and elaborate further.

These irk-making issues are not unique to me and have been expressed by many people – including many non-irk making authors – so unless you want to LOSE potential readers, fans and friends, you need to STOP doing the following IMMEDIATELY on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Goodreads, Shefari, Librarything, et al:

Making your first contact with the immortal words:

Get my books at ***************

LIKE my FB Page at ***************

Follow my Website / blog at ***************

And similar well meant (?), but self-centred sayings!!!!!

Think about it for a few moments – WHY did this person start Following / Liking / Send you a Friend / Connection Request?

Is it…

Excerpt from my book How To Promote and Market Your Book by Madi Preda

30 Book Marketing Tips:
I have included a variety of tips and I am sure that you will find something on the to do list that you can do to build your brand and sell your book.

1. Create a testimonial page on your website.
2. Offer advanced reading copies ARC.
3. Ask fans to post their reviews on your Facebook page.
4. Ask fans to post their reviews on Amazon.
5. Ask fans to post their reviews on Goodreads.
6. Offer bloggers advanced reading copies.
7. Set up a virtual book tour.
8. Create your street team.
9. Create seasonal videos: Mother’s day book, Summer Reads, Have Fun in the Sun, Autumn fall, Santa’s Book Recommendation, Spring-new reads, etc.
10. Register as an author on Amazon, Goodreads, AuthorsDen, Google Authorship.
11. Create a book…

In this post, I discussed the findings of a scientifically incontrovertible study (of myself) on the factors which influenced me when buying a self-published book.

The findings surprised me (which surprised me, because I was surveying myself). I found that I knew what made me buy a self-published book when it was in front of me, but not what put that book in front of me, unless I was browsing by genre (e.g. today I feel like reading a romance set in Ulaanbaatar: therefore I will now search specifically for such a story).

It was still hard to know what put those books in front of my eyes in order to buy them; to quote one of the commenters on that post – this is the thorny issue of “discoverability”. How will we find these books in the first place?

So I did the unthinkable, and asked some other people…