Read an excerpt from Eloisa’s RITA finaling book. Or, check out Eloisa’s Inside Take on the book.

Read an excerpt from Nicola’s RITA finaling book. Or, take a tour behind the book.

Read an excerpt from Maya’s RITA finaling book. Or, find out more about this exciting new series.

Read an excerpt from CJ’s RITA finaling book. Or, read her letter to readers.

Four fabulous books, four fabulous authors. We feel privileged to work with you on a regular basis.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Pamela Palmer signing the back of a fan's Nook at the RWA big benefit booksigning in Orlando, July 2010. (Photo: me)

“Sign my Nook, please.”

Fans didn’t just buy books to support literacy programs, I saw a quite a few people handing over their Nooks for authors to sign. The backs are easily removed, and replacements come in different colors. One reader said her plan was to hang signature-filled Nook-backs in rows on her wall.

I love it!

And what’s on my eReader? I have a Kindle app for my iPhone, and I am slowly reading Edward Rutherfurd’s massive tome, New York whenever I find myself with a few minutes without a book in hand (I still love paper!). But Max has a Nook, and I just transferred my HarperCollins eARC of Kathryn Caskie’s The Duke’s Night of Sin to hers and plan to ensconce myself with it tomorrow afternoon. I am calling it “working” (I have the BEST job).

And in case you missed the previous post, Awesome Things, Part One lauded the incredible accomplishment of Julia Quinn hitting the RWA Hall of Fame. Let’s all take another moment to say “yea!”

photo courtesy of Barnes&Noble.com

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Best Snark: This year RWA was meant to be in Nashville, but due to flooding it was moved to Orlando, as in Disney World. And as if that Mouse and all his Princesses were not enough, Orlando claims Universal Studios, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Sea World, and more. From the conference hotel you could get to Epcot by pink-and-white striped water taxi and there were fireworks every night. Pretty much every person I talked either arrived a few days early, kids in tow, or admitted necessarily and abashedly (as I did): “My kids have no idea where I am.”

Best Fan Behavior: This was Kindle- and Nook-related. And awesome. And not yet downloaded off of my camera. Stay tuned.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

A couple weeks ago I went to a booksigning at a A Great Good Place For Books in the Oakland Hills. It was cozy and intimate and, as I realized upon entering the store, it was the first such booksigning I had been to in quite a while. The last few had been either big multi-author signings tied to a conference, or a gaggle of people crammed into an alcove of a busy Barnes&Noble. And while these types of signings are valid, informative, and helpful to an author’s career, there is something very grassroots about hosting an intimate event.

When author Christi Phillips stood up and began speaking in the bookstore, the energy of the entire bookstore was focused upon her. Small booksignings like this go great distances to allow the author to make individual connections. This can be hard to accomplish at huge signings where the line is kept moving.

Christi began with a reading from her new book, The Devlin Diary, moved on to  Q&A, and closed with signing copies of either of her books for the few dozen locals who turned out. She had some simple but pretty trays of snacks, and a little basket of cookies by the signing area. And while I do not remember the actual text from the reading, I do remember thinking “Now, that’s something I would like to read,” and I how comfortable and charmed I felt at the signing, how kind and approachable the author was. In short, she intrigued me.

She did not have autographed by the author stickers, but not every signing can be perfect (and I feel she and the store will get them in hand!)

There are many people for whom this type of effort is not balanced by enough return. If you do it by sheer numbers, with the possibility of selling a couple dozen books at the royalty rate most authors enjoy, then the entire profit is spent on the refreshments and you have spent resources promoting it and then of course you are out the evening and whatever travel time. And while this cost-and-return approach has its merits, this is not why an author does these types of events. The intimacy of a small booksigning allows the author to meet readers. And the readers who attend booksignings are predisposed to talk about books. These are fans you want. The brand relationship between reader and author is significant. Courting them is worth the effort.

If you can seal the relationship with your voice and a shared experience within your fictitious world you have created (and a cookie helps), then there is a very good chance you have drawn that reader into your world and intrigued him or her enough to explore more. Maybe they will read one of your books (and hopefully it’s a signed, stickered keepsake, complete with leave-behind bookmark reminding them of the lovely evening you, famous author, hosted for them). Maybe they will leave a comment on your blog or enter a reader drawing on your site, or interact with you further in some other way your website offers.

Fan bases are built one reader at a time. Go out and meet them.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

First, What the Heck is WordCamp?
It’s an annual conference organized by our techie community in SF (though there are WordCamps all over the world), focusing on all things related to WordPress. There are great speakers, ranging from the original developers of WordPress to Google employees to eccentric social media advisers.

Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress (Thanks to Eva Blue for this photo!)

The State of the Word with Matt Mullenweg
Matt Mullenweg is the founding developer of WordPress, and I absolutely LOVE hearing him speak! His presentation was so creative, drawing similarities between WordPress’ open source environment to jazz, where everyone works together to create one beautiful piece, and even plugin developers are the jazz “soloists.” He uses four adjectives to compare WordPress to jazz:

• Improvised
• Independent
• Inclusive
• Inspired

His presentation was very inspiring and helped me understand how WordPress IS a collaborative community with its open-source nature, with folks helping each other out. There’s a reason why WordPress’ documentation and forums are so incredibly helpful!

The juicy news: What are a few new features in WordPress 3.0?

• WordPress Mu and WordPress will be merging! I believe there were a few features that weren’t available to WP Mu before, so this is pretty exciting! Many folks that use WP Mu are able to have separate blogs using one WP install—a lot of schools are beginning to do this with different blogs for each of their departments.
• Droplist subnav menus can be created/managed thru the WP Dashboard!
• There will be a new feature where you can upload an image as your “featured image” for your posts. This would be the main visual image used for your post.
• A new default theme! Kubrick has been WP’s default theme for many years now, and we’ll miss it, but it was great to see the new default theme, Twenty Ten. You can check it out here too! Definitely more modern, more visual with its large graphic header, and much more customizable to fit a vast audience with different site needs.


"Twenty Ten" — the new default theme for WordPress 3.0

Want to read up on more features that will be coming with 3.0? Check out BloggingPro’s recap with additional highlights.

WordPress, Audience, Engagement, and SEO with Vanessa Fox
Vanessa previously created Google’s Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community to help website owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search. She gave us an update on current SEO trends and what we should (and shouldn’t) care about for our site searchability.

Things you should keep in mind when managing your site’s SEO:

• Search engines are now the primary method of navigating the web
• Consider the difference between “search” and “browse”:
  • Search — entails you have a goal and task to achieve
  • Browse — implies that you don’t have a set goal, but freely scrolling through. The new method of browsing now is via social networking. Example: checking your Facebook feeds and Twitter lists in the morning
• Titles: Be sure to title your pages/posts! This is the text that will appear in the search results. Ideally, make sure your title appears first before your site name. The reason why this works: when we scroll through search results page in a search engine, we scroll down the left side of the page to look for our key words. If those key words don’t appear on the left-most side of the search results, we usually skip and glaze right past results we think aren’t relevant.
• Google will be phasing out tags and keywords—these will not be the main determinant for your SEO in the future. My thoughts: This makes sense. Tagging and adding in keywords has become too arbitrary, where anyone can add any words to their posts, even when the tag doesn’t relate to the content of the post. e.g. spammers
• I’ve heard the same thing repeated at several tech conferences recently regarding SEO:
  • Write compelling content — it’s ALL in the content. This is the most important factor in getting people to come to your site.
  • Understand Your Audience — this means understanding the language of your visitors. For instance, if your site is about climate change, be sure to include related words like “global warming”. These are related words that people from your audience may use to search. You want to make sure you have these bases covered so they can find your post!
  • Community — link to resources and sites of fellow bloggers in your field while you blog and post. Everyone loves a linkback! It’s a great way to connect.

The Blog Doctor sums up Vanessa’s points in a handy list of 12 Quick, Easy Tips to Optimize Blogs / Websites for SEO if you’d like more info about Vanessa’s presentation.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

We are pre-empting our customary month-end Wrap-Up to bring you a fabulous online design feature.
Eloisa James’s Paper Doll extravaganza.

It would be special enough just to have access to these gorgeous paper dolls. But Eloisa turned it into a DESIGN CONTEST. Eloisa and her daughter made the gorgeous doll seen right here. But when you DOWNLOAD the doll, she is a blank slate. Our homage to Eloisa’s covers appears at the bottom of this post.

SHARE THIS! Feel free to use this text for your own blog post:

Eloisa James has commissioned a  gorgeous paper doll and costume, in delicious Georgian fashion. And to launch the doll onto the web, Eloisa is hostessing a fabulous design contest!

Says Eloisa:

“If you’ve read even one of my novels, you know that I adore historical clothing: dresses that drip with diamonds, wigs with sailing ships, coats with gold-trim buttons… When I’m not writing, one of my favorite activities is sitting down with my 10-year-old daughter and making handmade birthday cards. We tend to go wild in scrapbooking stores and we always use lots of sequins!

To celebrate the end of the Desperate Duchesses series, I came up with the idea of combining my two favorite hobbies – writing and decorating.”

Download the pdf, print the four pages, choose a dress and a wig or a hat, and decorate her costume however you’d like! And then enter the contest! Full details on Eloisa’s site.

Use this link to download the doll (designed by the wonderful artist, Laurie Manifold), or head over to Eloisa’s site and get it from the source. Tell your friends!

If you post this to your own blog, come back here and put your link in the comments or over on the Eloisa James – Julia Quinn Bulletin Board — you could win!

(Wax’s regular Wrap-Up will resume next week for August.)

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©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Two minutes later, two more tweets.

Why it’s dated yesterday I can’t figure out. But it’s up. Please comment and share!

Though the post contains great photos of the President holding a romance novel, the real star of this story is Geri Krotow. I urge everyone to head over to her blog and read her first-hand account of what happened — a dream come true for her. The photos there are bigger, too. My HuffPo post is about reading, ultimately. Geri’s is about the actual event. Thank you, Geri, for sharing, and thank you for letting me broadcast it on a world stage.

Eight tweets.

There are several articles out there right now about the romance industry maybe kinda sorta getting some hard won respect. Please share them all. But because everybody deserves a great story with a happy ending. Including new-to-the-wax-family Geri Krotow, and of course, Michelle Obama, too.

Ten tweets. Twelve tweets. Keep it up!

photos: Kristi Stephens. Inset created by Waxcreative

UPDATE: Nearly 36 hours after posting, we are up to 50 tweets and the article was moved last night from being just-another-post to being featured on the Michelle Obama Big News page. How long it will stay there, who knows. Thanks for all the support.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Of course, people go to conferences all the time and manage to keep up. I, however, am not one of those wonder women. I am blog-challenged under “normal” circumstances. “Conference,” as those of us who go year after year pithily call it, is a complete derailer. Woe to the romance author on deadline in July, your editor knows where you are.

In DC this year, in what has been called the most over-air-conditioned hotel in the United States, I greatly enjoyed meeting with both new clients and long-established ones. I did not stop talking (and listening) for four straight days. In an industry driven by email, these face-to-face meetings are invaluable. Authors meeting with me, with their agents, with their editors… It’s all about touching base. (And for me, it’s also about distributing thousands of sample Autographed by the Author stickers… but I digress.)

I was back on Pacific Time by Saturday night — a 12-hour country-crossing marathon to get home in time to tuck my preschooler into bed. And then began my debriefing and catching up. Blogging? There is far too much else going on. Instead I will take this space to congratulate Waxcreative’s own Pam Rosenthal, who won the RITA for her exquisite The Edge of Impropriety. Well done.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

So sadly, I will not have a video to show you, but I will leave those of you still pining for that wonderful group of days in San Francisco with a little list of clients’ posts about the conference. In these posts you will find pictures, funny stories, good advice, and more.

And so, for your last look back at San Francisco, here are some good posts to check out, of you haven’t already done so:

Elizabeth Boyle wrote a great post about conference here.
Jane Porter talks about her conference and provides a link to pictures.
Hope Tarr gave us a few photos here and here, and a great post about her conference here.
Kathryn Caskie’s got a quick post here which includes a slew of great photos.
Pam Rosenthal wraps up her posts on RWA for Shy writers. More RWA from Pam here and here.
Susanna Carr has several fun posts: here, here, and also here.

Thanks, folks!

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Julia Quinn with her RITA in her MacGyvered-with-stickers dress. Morrow/Avon Editor Lyssa Keusch in background left (in the pretty mint-colored sweater). Photo: Morgan Doremus

Said sister is me.

Here’s what happened: it was a few minutes before she was set to meet her editor (the fabulous Lyssa Keusch) for dinner. JQ was in a lovely dress that fit perfectly, provided (we discovered at the last minute) she didn’t move in one particular direction. Make that move and the snap (which was weak, we discovered at the last minute) unsnapped and part of the dress flapped. It wasn’t a wardrobe malfunction of the indecent sort, but clearly some adhesive was required.

The winning book with the winning sticker. Photo: Deborah Sherman

I grabbed a roll of Autographed by the Author stickers, appropriated two for the cause, and stuck a couple more in her purse to prevent later-in-the-evening emergencies.

So note one more good use for these must-have stickers: they double nicely as in-a-pinch fashion tape, and you are always assured of a makeshift wardrobe repair for your author event, whether it be black tie with awesome shoes and a gold statuette, or jeans at a neighborhood signing.

Every author should always have these stickers on hand.

QED.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.