177 Search Results for thursdays with amanda
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: How to Write a Great Tweet"Thursdays with Amanda: How to Write a Great Tweet
Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. She posts about growing your author platform every Thursday. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.
To write well for Twitter, you really need to change your mindset. I’ve seen 100,000+ word novelists balk when it comes to Tweeting, and I’ve seen successful business types equally fail when they take the hard sell approach. Twitter isn’t a place for you to flaunt your knowledge of the English language or refine your author voice. It’s equally not a place where constantly telling people to buy your book or visit your website will work. Twitter takes a bit more finesse. A bit more thought. And a lot more of a marketing or sales-driven mindset.
Twitter restricts the number of characters used in each Tweet to 140. If you’re curious what that looks like, note this paragraph. Yep, 140.
It may seem like a lot to work with at first, but once you add any @ mentions or links or hashtags, it can get crowded fast. It’s this very crowdedness that hinders authors from being successful with their Tweets.
But the bottom line is if you can learn to write compelling, actionable copy for Twitter, you can write just about anything.
Just like any other social media channel, the basic rule to a great Twitter handle is to have a goal. Do you want to sell books? Generate interest in your website or blog? Position yourself as an expert on a topic? A clear goal will guide each and every Tweet, preventing you from flooding your readers with conflicting information. With a goal, you’ll be sure to attract the very readers that care about every single Tweet you throw at them. And that is where the Twitter magic happens.
But how do you construct compelling copy in 140
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: What I'm Looking For"
Thursdays with Amanda: What I'm Looking For
I'm in New York right now, visiting with publishers and pitching books, and though I had every intention of continuing my "Building an Author Platform" series, it just doesn't look like that's going to happen this week. So sorry about that. I know that some of you come here specifically for those posts and I hate to let you down.
So, to make up for the lack of a post this week, I thought I'd share a list of projects that I'm looking for. I'm hoping this is a satisfactory trade. 🙂
Right now, I'm primarily looking for authors who have published with a traditional house. However, if you're an unpublished author, don't lose heart. The best thing to do there is to try and meet me at a conference (I'm attending roughly 12 this year, and you can find the list on the info tab of my Facebook page). If I like you and I like your book, I'm much more willing to try and make room for you.
Here's what I'm currently acquring:
Adult Fantasy
Adult Urban Fantasy (especially geared to women)
Adult Paranormal Romance
Adult Science Fiction
Any of the "weird" genres, like Steampunk, Dystopian, Horror, etc.
African American Romance
Young Adult Fiction (open to just about anything)
Nonfiction projects from authors with great platforms
Nonfiction for the 20 and 30-something crowd
Have a genre in mind, but you're not seeing it on the list? Leave a comment below and I'll let you know whether it would be a fit.
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: Why Authors Should Be On Twitter"
Thursdays with Amanda: Why Authors Should Be On Twitter
I was on a plane yesterday with a gentleman who found out I was an agent and started asking me about the industry. He had a book idea, and a bunch of questions to go with it, and eventually he started asking about formatting the manuscript and design and all of that stuff.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “An author has two responsibilities: Deadlines and marketing. They have to get their manuscript turned in on time and then market the heck out of their book.”
And that’s where the conversation took a turn.
“I didn’t know authors had to be marketers,” he said. “I thought they just sat in their homes and wrote and wrote and didn’t talk to a soul.”
Twenty years ago, he would have been right. But Al Gore’s Internet changed everything. It made the world smaller.
And Twitter is as small as it can possibly get.
Ten years ago, celebrities were untouchable. If you wanted to know about their lifestyles, you read the tabloids or watched Cribs. If you wanted to meet them, you stalked their tour buses or started working out in LA gyms. Or, you’d stand outside of MTV studios in Time Square or set up camp in LAX, studying the faces of passersby. But even these strategies would fail. Meeting a celebrity was an occurance left to chance.
But these days, it’s as easy as sending a text message.
I follow Zach Braff (@zachbraff) on Twitter. He’s an actor/director/writer, most well-known for his work on Scrubs and Garden State. He’s a big-time celebrity, but on Twitter, he's just a regular guy. He dispels tabloid rumors, shares
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: Why Authors Should Be On Twitter"
Thursdays with Amanda: Why Authors Should Be On Twitter
I was on a plane yesterday with a gentleman who found out I was an agent and started asking me about the industry. He had a book idea, and a bunch of questions to go with it, and eventually he started asking about formatting the manuscript and design and all of that stuff.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “An author has two responsibilities: Deadlines and marketing. They have to get their manuscript turned in on time and then market the heck out of their book.”
And that’s where the conversation took a turn.
“I didn’t know authors had to be marketers,” he said. “I thought they just sat in their homes and wrote and wrote and didn’t talk to a soul.”
Twenty years ago, he would have been right. But Al Gore’s Internet changed everything. It made the world smaller.
And Twitter is as small as it can possibly get.
Ten years ago, celebrities were untouchable. If you wanted to know about their lifestyles, you read the tabloids or watched Cribs. If you wanted to meet them, you stalked their tour buses or started working out in LA gyms. Or, you’d stand outside of MTV studios in Time Square or set up camp in LAX, studying the faces of passersby. But even these strategies would fail. Meeting a celebrity was an occurance left to chance.
But these days, it’s as easy as sending a text message.
I follow Zach Braff (@zachbraff) on Twitter. He’s an actor/director/writer, most well-known for his work on Scrubs and Garden State. He’s a big-time celebrity, but on Twitter, he's just a regular guy. He dispels tabloid rumors, shares
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: 10 Steps to Growing a Public Speaking Platform"
Thursdays with Amanda: 10 Steps to Growing a Public Speaking Platform
When I first met Chip, I’d occasionally run a book idea by him just to see if anything sparked his interest. I remember at one point, I came up with this GREAT idea for a book all about making your wedding your own. It was about ditching tradition and going for something that reflected your uniqueness as a couple. But when I pitched this future bestseller to Chip, he kind of glazed over. He gave me a few pointers, patted me on the back and sent me on my way. And I couldn’t figure out why.
But now, years later, I know exactly what he was thinking: I’m not a wedding expert. People don’t ask me for wedding advice and I certainly don’t have an all-things-weddings blog. Heck, I’m not even a wedding planner. I’m a “no one” in the wedding biz, so who in the world would ever pick up my book and listen to what I have to say?
Most nonfiction writers are like I was a few years ago. They think that just because they have this great idea or a fabulous success story, people will want to listen. But think about it…
When we have money troubles, we look to Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey.
When we have health troubles, we look to Jillian Michaels or Dr. Oz.
When we have political confusion, we look to … Jon Stewart.
We will always pick the expert over the nobody. So how do you cross that divide? How do you become an expert?
Become a speaker, my friend. Become a speaker.
Speaking has gotten a bad rap lately because there’s not really any money in it anymore.
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: 10 Steps to Growing a Public Speaking Platform"
Thursdays with Amanda: 10 Steps to Growing a Public Speaking Platform
When I first met Chip, I’d occasionally run a book idea by him just to see if anything sparked his interest. I remember at one point, I came up with this GREAT idea for a book all about making your wedding your own. It was about ditching tradition and going for something that reflected your uniqueness as a couple. But when I pitched this future bestseller to Chip, he kind of glazed over. He gave me a few pointers, patted me on the back and sent me on my way. And I couldn’t figure out why.
But now, years later, I know exactly what he was thinking: I’m not a wedding expert. People don’t ask me for wedding advice and I certainly don’t have an all-things-weddings blog. Heck, I’m not even a wedding planner. I’m a “no one” in the wedding biz, so who in the world would ever pick up my book and listen to what I have to say?
Most nonfiction writers are like I was a few years ago. They think that just because they have this great idea or a fabulous success story, people will want to listen. But think about it…
When we have money troubles, we look to Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey.
When we have health troubles, we look to Jillian Michaels or Dr. Oz.
When we have political confusion, we look to … Jon Stewart.
We will always pick the expert over the nobody. So how do you cross that divide? How do you become an expert?
Become a speaker, my friend. Become a speaker.
Speaking has gotten a bad rap lately because there’s not really any money in it anymore.
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: Blogging as a Fiction Author"
Thursdays with Amanda: Blogging as a Fiction Author
The thing that’s going to make every fiction writer reading “Thursdays with Amanda” let out a big sigh of relief is this: publishing houses don’t expect new fiction writers to have huge platforms. In fact, for the most part they don’t expect you to have any sort of platform.
But before you shut down your blog and Tweet your good-byes to social media, know this…while they don’t expect you to have anything impressive, they do expect you to have a social media presence. And to that, I say if you’re going to do it, you may as well do it right. Because you never know when the thing that tips a house toward publishing your great American novel is the fact that you have a devoted following. Even if the following is a mere 1000 (In his book TRIBES, Seth Godin talks about how 1000 devoted followers are all you need).
For the past two weeks, we’ve talked about blogging. First, we went over some of the rules of a great blog and a great blog posts. Then, we discussed what makes your blog searchable and how to get readers to find it. So this week, we’ll wrap up the blogging portion of this author platform series by discussing how to blog as a fiction writer.
Blogging as a fiction writer is difficult. So difficult, that if I were in your shoes, I’d probably choose something else to build my platform. Maybe Facebook or Twitter. Something easier. Because unlike nonfiction authors, fiction authors aren’t really experts at things. They don’t have people coming to them, looking for answers or solutions or world peace. They don’t have that clear topic to drive their blog. They just have themselves
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: 7 Ways to Grow Your Blog Readership"
Thursdays with Amanda: 7 Ways to Grow Your Blog Readership
Thanks for tuning in to my ongoing discussion on author platform! We’re on post two of a three-post miniseries on building your platform through blogging. (If you missed it, last week we talked about the components of a great blog post). This week, we’re going to look at some things you can do to improve traffic and blog searchability. (Is that a word? you ask. Thanks to Google, yes).
Seven Ways to Build a Platform Through Blogging:
1. Title it right – Google is structured so that the title of your blog post helps determine its position within searches. The more searchable terms/keywords that a title has, the more likely it is to be pulled up in a search result. Confused?
Think of it like this…When people do a Google search, Google, in its infinite wisdom, pulls out what it deems to be the keywords of that search. You can throw an entire sentence at it, and it will pull out the proper nouns, nouns, and possibly verbs. It then moves across the Internet to find a match for those terms, and relies heavily on page titles to do so. This is why it’s key to avoid vague blog post titles, such as “Introducing my new book!” and “Happy to be home!”. These will get you nowhere because the words within them are overused. They aren’t specific enough. Still confused? Stay with me here…
Let’s say you do a blog post on your next book, which is about a cowboy winning the heart of a school teacher. You want to name the post “My next book!” but realize that would be Google suicide because the odds of your post coming up when someone searches for “book”
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: 5 Rules of Blogging Well"
Thursdays with Amanda: 5 Rules of Blogging Well
As promised, this week we're continuing our Platform Monster discussion by talking about blogging.
Blogging is the easiest way for any author to get their feet wet when it comes to online promotions. It has a free-form approach, meaning you can be as long-winded as you like, and it’s fairly simple to navigate, with free blogging services available from blogspot.com, wordpress.com and more. They even come with tutorials. It’s a win-win.
But blogging doesn’t come without its share of hurdles.
There are approximately 150+ million blogs. That’s 150+ million peopl screaming for attention. For your blog to rise out of this noisy mess, it needs to be good. It needs to be really good. And for it to result in a salable platform, well…let’s just say it needs to be near perfect.
So let’s start with the basics and build from there.
Blogging 101
The reason there are 150+ million blogs is because everyone has something to say…or at least they think they do. Of those 150+ million blogs, 149.9 million are written poorly. And the basic rule of writing is that you don’t get anywhere with a poorly-written blog, manuscript or what-have-you, right?
So let’s take a look at some of the most ignored, broken and abused rules of a well-crafted blog post.
Five (of the many) Rules of Blogging:
1. Stick to the goal – Before you begin, give your blog a goal (this is a good rule of thumb for ALL of your social media sites).
Do you want to promote yourself as an author/speaker/expert? Do you want to promote your book? Do you want to connect with fans? Do you want to offer an online experience that ties in with your book? These
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: 5 Rules of Blogging Well"
Thursdays with Amanda: 5 Rules of Blogging Well
As promised, this week we're continuing our Platform Monster discussion by talking about blogging.
Blogging is the easiest way for any author to get their feet wet when it comes to online promotions. It has a free-form approach, meaning you can be as long-winded as you like, and it’s fairly simple to navigate, with free blogging services available from blogspot.com, wordpress.com and more. They even come with tutorials. It’s a win-win.
But blogging doesn’t come without its share of hurdles.
There are approximately 150+ million blogs. That’s 150+ million peopl screaming for attention. For your blog to rise out of this noisy mess, it needs to be good. It needs to be really good. And for it to result in a salable platform, well…let’s just say it needs to be near perfect.
So let’s start with the basics and build from there.
Blogging 101
The reason there are 150+ million blogs is because everyone has something to say…or at least they think they do. Of those 150+ million blogs, 149.9 million are written poorly. And the basic rule of writing is that you don’t get anywhere with a poorly-written blog, manuscript or what-have-you, right?
So let’s take a look at some of the most ignored, broken and abused rules of a well-crafted blog post.
Five (of the many) Rules of Blogging:
1. Stick to the goal – Before you begin, give your blog a goal (this is a good rule of thumb for ALL of your social media sites).
Do you want to promote yourself as an author/speaker/expert? Do you want to promote your book? Do you want to connect with fans? Do you want to offer an online experience that ties in with your book? These