WOW! Writers Using Their Powers for Good

 

Last week, Nicole posted and encouraged us to nominate WOW! for Writer’s Digests 101 Best Websites for Writers. I immediately clicked through and filled out the nomination. 

Then I went to a Zoom meeting for another writing organization. When I left, I was shaking.  I’m not going to go into the details but suffice it to say that the negative energy was palpable. I wished that I hadn’t already nominated WOW! for the Writer’s Digest award because now I had so much more to say about what a great place this is. 

If you are new to WOW! Women on Writing, you may not be familiar with everything the community has to offer. And first thing, realize that this is a community. We write a wide variety of things, we publish traditionally and independently, and live scattered across the globe. And yet we are a community of writers working together to strengthen each other’s work.  Here are some of the ways that we do this.

Blog 

If you’re reading this, you’ve discovered the Muffin, the community blog. Come back several times a week and read the posts and you’ll discover just how varied this community is. We are essayists, children’s book writers, magazine journalists, poets, and more. Because of this, the information is wide ranging.  You'll find yourself challenged to learn more and try new things.

Contests 

WOW! sponsors quarterly contests in flash fiction and creative essays. A variable entry fee allows participants to enter the contest or enter and receive a critique. Contest winners are interviewed on the blog. These interviews are a great way to find out what inspires other writers as well as how they hone their work. Many give tips on how to know if your work is ready for competition. 

Classes 

I’ve taken WOW! classes on school visits with Margo Dill, on narrative structure with Madeline Dyer, and on writing graphic novels with Melanie Faith. You will find classes on writing, rewriting, and marketing your work. There are classes on platform and on research. That last one, the class on research, is mine and you can find out about it here. 

If you want access to actionable information and feedback on your work and ideas, pick out a class. Tell me which one you’ve chosen because I’m having troubles picking out my next one!  

Newsletters 

With so much going on in one community, it can be hard to keep track of it all. It helps if you visit often and subscribe to the newsletters. Click on this link and fill out the form. Me? I checked it all! As I attempt to tell you which is my favorite, I waffle. Every newsletter about classes tempts me to sign up for something new. Markets newsletters send me to my files, looking for pieces that will allow me to take advantage of the many publishing opportunities WOW! has helped prepare me to try.

I can’t say enough positive things about this community. Thank you to Angela and to my fellow bloggers and instructors. Thank you to all my fellow writers who make this the place that it is. Where many corners of the internet are filled with negative energy and toxic tongues, WOW! is a community of writers who excel at using their powers for good. 

--SueBE

Sue Bradford Edwards' is the author of over 35 books for young readers.  To find out more about her writing, visit her site and blog, One Writer's Journey.

The next session of her new course, Pitching, Querying and Submitting Your Work will begin on December 4, 2022).  Coping with rejection is one of the topics she will cover in this course.

Sue is also the instructor for  Research: Prepping to Write Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins December 4, 2022) and Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins December 4, 2022). 

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Upgrade Your Site with a Favicon

Every Saturday, I read Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed newsletter. One recent newsletter featured a piece on generating a favicon for your website. It explained that favicons are those tiny icons that appear on browser tabs. 

Below is the favicon for WOW! Women on Writing. Not only does it appear on your browser tab, you can also find it in your search history and in search results. It makes WOW! and the Muffin easy to find amid all the other tabs, sites, and searches that we writers visit on a regular basis. 

As I read the piece in Electric Speed, I was a little envious. I’ve always wanted a favicon although I didn’t know what it was called until that very moment. But did I want it badly enough to take the time to figure it out? The answer was yes and it was helped by the fact that it was wildly easy to do.

I started with Friedman's newsletter and the link she provided to Real Favicon Generator. This site will help you see if your blog or site can support a favicon. It will also help you generate the JPG file of the image. 

The Saturday that I was reading this, my site had the WordPress logo. That's fine for WordPress but not so fine for me. There are a lot of WordPress blogs and blending into the pack wasn’t going to do me any good. 

But what to use? This is the step that is going to take a bit of time. Yes, you can just choose a piece of clip art, but you don’t want to use something random. You want to use something that will immediately make people think of you. If you write mysteries that are solved by a Sherlock Holmes-style sleuth, you might use a magnifying glass. If you write romance novels, you might use a heart. 

Fortunately, I have a logo. It is my nickname set against an oblong background (see below). You might not realize it by looking at the favicons in your browser, but the image is square. My image was rectangular, longer than it is tall. Real Favicon Generator will fix that for you, expanding the image. I fixed it using Photoshop by expanding the canvas size. 

I wasn’t altogether certain how to add this to my site once I had it, so I did a quick Google search. That led me to “How to Add a Favicon to Your WordPress Blog.” Honestly, let other people do the heavy lifting by figuring things out whenever you can. If you have a WordPress site, click through.  If not?  Google is your friend.

In less than 20 minutes, I had sized my image and uploaded my favicon. My site and my blog will now stand out among the WordPress blogs that don’t have a unique image. It isn’t something that you have to do but it is something you might seriously consider. It adds just a bit more professionalism to your site and makes you just a bit easier to find. It’s small but it can help make you and your work more visible, which isn’t a bad thing in a crowded marketplace. 

--SueBE

Sue Bradford Edwards' is the author of over 35 books for young readers.  To find out more about her writing, visit her site and blog, One Writer's Journey.

The next session of her new course, Pitching, Querying and Submitting Your Work will begin on November 6, 2022).  Coping with rejection is one of the topics she will cover in this course.

Sue is also the instructor for  Research: Prepping to Write Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins November 6, 2022) and Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins November 6, 2022). 

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Promoting Your Book with WOW! Women on Writing

Promoting your book is important and WOW! Women on Writing offers options to meet your needs. Please contact Renee, Jodi, or Crystal via blogtour@wow-womenonwriting.com to learn more!

Our most popular blog tour lasts 3 to 4 weeks and includes 10 or more blog stops starting right here! This stop at the Muffin includes a contest giving away a copy of your book, as well as an interview and details about where readers can find you online. The general layout of this stop includes a summary of your book and image of the book cover, your author biography and your head shot, a calendar of the upcoming stops on the tour, and the interview. The rest of the blog stops can take many different formats: interviews, book reviews, guest posts, or book giveaways. The blogger usually chooses what option best fits their audience. Most stops seem to be a guest post and giveaway or a review and giveaway. For instance, the author of a children’s book about OCD offered bloggers articles on advocating for children with special needs and doing online research about medical problems and the mental healthcare system. A cozy mystery writer who was also the mother of twins offered an article on baking with children (the amateur detective in her book was also a baker).

There are so many possibilities. The guest posts are usually very brief—often 500 words or fewer.

When we set up your blog tour you will be asked to provide a list of topics you would be comfortable writing about and these would be offered to bloggers interested in having you do a guest post for their blog. You can get a better feel for our tours by visiting http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs095/1101417136261/archive/1102368944417.html and scrolling down to Events Newsletter.

We have several writers’ blogs that we contact regularly but we also try to tailor your blog tour to you and your book. For instance, a children’s book would be a better fit for some blogs and would likely not a good fit for others. Similarly, the children’s book wouldn’t cross paths with a steamy romance. For this reason, our blog tour managers (Renee, Jodi, and Crystal) read your book before setting up the tour. This ensures the blog stops are a good fit for you and your book. If you are interested, the first step  is for you to answer our Author Survey (we would be happy to email you copy, but the questions are at the bottom of this post as well) so we can get a better feel for you.

Once we have the completed Author Survey and have finished reading your book, we approach bloggers about your book and organize a list of dates for your blog stops. After the dates are set, the bloggers will receive the following information:

· The official tour book summary
· A .jpg file of your book cover
· Your biography
· A .jpg file of your headshot

At this time, you will receive the list of tour stops and you can begin working on the guest posts or interviews mentioned earlier. These guest posts or completed interviews are provided to the bloggers 2 weeks prior to your blog stop at their blog/website. If the blogger has chosen to do a book review, they will be busy reading (most prefer an e-copy, but some will ask for a hard copy – as these are requested, we will let you or your publisher know and you can send them out).

The authors we have worked with have been very happy with how WOW! Blog Tours present them to readers. Often, these are readers they may not have reached doing publicity on their own. This is also a great way to save time—allowing you time to write your next book, be with your family, or attend life events. The tours are affordable and effective!

We are happy to customize a tour to meet your needs, we offer a Tweet Tour as an add-on to the basic tour outlined above, and 2017 brings along some additional options and add ons:

WOW! Authors on the Air Tour:
- Written pitch highlighting your book with interview topics sent to radio show hosts
- 4 or 5 podcast/radio spots
- Promotion of events on WOW's Twitter for each spot



Professional Book Trailer Add-On:
- A 45-second video using text, images, music, and video clips without voice over but with sound effects (if appropriate). Also features additional clips and reviews along with the script.


This is the same video package seen at Dramatic Videos (http://www.dramaticvideos.com) called "Guest Spot" (http://www.dramaticvideos.com/#!purchase/c1vud) . The videos usually take no longer than two weeks to make. There's an FAQ section on the site if you have any questions about it.


If you are thinking about a tour, please contact us today at: blogtour@wow-womenonwriting.com and one of our helpful blog tour managers, (Renee, Jodi, or Crystal) would be happy to tell you more!




AUTHOR SURVEY:


· What is your book about? Will you be providing an e-copy or hard copy so I may begin reading?

· Who is your audience?

· What group would you like to reach that you haven’t yet? Has your book been featured on any blogs? If so, which one(s)?

· How soon would you be able to provide bloggers with review copies, e-book excerpts, or other promotional products for giveaway on their blogs? How many? Some authors have a specific number, some would prefer to give e-books or pdfs if possible, and others have publishers willing to give each blog two copies (one for the blogger and one for giveaway). It’s helpful if we know the parameters before we start approaching bloggers.

· List at least eight topics you would be willing to write guests posts about. We prefer some writer topics and some non-writer topics if possible.

· Where can readers find you online (website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc…)?

· When would you like to launch your tour? You can give us a month or a particular date and we will try to work that in. We always launch on Mondays and keep in mind it’s better to have a tour after the book is released. This allows readers to purchase it immediately. The longer we have to set up a tour, the better for everyone (8 weeks is the absolute minimum).


We look forward to hearing from you and congratulations on your book!

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