Bravo OK Go! Wired has a great article on how this Rube Goldberg machine was built, but feat of engineering or not, it’s beautiful to watch.

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

NEW BOOKS:

In early February perennial powerhouse LORI FOSTER released Back in Black, which promptly hit the NYT list (yay!). AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: Grab a link to a free online read from Lori’s home page. There are more links like this on her site – go explore!

Mid-month: MICHAEL SPRADLIN released his beautiful picture book Off Like The Wind! The First Ride of the Pony Express. AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: Michael is in the sixth inning of his nine-inning contest through his blog. A quick comment could win you an awesome book!

CJ CARMICHAEL released The P.I. Contest, the second book in her Fox & Fisher Detective Agency trilogy. AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: Catch the fun story behind the book’s dedication on CJ’s blog.

Late-February: SOPHIA NASH released Secrets of a Scandalous Bride, Book IV (final book) in the Widows Club series. AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: I have said it before, but nothing has changed to lessen its impact — Sophia’s Lexicon of Slang is a must browse.

Re-release bonus: DIANE GASTON’s A Reputable Rake was rereleased in the UK’s Regency High Society Affairs Vol. 13. AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: Grab a link for free shipping from Diane’s home page.

NEW EXCERPTS:

CJ CARMICHAEL posted an excerpt from Receptionist Under Cover, due out in mid-March.

LOIS FAYE DYER posted an excerpt from Cinderella and the Playboy, due out in early April.

RED GARNIER posted an excerpt from Men of Danger, featuring Red’s novella Reckless. Men of Danger is due out in late-April.

GERRI RUSSELL posted a sneak peek excerpt from Seducing The Knight, also due out in late April.

More next month. Stay tuned!

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Okay, so this may be true for those dozen (or three) people who wrote in. And I absolutely respect how loudly such comments can color your opinion of your own content. But do not forget, that your loudest contingent is rarely your largest, most representative, or your only.

When designing your content you must consider all your audience sectors — the hard-core invested, the curiously interested, and the merely intrigued. You need both sales content and you need reinforcement content. You need several lures. You can’t put it all on your home page (that will look like a circus, but good navigation should consider that your audience consists of levels), and you can’t fill your blog with only one audience appeal. These are your portals. This is where your audience — all of it — first sees you. Be welcoming and encouraging.

Here is a short tale of what it feels like to be the audience who is forgotten. For me, it’s yoga. Once upon a time I went somewhat regularly. Then life, motherhood, and work messed with my schedule and suddenly I was ten-plus years out and my stamina was gone. Every time I tried to get back to yoga I felt like the cross-eyed stepchild in the back of the room who couldn’t hold a down facing dog for any respectable stretch.

I passed my neighborhood yoga studio and looked at the window wistfully, longingly, like a cute boy way out of my league. I felt that they did not have classes for me. I couldn’t carve out 90 minutes, and when I did I was disheartened by the end. I needed to be eased back in. I needed shorter, more basic classes and my neighborhood studio felt closed to me. And I know I wasn’t alone because I’d heard the moms at the park talking, and just yesterday the people in front of me in line at Trader Joe’s described going to the studio as intimidating (at which point I thought, Well, that’s just bad for branding).

I finally said something, and they were stunned. Of course we have classes for you!

Maybe I had just missed it. So I looked again at their newsletter — info about advanced workshops. New level 2 classes, etc. Well, that’s what our regulars were asking for.

Okay. Sure. You need to appeal to your regulars. I get that. But how can you grow your audience if you ONLY appeal to those you already have?

I suggested a small invitation in their window, website, and on their newsletter: NEW TO YOGA? or EASE YOGA BACK INTO YOUR LIFE or WE HAVE BEGINNER CLASSES — something inviting that spoke to this forgotten audience — yes, we have content for you. Follow this little icon to these classes…

Moral of the story: Diehards will ignore what they don’t love. They will remain devoted unless you tick them off. The quiet, forgotten audience will rarely speak up.

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

WE LOVE WHAT WE DO!

This is card #2 — check out card #1. Which makes you swoon?

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

(Check back on Sunday for our other Valentine card. We made two.
Then tell us which you liked better.)

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

I regularly suggest to authors that they write a little something on their website for readers to read after reading the books. Something to help readers continue in the warm glow of the wonderful story they have just read. Some extra content to help solidify the brand experience. This is not a sales strategy, this is author-reader relationship building. And there are many, many ways to do this. Here are a few:

Kathryn Caskie gives interesting insight into aspects of her book in her Inside the Story feature. Elizabeth Boyle offers incredible Footnotes complete with character lists and more. Jennie Lucas has a wonderful online after-the-story additional epilogue feature for some of her books (Beware: this one is s spoiler). Eloisa James deliciously provides Extra Chapters for each of her Desperate Duchesses series (login required). Julia Quinn has a whole set of Second Epilogues for her Bridgerton series (purchase required, but for those not wishing to purchase the $1.99 e-book, there is a plethora of other info on the series.) More on series: Joy Nash provides a page full of info about one of her series. Stephanie Tyler has extensive extras, and Pamela Palmer has several series, all with extra info. It’s a readers’ bonanza. (And there are many more examples… Just tool through our portfolio.)

All this, because after a reader spends so much time with your characters, you will have done your job if your reader is wistful, and if you’re lucky, said reader might welcome a chance to revisit them and be reminded about how much they enjoyed spending time in the world you created. That reminder is crucial to the emotioanl branding bonding process.

Yes, a little extra content goes all this way.

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

NEW BOOKS:

STEPHANIE TYLER landed on bookshelves twice this month: Too Hot to Hold, the second book in the Hard to Hold trilogy rang in the New Year, and  Hold on Tight, the third book hit stores earlier this week. AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: There is so much extra on this site. Two months ago I mentioned the maps, soundtracks, and character lists to enhance the reading experience. This month I will simply say: meet Gus.

PAMELA PALMER anthology Bitten by Cupid (Hearts Untamed is the title of Pam’s novella and is part of the Feral Warriors set) released earlier this month and promptly hit #14 on the New York Times bestseller list! AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: Find out what hidden pockets in books had to do with the writing of this book. After that there is always the BB.

CJ CARMICHAEL starts a three-month, three-book series this month with Perfect Partners?, the first book in The Fox & Fisher Detective Agency trilogy. AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: ten days left on a two-author contest. Too fun.

JENNIE LUCAS can now be bought since Bought: The Greek’s Baby is newly in stores. (Sorry, I couldn’t help it). AUTHOR WEBSITE BONUS: get more to the story.

NEW EXCERPTS and SNEAK PEEKS:

CJ CARMICHAEL posted an excerpt from The P.I. Contest, due in stores February 8.

MICHAEL SPRADLIN posted an excerpt from Baseball From A to Z, due in stores March 23.

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

~~~~

I finally did it. I took the plunge and reformatted my computer. I had MEANT to do it two weeks ago, but well, you know… life happens. As I’ve mentioned before, reformatting a computer means a time commitment — if you want to be able to be up and running in the same day, that is!

Feeling confident in my preparations, I opened up the chassis, blew out about five pounds of dust, installed my newly acquired 2G of RAM, plugged keyboard, mouse, and power back in, and started in on the reformatting, which took a lot less time than I thought it would. I managed to get all the appropriate updates done, drivers installed, and my security suite and other essential programs installed in just a couple of hours. The only casualty of the reformatting? Windows 7 doesn’t like one of my printers. Someday I’ll work on that issue.

The real “fun” of reformatting is getting to work on a computer which is – for all intents and purposes — brand new. It is a chance to start fresh. Don’t like your file structuring? When you reformat, create a structure you like, and then transfer your data into that structure, weeding out the extraneous and non-necessary files along the way. You may re-discover a forgotten photo, or find that essay you wrote seven years ago. It takes time and patience, and you certainly don’t need to do it all in one sitting. My data files, as I mentioned in my previous post, reside on my home server, but that didn’t stop me from starting a restructuring process this time around. My programs still have their default go-to data folders, so when I set those, I started the data restructuring. I’ve found some long-forgotten gems, and well as many (many) duplicates. I suspect I will still be sorting through files and “re-filing them” well into the summer (maybe beyond), as I’m managing to get about thirty minutes done a day, but it is well-worth it.

Now, if I could only re-organize my house in the same manner!

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

But the January 12 earthquake is now a week past. It’s still front page news certainly, but it is no longer the only news story. If you didn’t get a chance to donate last week, please do it now. If you donated last week and can again, please do. Or if you need to wait a month or until your next paycheck, please bookmark this page or head to Partners in Health and bookmark there. Partners in Health has been working in Haiti for over 20 years and is well-equipped to get care to the people who need it most.

As someone living in a major earthquake zone, I send thanks to you… and to the world. And from this paycheck I also send $100 to Haiti… Because I can’t not.

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

I did not agree. The content did not contain enough about her, which has to be, IMO, one of the main goals of an author website. I had had to gently twist her typing fingers to get her to understand that Yes, it was about the books, but it was not nothing but the books, so help me God. She did not want to “ram ME ME ME down people’s throats.” She just didn’t believe people would be all that interested in her, per se. Of course the ego trip can be overdone, but there are ways to include enough info about oneself so that those who want it will seek it and those who don’t won’t.

It took a little doing, but I was able to convince her. And now I want to convince you. As an author (or realtor, photographer, wedding consultant, massage therapist, artist, or any other profession where much of the success of your product depends upon you personally), there is a significant level of loving the product that depends upon an emotional attachment with the person who created the product. You. In some fields such as realty, trust. In others, writing and publishing, where you are asking people to give over hours upon hours of their time to fall in love with your characters and settings, etc. That means you actually want people to develop a crush on you, or the idea of you. “Oh, I love Elizabeth Boyle, too,” was an email I recently received from someone after posting my own adoration.

Some people are experts at being adored, and for some people this is just awkward. But this is business. Give your online audience enough info to feed their crush. Definitely stop short of TMI, and and of course neither encourage stalkers nor bore your audience to death with endless mundane inanities, but if someone has just read your book and is riding that high, give them enough on your bio page to smile more. To feel that they have met you. To reinforce that crush. You are a celebrity to your readers. Throw them a juicy, meaty bone. Your website should be about your books, because selling your books is what allows you to keep writing. But your website is YourName.com — it needs to be about you, too. Because somewhere, some one is turning to the person next to them and saying, “I love her!”

And that is definitely a goal.

©2010 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.