Recent studies tell us most Americans are spending too much time with their computers, smartphones, and other devices. At the beginning, writers tended to follow the advice of agents and editors who felt that platform was all important, and platform had to include a website, blog, and a strong social media presence. That was the trap no one anticipated. Do the sites help authors and their publishers sell books? I’m guessing not too many. At least, not enough to warrant spending more than a few minutes a day updating, reading, and/or tweeting/retweeting. Image via Pixabay Facebook , more than Twitter , is also a hotbed of bandwagons, started by goodness knows who and jumped on by everyone who can’t resist being part of the latest groupthink, hivemind, lemmings-jumping-off-the-cliff fad. I don't believe that sells books either. The part of my online activities that keeps me in touch with family and friends is not all bad. Believing that being online more than a few minutes...

Yes, it’s possible to enjoy using Twitter instead of getting stressed, frustrated, and downright angry. How? I have four main suggestions for those who truly want to use Twitter to make connections around the world without tearing their hair out along the way.This post assumes a reader already has knowledge of how Twitter works and how frustrating it can be. However, if you’ve never tried out the site because of all the bad stuff you’ve heard, I can assure you there are ways to keep the monster under control and have fun. Connect with people who share your interests. If you're on Twitter because you want to see and engage in vicious political discussions, it will be easy to find followers who are willing to agree, fight, stalk, and threaten. But if you want to avoid that kind of community and instead search for those who are more interested in knitting, cats, books, mountain climbing, etc., begin by posting tweets, liking, and retweeting the things you see that fit...

Last month here at The Blood-Red Pencil I wrote about moral and ethical lines that we writers need to consider before we cross them just to make a buck. We had a great discussion about what we are comfortable writing, as well as our responsibility to consider what we're contributing to society with our work. One of our regular BRP contributors, Diana Hurwitz , had this to say on the topic: Stories have the power to shape the collective consciousness. You can write with brutal honesty about what has happened and what could happen without suggesting that it should happen. Your work has a slant - perhaps a subliminal one. As a writer, you should at least be aware of the message you send and make sure it is the one you intended. How we use our words is indeed important, and it is also important to consider how we act as professional writers. Addressing that need to always put a professional foot forward, was an interesting article on Writer Unboxed, written by Katharine Gru...

We haven't played this game in a while, so it's time to start it up again. I present a topic, ask some questions, and offer my answers. You pick one or more questions to also answer. If you only choose one, please expand. If more, please shorten. You're allowed to include one website URL or blog link of your own. Okay, here goes: Which social media sites do you visit? ( not including blogs or Yahoo groups) In the order of how often I visit them: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus, and Goodreads. Which do you find most relaxing? Hands down, that would be Pinterest. I can't resist all the pretty pictures. I wish I had more time to play there.  Which do you find most stressful? Facebook is definitely the most stressful. People are not bashful about expressing opinions there, which don't always coincide with mine. Trying to offer a differing opinion, even politely, gets me into trouble, so I don't try too often.  Lin...

Nowadays, it's all about shortcuts. Short attention spans. Being able to do things in a click. Yet we also want ourselves visible everywhere. So, how do we make it easy for people to find us, and help spread the word that we're out there? I discovered a site that expands on the typical "tweet" button we're used to seeing on blogs. It's called " Click to Tweet " and it allows you to customize a tweet, include links, and make it easy for your readers to share information. It took some trial and error on my part, so I thought I'd share what I figured out. It's the customization feature that attracted me. The typical tweet buttons that come with sharing packages tweet the title of the blog. But what if you want more? A long blog title uses up characters, and a short one might not convey enough to tempt readers to give you that magic click. What if you want to pull something else from your post? That's where Click to Tweet might help. ...

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Benny Hung, co-founder of my latest favorite creative writing tool - The IF List . Read more to find out how you can use it in your writing life. ~ Dani Greer/Chief Red Pencil So, Benny, tell me first what "The IF List" means. The IF List stands for The Imagine Film List. The “IF” also refers to a hypothetical “what if” movie proposal and dream cast. My co-founder Noel Spangler had brilliantly come up with the name after we spent months brainstorming different possibilities. http://www.iflist.com Why did you decide to create this site? And how long has it been around? Ever since co-founders Noel Spangler, Ian Spangler, and I first met over twenty years ago, we've been passionate about all kinds of stories. We’re huge movie fanatics, and have often discussed our original movie ideas and actor dream casts. So we've held the core concept of IF List close to heart for a long time. The idea for a website first...

I'm on Twitter quite often, but am still searching for the most effective way to use the site to promote my books. One thing I have learned is that using hashtags is a good method to draw people to what you'd like them to see. Hashtags are words or phrases with the # sign in front of them. When a person clicks a particular hashtag, out pops a bunch of tweets which include that hashtag. That comes in handy for people who want information in a hurry, without sifting through everything. Here's a smattering of the ones I use: #romcom - short for romantic comedy #romance #chicklit  #mystery #thriller #amazon #kindle #free #freebie #free4kindle #amwriting #prime Since all but one of my books are available on Kindle Unlimited, which seems to be the next big thing at Amazon, I'm also planning on using #kindleunlimited and see what happens. What about you? What are your favorite hashtags? Which seem most effective to you? ...

This post was first published here on November 27, 2013. Prior to the invention of the Internet, writers holed up in their attics, alone and palely scribbling, fantasizing about an elusive publishing contract. They spent sunny afternoons deep in the bowels of libraries flipping through the card catalog and paging through thick reference books. Scribes developed callouses on their fingers. They sported perpetual ink stains from writing draft after draft on paper they wadded and tossed in bins. They longed for someone, anyone, to talk to about their passion. They were isolated introverts with impossible dreams, often in desperate need of a critique group or at least someone to help with plot snags or elusive titles. Then some smarty pants invented the electric typewriter, which led to the personal computer, which led to the Internet. Writers were able to research from the comfort of their living rooms while still in their bathrobes. They could draft and revise a hundred ti...

If done right, social media can be an effective tool for selling books. A while back, when I began to write seriously, I set up a Twitter account and tweeted four times daily. Some swore that was too much, but it seemed to work for me. My tweets were often about a blog I'd written, an aspect of writing, or one of my books. When the Facebook revolution began, I followed the masses to the pretty and popular place. A page on Facebook looked almost like a website, but could easily be updated. I could post longer messages than on Twitter, plus more pictures. @MorganMandel I was really getting into the Facebook scene, when lo and behold, I was surprised to learn from fellow-author, Bob Sanchez , that Twitter, which I'd thought had become unpopular, had regained steam. Not only that, Bob, as well as many other authors, were successfully using Twitter to promote books. Shonell Bacon posted an article here, called " Using Twitter to Promote Your Book ". And, now, ...

Last week, I released my first novella, Saying No to the Big O [ Amazon | Smashwords ]. Instead of reading a book description, you can view the trailer for SN2BO below. As I began promoting Saying No to the Big O , I thought about how I would use Twitter in the promotions. I tweeted the obvious posts that brought people to my Website to read the novella's description, to watch the trailer, to read a sample, and to read commentaries I wrote on the novella, but I wanted to do something that was fun and intriguing and that would be a challenge for me. Back when I was promoting my mystery Into the Web , I pulled several lines from the story and tweeted them along with the link to purchase the novel. Tweeting lines from the story generated a lot of interest. Many people messaged me to talk about how much they enjoyed the tweets, many retweeted the lines, and others went directly to the purchase link to buy a copy of the novel. With the success of the tweets, I decided to do i...

In keeping with our theme of "fear" leading up to Halloween, I decided to write about my fear of Twitter . Well, maybe not exactly my fear. More of my "oh, my gosh, what am I supposed to do" reaction to the social site when I first joined. I was reminded of that at a writers' workshop I attended this past weekend in Pittsburg, Texas. Yes, Pennsylvania, there is another Pittsburgh and we do spell it differently. Pittsburg is the home of the Northeast Texas Writer's Organization (NETWO) and they do a terrific conference every spring, as well as these periodic day-long workshops. There are a lot of writers in the area, and many others make the 100-mile trek from the Dallas Metroplex to attend the workshops, so there can be up to 50 attendees. Which is pretty good for a rural area with towns of less than 4,000 people in a 50-mile radius. At this last workshop, of those nearly 50 folks, there were only three of us who used Twitter. One of the presenters, Rus...

If anything can teach you the fine art of tight writing—saying the most with the least number of words—Twitter’s 140 character limit for tweets can. Think in terms of a writing prompt, a little box to type in, a counter to keep you to the 140-character limit, and an audience as large as the number of followers you’ve accumulated. Here’s an example: Writing prompt: promote a new book release and take your tweeps (the Twitterers who follow you) to an online bookseller’s buy page. Using the Little Pickle Press book, What Does It Mean to be Present? by Rana diOrio as an example, here’s the amazon.com url for the page to purchase the book: http://www.amazon.com/What-Does-Mean-Be-Present/dp/0984080686/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281041089&sr=1-3 The link has 110 characters. The title contains 33 characters. The author name is 11 characters long. We already have 154 characters to deal with even without additional text, spaces between words, punctuation, retweets,...

The definition of social media is evolving. The Wikipedia version is constantly under discussion and is dynamic, changing as fast as the various components of social media change. To get to the bare bones, however, we can say that social medial consists of internet-based applications accessible to a variety of content producers and a wide audience of consumers/readers. You, as producer or consumer, can participate in social media and social networking in a variety of ways (blogger, Wikipedia contributor, photo sharing exhibitor, podcast producer, internet forum contributor/reader, corporate marketer, and so on). Finding resource materials on the use of social media seems easy when you take a look at booklists. I’ve consulted: Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans (Wiley Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2008) Blogging for Dummies by Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley (Wiley Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2008) The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Mil...