Here’s a simple story of how social media works in practice and how I found a new supplier on Facebook quite by accident. Continue reading
Novel, Short Story and Poetry Writing Competitions Update – April 2012
I’ve just added THREE new competitions to the Writing Competition Listings Page, they are:
- York Festival of Writing
- Christmas Ghost Story Annual
- May Poetry Competion Continue reading
The pen is indeed mightier than the sword – let’s all celebrate national stationery day
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s International Day of the Book and World Book Night comes National Stationery Day. April 24th is a day of celebration of the written word and of all things stationery. It has been launched to get more people putting pen to paper, and writing more often by hand. There’s more to life than email and texting! Let’s face it, we all love to receive ‘proper post’, something with our name and address hand written on it sent to us personally and containing all sorts of things from a card to a letter from an old friend or a loved member of the family. Continue reading
Happy World Book Night, Happy International Day of the Book and Happy St George’s Day
Legend has it that St George Patron St of England and Catalonia slew a dragon and a beautiful rose bush sprang from the dragon’s blood. Whereupon St George promptly plucked the most beautiful rose and gave it to the princess he was defending. A Rose Festival has been celebrated in Barcelona on April 23rd ever since and in 1923 it merged with the International Day of the Book which celebrated the deaths of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes.
World Book Night #worldbooknight is a celebration of books in the US, Ireland, Germany and the US that occurs on the same day as the Unesco International Day of the Book and is committed to improving literacy amongst the hardest to reach populations in the UK. Events take place all over the UK and I shall be off to one at The WatchHouse Cafe in West Bay this afternoon. You can also find out more about World Book Night in the UK here: http://www.worldbooknight.org and in the US here: http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/ Continue reading
Like this:
The Top Ten Lists for Writers and Authors to Follow on Twitter
If you’re a writer you will almost certainly have a blog and a Twitter account because let’s face it, Twitter and blogging were built with writers and authors in mind. Sometimes though it may seem as if you are writing into the wind, with your words drifting off into the distance without catching on anything or anyone at all. However, there is always something you can do about things like this and I thought I might start with a run down of the top ten writers lists to follow on Twitter.
You may well be asking why writers lists and not writers themselves? Continue reading
The Thursday Throng – Meeting Emma Piers author of the Therapeutic Bedtime Stories series for Children
‘Throng’ is n. - A multitude of persons or of living beings pressing or pressed into a close body or assemblage; a crowd.
Welcome to a new section of this blog which I’m calling The Thursday Throng in honour of the throng that waits eagerly outside the book store when a new author is doing a book signing event or appearance.
This will take the form of a ‘Meet the Author‘ online event with some information about our author’s latest book and an interview. If you would like to take part in the Thursday Throng then why not email me to find out more. Continue reading
April is National Poetry Month in the US – do you have a poem inside you?
April was claimed as National Poetry Month in the United States back in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets. They have celebrated every year since. According to their website thousands of businesses and non-profit organisations also get involved and participate by holding things like readings, running poetry festivals, creating stunning book displays, holding workshops, and a myriad of other events. Continue reading
The birth of an eBook – one booklets journey from workshop handout to Kindle heaven
I’ve been passionate about many things over the years and they wax and wane according to my mood, my situation, the weather and social climate; but one thing has remained fairly constant and that is my belief in empowering people. If you were to check out my LinkedIn profile, you would see right at the top of my summary the following quote, “give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.
This mantra of mine has resulted in me running workshops, doing presentations, managing seminars and generally having coffee with people who want to pick my brain. In the doing of most of these activities I tend to create resources that I then give away to attendees or people I’m talking too.
This then is my starting point. Continue reading
Visiting the London Book Fair – a must for all authors at least once in their lifetime
If you are an author and you have never visited the London Book Fair then you have, my friend, never lived at least that is my humble opinion on the matter. The huge, bustling event is proof, if ever any were needed that the thirst for opportunities to learn through some form of ‘book’ whether printed, spoken or e is huge and the market is getting bigger – you only have to look at the size of the event each year to realise that despite the doom and gloom of the nay-sayers that this is only going to grow even bigger too. Continue reading
On being an Amazon Best Seller – the reality behind the hype
Update: 15/04/12 Following a conversation with a friend, I updated this post because he had read it quite negatively and actually the story isn’t negative. When I became brave enough to actually see how many books there were in each category I was being listed as a best-seller. At the end of each listing you can find the numbers of books in each category that I’m listed as a Best Seller in and some of them are quite impressive; I mean #53 out of almost 10,000 is pretty good by anybody’s standard. So I think I’ll give myself a pat on the back. Continue reading
