Eight Random Things about Lillie

Jason Clark at Inner 88 tagged me for the Eight Random Things meme.

The rules:

In the 8 facts about [name], you share 8 things that your readers don’t know about you. Then at the end you tag 8 other bloggers to keep the fun going.

Each blogger must post these rules first.
Each blogger starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
Bloggers that are tagged need to write on their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I told Jason I was going to cheat a little. Since I responded to a tag for a similar meme recently, you have to read the first seven of my eight random things at Seven Random Things.

After you read them, come back here to read #8:

• I have my days and nights mixed up. I usually start work in the late evening and work through the morning, then sleep the rest of the day.

Since I only tagged five people before, I’m tagging three more:

• Michi Beck at Content Done Better

• Jeanne Dininni at Writer’s Notes

• Laura Spencer at Writing Thoughts

So now you know eight random things about me – about eight more than you ever wanted to know. And I’ve tagged a total of eight bloggers I’d like to know more about.

[tags]Eight Random Things, meme[/tags]

The Blog Fairy Says I’m a Blue Ribbon Blogger

I’ve been sprinkled with fairy dust and named a Blue Ribbon Blogger by the Blog Fairy.

The Fairy’s profile at MyBlogLog says:

I keep watch over all the blogs and bloggers in the vast blogosphere. It is my joy to shine light on those that show love and kindness and to honor them.

Thank you, Blog Fairy! I will proudly display my blue ribbon. May your magic fairy dust continue to bring joy to those you honor and love and kindness to their readers.

8/26/07: The Blog Fairy is Now an Angel

[tags]Blue Ribbon Blogger, Blog Fairy[/tags]

Signed by the Author

Signed by the Author offers books that are, as the name says, signed by the author. If you are like me and like to collect autographed books, this is a great site to find books by a variety of authors. An autographed book makes a distinctive gift for a reader, and you can request the book autographed to a specific person.

If you are an author with books to sell, Signed by the Author makes it easy. They process the orders and even send you a PDF file containing an address label ready for you to print out and affix to your envelope or box to mail the autographed book. You are required to put their logo on you Web site to assure readers that you have authorized Signed by the Author to take orders for your book, and they take a commission (less than bookstores). Request information for authors if you’re interested.

The site is fairly new, so it will take time to see how well it works. But it looks to me that a good opportunity for both readers and authors. David Bowles has listed his book, and Spring House is one of the featured books right now. David sells autographed books from his own site, but he hopes that Signed by the Author will introduce his books (he’s working on Book 2 in the Westward Sagas now) to new readers.

If you have any experience with this site, let me know how it went.

[tags]Signed by the Author, David Bowles, Spring House[/tags]

You Comment, I Reply … and New Plug-ins to Make Commenting and Navigating Easier

Thanks to Yvonne Russell at Grow Your Writing Business for introducing me to You Comment, I Reply. If you look back through the posts and comments, you can see that I have always replied to comments. However, I’ve never brought it to readers’ attention. So the new icon in my sidebar lets folks know that I appreciate your comments and will reply. And since I’m part of the DoFollow movement, you’ll get a link for your comment. Now the only reason you have for not commenting is if you find nothing worth commenting on.

I’ve also added some new comment plug-ins. Brian’s Threaded Comments allows replies to specific comments, so it’s easy to follow conversations. Another plug-ins lets you subscribe to comments so you don’t have to keep checking back to see if replies have been posted.

More plug-ins: Notice that the Archives has been moved to a separate page and is now a detailed listing of posts by date and title, courtesy of the Clean Archives Plug-in. And I changed my permalinks to include the post title, which Mig Lica recommended in her SEO Book of WordPress Blogs. The Permalink Redirect WordPress plug-in ensures that I don’t lose the links on all the old posts that were named differently.

If you’re a blogger, I hope these plug-ins are helpful to you. If you’re a reader, I hope the plug-ins make your reading experience easier and more pleasant.

Support P.A.P.A (Parents Against Predators Act)

The statistics on the Parents Against Predators Act (P.A.P.A.) Web site are appalling and frightening:

It is estimated that a sexual assault occurs every 2.5 minutes in the the United States and more than 200,000 people in the United States are victims of sexual assault; 1 in every 6 females and 1 of every 33 males in the United States have been victims of rape or attempted rape, according the Department of Justice.

To date, with nearly 600,000 convicted sex offenders, there remains no social responsibility with regard to ISP’s and website owners as to excluding certain individuals from accessing their services.

Imagine the permanent damage done to a teenager or pre-teen who is sexually assaulted by someone she considers a friend after hours of chatting or playing video games. Parents like to think their child would never agree to meet a stranger, but young people don’t always recognize danger that seems obvious to adults. They don’t realize the “15-year-old boy” they’ve been chatting with and think they know is really a 45-year-old convicted sexual predator.

Convicted sex offenders are prohibited from being around children in the real world, but they have complete freedom to contact children in the virtual world. P.A.P.A. would remedy that.

P.A.P.A. would federally mandate that all websites providing electronic communication to minor children (chats, multi-user gaming, social networking) would have their auto-responder cross reference against the National Sex Offender Registry when an individual attempts to subscribe to their service. If listed in this registry, that individual would be prohibited from that site’s areas where children congregate.

This act won’t stop all sexual predators from contacting and harming children. Many sexual predators will not be included, either because they are committing their first offense or because they haven’t been brought to justice on prior offenses. However, preventing the 600,000 convicted sex offenders from having access to children online will make a huge difference.

In addition, the campaign in support of the legislation includes education on Internet safety. Read the details of the 4 Pronged Internet Safety Model Supporting PAPA Legislation.

Mihaela Lica at eWritings designed and donated the Web site for the campaign and put out a call for support on her blog. Although it took me longer than expected to answer the call, I’m spreading the word and, as Mihaela requested, praying. I hope you will add your support to this campaign for the safety of our young people on the Internet.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we pray for the safety of our children on the Internet. You said, “Let the little children come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” You also told us to stand strong against evil. We stand today against evil and for the protection of children. Bless this cause, O Lord, that it may lead to the protection of children. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

[tags]Parents Against Predators Act, P.A.P.A., Internet safety[/tags]

Call me an old fuddy-duddy …

I have been planning for some time to change the theme on my blog. After all, I’ve used the default theme for over a year – it must be time to be a little more creative.

I spent last week reformatting my hard drive, upgrading my computer and many of my programs, and restoring all the data. While that was tedious and time-consuming, with the help of the great tech support at Dell, all went smoothly.

Then I got to the blog … and ran into problems. Although other people said it look fine in their browser, it looked awful on all three of our computers. The sidebar overlapped the text, and the sidebar was ugly.

I spent lots of time spent getting advice from my Web host, searching the forums and documentation at WordPress, and getting a little help from my friends. Thanks for everyone who gave me advice and encouragement!

Finally, I decided to install the new theme, thinking maybe the problem was the theme. I tried half a dozen themes, all of which I thought I liked until I actually installed them. I didn’t like any of them as well as old default theme, but I wanted it look like it had before I upgraded.

As I was going back and forth between themes, I couldn’t get widgets to work in a three-column theme I tried, so I went back to the default sidebar. I still wasn’t happy so I decided to go back to the original theme.

Voila! With the default sidebar instead of the widgetized sidebar, my blog looked just fine. So I went back to the old-fashioned way of editing the theme to modify the sidebar.

I am adding some new plug-ins … but guess I’ll stick with my old look. I haven’t changed my hairstyle in a zillion years, either, so I guess I’m just an ole stick-in-the-mud.

[tags]WordPress, themes[/tags]

Exciting news … and you can make it more exciting

Spring House by my client David Bowles is an AuthorIsland.com Readers’ Choice Finalist For Historicals.

Updated 8/4/07: Thanks to everyone who voted. David got about twice as many votes as the next book. However, we misunderstood how the contest operated. The winners had already been chosen before the finalists were listed on the Web site. There were two rounds of judging in each category – one by three judges that determined the finalists and a second by one additional judge that determined the winner.  It was called a readers’ choice contest because all the judges were readers, not authors or editors. The voting on the Web site had no bearing on the outcome of the contest – it was just created to involve more readers and generate interest. I apologize for misunderstanding and giving out erroneous information.

Updated 7/12/07: The voting in this category is over. Thanks to all who voted for David’s book. I’ll report the official results when they’re announced, after all the categories have been voted on. David was in the lead the last time I checked the votes.

I’m thrilled for David and proud that I edited the book. David and I would both be even more thrilled if he won. Readers will select the winner by voting at AuthorIsland.com. If you’d like to help make Spring House a winner, vote this week. The voting box is on the right-hand side of the page, just below Island Spotlights.

I originally posted this just before my blog disappeared. Thanks to you who have already voted, and thanks to anyone who votes this week.

[tags]Spring House, David Bowles, AuthorIsland.Com Readers’ Choice[/tags]

You can see my upgrade didn’t go well …

If you’ve been here in the last couple of days, you couldn’t read my blog … because it wasn’t here! Something went wrong during the upgrade, so I tried to restore the backup. That didn’t go well, and for a couple of days, my blog was gone. My Web host got my backup restored and upgraded WordPress for me … and it looks just like it did when I upgraded. Awful! Everything that should go on the sidebar is still in WordPress. It’s just not showing up where it’s supposed to be.

Comments left over the weekend were lost, so if you left a comment and it’s not here, I apologize. Please comment again AFTER I’ve got this thing back to normal. I don’t want to lose your comment again.

Thanks for your patience, and wish me luck in getting back to normal!

Answers to a Writer’s Questions, Part 3: Marketing a Children’s E-Book

In the last post, we talked about self-publishing a children’s book on CD. This is the final installment in the answers to questions posted by a writer.

Patti McQuillen wrote in answer to my follow-up questions:

I don’t have a clue about making my children’s book available online as a download. I am working on a website through Google Page Creator. I cannot afford to have a professional one yet.

I’m glad you’re setting up a Web site, but I think you will have more marketing success if you have your own domain name and site rather than xxx.googlepages.com. I set up sites for my clients for less than ten dollars to register the domain name and as little as forty dollars a year for hosting. You can use WordPress (which is free) as a template and have a blog and Web site that you can create and maintain yourself. I created the site for GASLight Publishing on WordPress.

You can then sell both the CD and download versions of your book. Although the ideal option is a shopping cart with secure download features, that is expensive and not necessary for a single product or even a few products.

Updated: I have recently learned of E-Junkie, a shopping cart for digital products that is very reasonable (only five dollars per month for up to 10 products). You can even try it free for one week.  

One simple process that works when you have a fairly small number of sales is to store a zip file containing all the e-book formats in a password protected area of your site. When you make a sale, have an autoresponder send out a link for the buyer to download the file. You can accept payment through PayPal or Google Checkout.

Selling Digital Products Online: Why? How? at MoreBusiness.com has a lot of information about selling digital products.

Another option is to sell through Lulu or PayLoadz. Lulu will also create and ship CDs, but I believe PayLoadz offers only digital downloads. There are other options as well, several of which are listed in the MoreBusiness.com article mentioned above.

Once you have your site and distribution set up, then you start blogging and commenting on other blogs and look for other opportunities to participate in forums and other places – perhaps educational sites and writing sites – frequented by people who would be apt to buy your children’s book.

I hope these posts have given you some insight into the next step … or several next steps, Patti, and that this information has also been helpful to other aspiring writers.

If you have a question or a particular topic you’d like me to write about, please ask in the comments below.

Answers to a Writer’s Questions, Part 2: Children’s Book on CD

This is the second in a series of three posts answering questions posed in comments to an earlier post.

Writer Patti McQuillen asked:
I have a book I finished for encouraging kids to write. It is available on CD. I self published (my first one ever) and I know that phrase makes some people run! The name of the book is 100 Things To Try, Writing Activities For Kids in Grades 2-5; it is a book of ideas covering a range of subjects. … My book for kids is computer and it is basic – no talking characters or fancy stuff. I did it in Microsoft Word to begin with, then finalized it in Power Point. What is the next best step?

The word self-published doesn’t make me run. Most of the clients I work with self-publish, and while it’s not for everyone, self-publishing is a valid way to bring a book to market.

The first thing I would do with your children’s writing activity book is to make sure it’s easy and fun to read. If you haven’t already done so, get someone else to proofread it for you. None of us can catch our own mistakes, and one reason there is a stigma attached to self-published books is that many are produced without editing. No matter how good a writer you are or how well-written the book is, you need to have another pair of eyes go over it. You’ve probably done this already, but I want the answer to your question to be helpful to other writers as well.

Although you don’t have talking characters or fancy stuff, you will want to have color and graphics. One of the great advantages of publishing electronically is that you can use as much color as you want without increasing the cost of production. You can find lots of free and reasonably priced clipart and photos online to add graphics so you don’t need an illustrator.

Then I would put the book into a more user-friendly format. Not everyone has PowerPoint, so you’re limiting your market if that’s the only format you offer. Adobe Acrobat PDF is the most popular format (though not my favorite because it can’t be read on my e-book reader). Acrobat Reader is on just about every computer there is. If you don’t have the program to create PDF files, you can sign up for a trial offer and convert five files to PDF for free.

You can also save the PowerPoint file as a Web page and create an HTML document. Some people prefer to read in their Web browsers, and most e-books readers can display HTML. Of course, most children aren’t going to have an e-book reader, but their parents might, and the more options you have the more potential customers you have.

You can even save your original Word file as RTF (rich text format), which can also be read universally. I think it’s a good idea to give buyers all formats (PDF, HTML, RTF, and PowerPoint). It reduces complaints from people who ordered the wrong format, and it makes it easier for you manage sales and distribution.

In the next post, I’ll talk about marketing your children activity book.

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