Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

I attended a local writers guild meeting last week. Author, Paty Jager gave a great talk on promotion. Some things I knew and already do, some things I knew and choose not to do, but there was one thing I never even thought to do. I’m still scratching my head and wondering, “Why didn’t I know about this sooner? How did I miss this information before?” QR Codes are two dimensional barcodes that act like hyperlinks when scanned with the proper app on a cell phone. The code can take your browser directly to a website, a social media page, a google map. You can use it for many different reasons.  But for this blog post purposes, I’m going to focus on writing. When my third middle grade novel was published, I had new bookmarks printed that included the cover of each book and a blurb. Across the bottom of the bookmark is my website. Then I learned about QR codes. DOH! I created a code to take people directly to the middle grade page on my website, which offers downloads and th...

I tried to do some R andom A ct of P ublicity during the September event, but I fell off. So I'm gonna make up for it now. I've talked before about easy ways to help your favorite authors sell their books. There is no denying that the current hot spot online for book buying is Amazon and Amazon makes it easy for readers to support their favorite books and authors. First you can click the like button on the author's page and also on the book's page. The more likes an author or book has, the more confident a browsing reader is in making the investment on a book they are interested in. When clicking like on a book, be sure to get all the versions, hardcover, paperback and kindle editions. One like does not like all. Also, you can tag a book with related words and phrases. The more times a book is tagged with that word or phrase, the more it will come up when a browsing reader is doing a search for books related to those tagged words. As an example, my Weaver Tales...

Now and again I like to share a recap of my social media outlets. I’m thankful to all of you who read my posts. Welcome to the newbies who’ve been around less than a few months. If you are also on these sites, I’d love to friend, follow, like you there as well. Facebook author page Twitter Linked In Goodreads And of course my website: http://www.kaistrand.com/ which info and fun downloads and fun stuff like that. Please visit.

Be There Bedtime Stories is offering a free recording today only. Click on over to their site and see how to take advantage of it.

I am visiting with Beverly Stowe McClure over at The Story of a Writer . Please stop by and say hi. GAP Family Blog announced great news for The Weaver and many other GAP books at Amazon today. I have a date for my local book signing event !   Yippee!! If you are anywhere near Central Oregon February 10 th , I’d love for you to come by.

What a difference a year makes.   At the close of 2009, I called out to all my online writer friends to suggest books for my to-be-read list for 2010. I got a LOT of great suggestions. Read many of them.   Yet this year, I didn’t need to raise my virtual hand and ask my question. Why? Because now I belong to Goodreads .   I love Goodreads!   I don’t even use all the awesomeness that it offers, but one feature I fully appreciate is the ability to easily add to my tbr list based on the books my friends are reading, have read or plan to read. It’s really a great way to find books you wouldn’t normally be exposed to.   If you are an avid reader, I suggest joining.   You’ll find plenty of people to befriend with similar reading habits or you can just follow people’s reviews if that is all you are interested in.   Speaking of great reading resources, I’m A Reader, Not A Writer is a fantastic book review and author interview blog.   I don’t know how t...