Sandwiched between four presentations, I had working lunch with a dozen fifth-grade, future authors at Bach Elementary. We spoke about avoiding clichés and discussed why adjectives like “awesome” and “interesting” are neither awesome nor interesting.

I am going to respectfully differ with him on this: I think awesome and interesting are awesomely appropriate adjectives to describe how interesting a character like Cheesie Mack is. Cheesie is inquisitive without being a sap, honorable without being unbelievable, loyal, smart, determined, funny and —yes— interesting. He’s an excellent character for any kid to emulate which, as a parent, I appreciate. And his narrative contains both varied sentence structure and layer plots which—as an adult stranded in the the world of Magic Treehouse, Little House, and American Girl—I think is awesome.

To see an example of how awesome my dad’s interesting school visits are, merely click play below. To see how awesomely interesting the Cheesie Mack experience is, I invite you to find out a bit more about what makes Cheesie so perfectly written for today’s kids, then head over to Cheesie’s site (he has his own), and read an excerpt and see how the reading experience is interestingly extended. Awesome.

To find out more about all the prestigious awards and accolades Cheesie has garnered you will have to wait. My dad is awesome about so many things, but delivering content to his web-designing daughter is not one of them. So alas, there is no spot on his website for such stuff (yet), but he does announce it on Facebook.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Humor aside, this helpful image below concisely explains — at least on the surface, how to use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc, etc., and does it through the universal language of donuts.

Image courtesy of @ThreeShipsMedia

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

For the writer

When you give someone your bookmark, you’re making a connection. Even if the interested party doesn’t buy your book, and even if that person isn’t even your fan (yet) and just dropped by your table for a piece of the chocolate you have out, or perhaps the roll of shiny gold Autographed by the Author stickers sitting in front of you caught her eye, or maybe she was just walking by but you said “Hi” — even then, if you hand that person a bookmark, you’re sending her (or him) home with something with your name on it. Even better, it’s something that will get used, or at least seen again, even if just by getting tucked into a book on the nightstand’s to-read stack, or simply by looking too pretty to throw away immediately (as so many do), it might get tossed in with a pile of mail, or onto a desk, or into a purse — some place where it will be seen again.

Also, think of all the times you have met someone in line at a supermarket, or on the plane, or in a restaurant where the tables are quite close together and the kids are spilling over. When you carry some bookmarks on you, you can hand this newly-met person a bookmark. Now you know that this branded reminder of you and your book has gone home with this potential reader.

And when they visit your website they’ll already feel comfortable because it’s in the same design as the bookmark you gave them. Hopefully that comfort will carry them through clicking on your order links!

Check out some other reasons to love bookmarks!

1. It does everything a business card does, but better.
2. Remember the preschool adage: “Books are our friends”? Well, that’s still true, even now that we are all grown up. Be nice to your book. A bookmark can help.
3. They’re cheaply printed and easily changeable.
4. Bookmarks actually help you read.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

“I really need something very basic.”

“I don’t want a big website — just something basic.”

I hear this a lot. Specifically, the “really basic” part.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing anymore as a “basic website”. Any web presence should be — must be customized to fit your needs, otherwise, what’s the point? Even if you envision a small website, it’s not likely to be “basic”. If your business/product is like everyone else’s, then your specific site goal should be to set you apart. If your product is different, highlight that. And your content delivery method must figure into determination of what’s “basic” — are you planning to update yourself or have your designer update, or some of both, and if so, what specifically, and how much/often? Do you intend to blog, sell things, display adspace, etc.? Do you need a site up in three weeks or have you allocated more time for development? Would you need dynamically-generated content, feeds, or would it all be hard-coded?

These scenarios require vastly different processes and it would be wholly irresponsible for me to even indicate a cost without knowing your plans and druthers. And factoring in all these various factors, how can your website be considered basic? I know a lot about author sites. But even with those, I ask a lot of questions. It’s even more critical to ask questions about unique small businesses.

I don’t mean to be argumentative, and I respect wanting to know a cost, but no designer should advertise a “basic cost” unless they are merely churning out templated, cookie-cutter, clip art stuff. There is certainly a market for that type of product, and kudos to those who can make a living at it. I pass no judgment on those who feel that that is all they need for their web presence. But it is not what we create here, even though the majority of our clients are all in the same industry. Not even our Waxcreative Express site, which is based on a base price, is a “basic” site.

We have built websites that took 25 hours and we have built some that required over 300 and hundreds of hours have gone into building them up over the years. It’s all relative. There is no such thing anymore as a “basic website”. Plus, what a lot of clients think is “basic” is really quite complex code — it’s merely that they have seen it in a bunch of places and therefore think it must be as easy as 1-2-3.

So how do you get a sense of cost? Have a ready Scope Document, or be prepared and available to answer a lot of questions. But I bet your needs are more complex than “basic” — because your company idea is pretty cool, isn’t it? And you are an individual, with individual content management needs and workflows. Don’t sell yourself so short.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

You read by habit. Your eyes have muscle memory for what you usually read. If you’re used to Twitter, neither War and Peace nor Harry Potter will come easily. This is not because Twitter made you stupid or less intellectual (although there are those who will passionately argue that point), but because you’re in the habit of skimming and of learning all you need to know in a 140-characters-or-less glean. If you’re used to War and Peace, Twitter is going to be a challenge– but not because you’re too erudite for society! You, too, are missing some muscles.

Bookmarks are a great way to keep yourself steadily reading something you’re not used to. The bookmark underlines one line of text and all you’re responsible for is reading that line. Move it down, read the next line. You won’t skim and you won’t read so slowly that you suddenly realize you’re thinking about your laundry, or the boy in the carrel two rows over. All students should have bookmarks for this reason precisely.

Yes, we love bookmarks.

-=-=-=-

Check out some other reasons to love bookmarks!

1. It does everything a business card does, but better.
2. Remember the preschool adage: “Books are our friends”? Well, that’s still true, even now that we are all grown up. Be nice to your book. A bookmark can help.
3. They’re cheaply printed and easily changeable.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS.

The gist is this: if your potential new client isn’t forthcoming with explanations pertaining to the scope of the proposed project, isn’t available to spend time clarifying parameters, doesn’t see the value in description of wants, feels that communication is just too complicated… Thank you, but no thank you is in order. Usually the potential client just drops off in the communication volley and that should be viewed as a bullet dodged. That client would have been very difficult to work with and even harder to design for.

In order to design a site that doesn’t just visually resonate with the client whose name will proudly be displayed across the masthead, but also achieves a host of other goals such as: scalability, usability, accessibility, and the all-important: does it speak to the targeted audiences… this takes discussion and discovery. Building a website is easy. Building a website that works — more than simply having accurate linking and rendering in the major browsers without shifts — that’s pretty easy. Designing a website that works on many levels, and that continues to work on levels not yet imagined as careers and industries evolve… that takes forethought and discussion.

If your potential design house isn’t asking questions, scratch them off your list. If you are unwilling to spend the time answering questions in depth, lower your own expectations.

We ask questions. A lot of them. We find great value in the exercise. Most clients do, too.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Hosted by award-winning author and professional publicity coach Elizabeth Yarnell, these podcasts connect author to author about book promotion.

Mia Marlowe

This week, we have Mia Marlowe (one of Waxcreative’s newest launches). Mia Marlowe is a lucky girl and she knows it. Both her real life hero husband and her terrier treat her like a princess. No wonder she writes sensual historical romance with a sparkle of magic.

Listen:

What kinds of promotional efforts have brought you the most benefit in terms of recognition and book sales?

MIA: If I knew what really worked, I’d be answering this question from a beach house on Maui. However, the best way I’ve found to connect with readers has been through my blog and social networking. I attend the Romantic Times Convention and RWA National each year and so many people have introduced themselves to me by telling me they are my friend on Facebook or Twitter or that they regularly follow my blog. We have an instant connection.

What secrets can you share to help create successful book signing events?

MIA: My most successful signings have been held in conjunction with speaking engagements. If I speak for a writers or readers group and then lead them to the bookstore, I usually sell out. Organizing a signing with other authors also helps because we all benefit from the pre-signing promo we do individually. Staging readings and offering gift baskets helps create a party atmosphere readers enjoy.

Do you have branded promotional items other than paper products?

MIA: No. I’ve never bought a book based on a branded potato chip clip or bit of bling, so I haven’t invested in any.

Is there anything you always carry with you, in case you run into readers of your books?

MIA: I always carry collectible Romance Trading Card of Touch of a Thief. These are fun little cards that display my lovely cover on one side and my hot hero on the other. It can double as a bookmark or for readers who prefer ebooks, it serves as a physical record of my book in their cyber library.

Do you have a final tip to offer on conducting successful author promotions?

MIA: Find a type of promo that you enjoy. You’ll be more likely to do it consistently which is what’s needed for any kind of promo. I love blogging and social networking because it gives me a chance to hear from readers. That’s why I invested in my new website. It’s my cyber-home, my public face on the web and I’m very pleased to offer a place for my readers to learn more about me and my books and connect with me.   However much I enjoy chatting with readers online, I have no way to measure the effectiveness of this sort of promo and I need to be sure blogging, FB and tweeting doesn’t cut too deeply into my writing time. The best promotion an author can do is write the best book she possibly can. That’s my main focus.

Great tips and tricks, Mia. Thanks! For all our listeners, check back here regularly to get insider secrets from bestselling authors about what promotional tools YOU can use to support yourself as an author. Or subscribe to the Promotional Secrets for Authors podcast on iTunes!

Thanks for listening, and thanks for showing off your signed books with our gold Autographed By The Author sticker… the signature sticker that makes your signed books that much more valuable on the store shelf and in a reader’s hands.

We know you have promotional secrets to share! We’ll have an easy-to-use online form ready for you soon, but in the meantime, please email us if you want to be interviewed, be featured here, and share your secrets with other authors.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Code-level structural changes to Fan Pages, however, get a particularly fuzzy end of the lollipop. Whereas profile changes affect your personal workflow, Fan Pages are tied to your business and changes are usually subtle, sudden, and annoying (read: costly) to fix. Facebook’s most recent change brings us back into the era of (I still can’t believe it) frames. You remember — scroll bars everywhere and a URL that never changed so it was unclear where you were and impossible to link to. It was awful.

Frames had only two valid, though clunky, uses. One of which was to embed another site within your own. However, what was awkward in 2001 is simply annoying now. But Facebook’s fortune relies upon no one ever leaving their site, so Facebook tabs now employ an updated version of a rightly-euthanized type of code. Now, with iFrames (cute how the “i” makes it all seem so cutting edge, right? NOT!), when you click a link that would take you to a site, you don’t get taken to that site — you get taken to that site within a Facebook frame, complete with those less-than-fantastic scroll bars. With iFrames, Zuckerberg and Co. ensures that you never have to leave Facebook and they can continue to get ad revenue while you browse another site. Brilliant, right?

Gawker Media probably disagrees.

Frames had one other use, that was to have one section of your page that remained global while another could change. Gawker Media used an updated version of this antiquated structure (that was replaced almost entirely by SSIs before most of today’s first graders were even born) to change the their formatting across their eleven blogs, from the standard blog view to something else — a two-paned format in which the story you’re reading is wide on the left and the rest of the stories are listed on the right, in a frame, complete with — you guessed it — those annoying scrollbars. There’s no anchoring homepage. Every single page on the blog is displayed that way. Although they’ve fixed the unchanging URL-problem that plagued users ten years ago, this is also essentially frames.

It’s a terrible user experience. It’s confusing — whether you’re scrolling through the story or through the story list is dependent on where your mouse is. How do you sort by category? Or by tag? Or even by date? According to Lifehacker’s announcement the day they made the change, their major motivation was to make the user experience better, but they couldn’t have possibly tested it because across Gawker’s significant roster, users are not jumping on the bandwagon. According to The Atlantic, traffic to Gizmodo, one of Gawker’s most popular blogs, has dropped from 400,000 in January (the month before they implemented the change), to less than 100,000 today. Even with the option of viewing in traditional blog format, people hate the new Frames-style format. So much so that they have abandoned the guilty-pleasure go-to of the gawker sites. And guilty-pleasure online habits (including visiting your favorite author sites), once poisoned with a sour taste, are very hard to get back.

Facebook is a different animal than Gawker, infinitely bigger and far better integrated than arguably any other site on the web. For better or for worse, this is a Facebook world and we’re all just living in it. Business has become painfully tied to it. Too big to fail like Gawker, Facebook has become the benevolent dictator that can, on a whim, tax our resources at will and, if it wants, bring back sleeping giants.

Bottom line: employing frames might be good strategy-on-paper in Palo Alto, but it’s a very frustrating user experience online, and it’s even worse (read: so not cost-effective) to design for. But like the peasants in Cuba, all we can do is try to survive within it, hoping it doesn’t become more oppressive.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Well, me too (see above about John Bonham, RIP). I didn’t use a computer until my last paper of college. And at that, it was printed on a dot matrix printer and my professor (older and far more set in her ways than our client is now) marked the paper down from an A- to a B+ because she didn’t like “computerized papers”. She felt that they were less thoughtfully crafted.** Hmft!

In the technological flow described by Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, as we move forward at the warp speed of tweeting and the like***, it will become more and more important for those of us who remember typewriters and [gasp!] rotary phones to move faster to understand the world in which we want to compete. I spend so much time learning when I argue with myself that I should be doing more fruitful tasks like, oh, billing or working with new, incoming clients. But being open to ongoing education — both formal and informal — it’s critical. Kids these days are wired in.**** And these kids are now or will be competing for our jobs, just as I did in the early 90s when I was the resident mac-go-to-whiz-kid. Beware you 24-yr-old hotshots, the tweens are gaining on you.

I imagine that similar generational conflicts have occurred over history. I can see the pre-plague 14th century cooper disowning his son for coming up with a better way to build a barrel. The inherent problem is one of mindset: if it’s better, and we aren’t open to change, then the newly discovered bit of progress can seemingly invalidate an entire life’s work! But today we have an understanding of the mathematical curve of progress. Hopefully we will embrace it… Even us “golden oldies”.

**Incidentally, the paper was dropped from an A to an A- because my analysis comparing the descent of Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar to that of Pink in Pink Floyd’s The Wall went right over her head. She readily agreed with all my points, but couldn’t get past the lyric “We don’t need no education,” which didn’t figure into the paper at all, but was the only snippet of the album the prof knew (thank you pre-iTunes pop radio) before my paper crossed her desk. Had I not been a UCLA fifth-year ready-to-get-out-22-yr-old I would have fought it, and in retrospect, wish I had.

***I am reminded of the “interview” scene in The Social Network where the coveted position for intern was awarded to the kid who, while playing a high-pressure, multiple-shots drinking game, is able to first hack into some school mainframe or something like that.

****Wired in, indeed! Some school district in Maine is trying to convince taxpayers that in kindergarten students need an iPad2. Operative word here: need. I can’t imagine. But then again, who could have imagined today’s world back in 1980 when John Bonham was still banging a drum?

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

We believe having a great website invariably assists in reinforcing the urge to purchase. The buyer is welcomed, and reassured that the purchase is supported. The difference in entering a great website vs a mediocre or poor one is similar to the difference in entering a house that is a mess vs entering one that is tastefully decorated and picked up. It’s just more welcoming and easier to get through. It leaves the visitor with a better feeling, regardless of how much the visitor may already love you (though if said visitor doesn’t already love you, a messy house is a turn-off, isn’t it?). Furthermore, if the author’s site can display a strong community aspect, then the welcoming feeling is extended past comfort into interactivity.

Of course if you don’t have a great book then there is no level of website investment will help. And if you don’t have publisher support behind you in the form of a print run that can support a list hit, then again, no effort on your part will land you on a list. And if your promo budget doesn’t support a really good professionally designed and maintained site, then don’t kick yourself over it — you will do the best you can. But it is hard to deny a connection between a great website and the ongoing building of a solid following. And a solid following unequivocally helps in terms of sales, primarily early sales which lead to listmaking. And impressive early sales almost always come into play during contract negotiations.

And the hip bone’s connected to the backbone…

* Jennie actually hit the list many months ago. I *just* found this screenshot in my files.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.