“Did you send me a friend request?” “No—we’re already friends.” “Well, someone with your name sent me a friend request.” I’ve been seeing this conversation on Facebook a lot lately. Sometimes it’s followed by announcements along the lines of, “I’ve been hacked!” with...
I love infographics. Maybe it’s because I’m more a words/pictures than a numbers person, but something about these little bundles of graphical joy blows my proverbial skirt up. I find this one particularly interesting for anyone who care about marketing...
As a reader, I don’t pay blurbs much heed. Never have. A couple of years ago, though, a voracious reader I know told me that she bought a book because it had a Michael Connelly blurb on the cover, which caused me to reconsider the marketing value of blurbs. Rightly or...
It’s been quite a week! It started a week ago Thursday, when I arrived at Sleuthfest in Orlando. Sleuthfest is the annual writers’ conference hosted by the Florida Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. It always draws a fantastic group, because the organizers do a...
Marketing books and “author brands” (read: authors themselves) really can be a tricky business. You have a platform, and you have fans, which means people pay attention to what you say. You are, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the size of your...
It’s an eternal question. And by one reader I don’t mean a librarian or book reviewer or bookseller or Stephen King or Michael Connelly. I mean one ordinary, run-of-the-mill, casual reader. Now, before I start, let me acknowledge that this question will never be...
