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Does Social Media Sell Books?

The $64,000 question when it comes to social media is: Does it sell books? Many authors have written blog posts attempting to answer this question, and the consensus seems to be that yes, done right, social media does sell books, but in modest quantities. In other words, a rock star social media platform does not […]

BlogHer ’13

Who’s going to BlogHer ’13? It will be in Chicago, Thursday through Saturday, July 25-27, of—you guessed it—2013. Early Bird registration ends Nov. 7. Until then you can register for half the regular price, just $198! No, I’m not advertising for BlogHer. I have no connection to BlogHer, but I really want to go to […]

Should You Blog Your Book?

First, I want to let my Bay Area peeps know that I have a new session of Blogging for Beginners starting next Wednesday, September 19, at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, and there are a couple of spots left. If you’re interested in signing up, contact me as soon as possible. And now … Should […]

Hashtags: How to Use Them Without Abusing Them

After @KristenLambTX decided to reclaim her hashtag, #myWANA, by announcing that she would block anyone who prescheduled tweets using it, I had to ask myself: Have I been abusing hashtags, too?

For those of you new to Twitter, a hashtag is a searchable keyword that you attach to a tweet using the pound sign. […]

Personal Essay vs Memoir

Constance Hale, author of the must-have guide to language Sin and Syntax and the forthcoming Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, sent this description of the difference between personal essay and memoir to everyone at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. I found it so insightful, I asked her if I could share with you:

“Personal essay is […]

Should You Preschedule Tweets?

I’ve begun a new column for SheWrites called Networking for Introverts, which will run every other Thursday, and I’ll repost those here. Here is the latest:

With the growing popularity of Buffer and the introduction of HootSuite’s AutoSchedule feature, there has been a lot of brouhaha on the Internet lately about whether you should preschedule […]

How to Write Kick-Ass Character Descriptions

I’m guilty of it, too: The description of a new character who has just entered your story as having “big brown eyes and frizzy black hair” or “ginger hair that cascaded down her shoulders and eyes the color of jade.” No matter how creative you get, describing a person according to his or her hair […]

Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women

This week I had the privilege of interviewing Ayesha Mattu, co-editor of the anthology Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women and Zahra Noorbakhsh, one of the contributors to the anthology, about Love, InshAllah and the success it has seen since it debuted in February of this year. After being featured in […]

Bisy Backson: The Unsung Value of Idle Time

Happy Independence Day! And congratulations to the winner of the How to be a Writer in the E-Age give-away, Sara Renae. Thank you to Anne Allen for a wonderful guest post last week and to everyone who took the time to comment. I am eager to read Anne’s book, and I encourage you to pick […]

Where to Get Photos For Your Blog

When I teach blogging and social media classes at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, students frequently ask me, “Where can I get art for my blog? Can I just google images and use those?” The answer is yes, you can, but no, you may not. Because any image you find on the Internet may be […]