If you write online for years on end there will come a point where you will end up with multiple old blogs and abandoned writing projects residing on various platforms across the web.
Just to give a personal example, I have a blog on Tumblr that I played with in late 2015 and early 2016, and I also have a humor blog filled with dad jokes that I still use from time to time. I plan to take Mike Cane’s approach of letting the old blog(s) lie fallow after I put down the keyboard and walked away, but did you know we have another option?
One question I have been getting more and more from authors is how to move their old blog to their new site without mixing the old and new posts. Sometimes the author had switched genres or audiences, or perhaps they had decided they wanted to adopt a different blogging style but didn’t want to throw away all they had written before.
It used to be that you had to set up separate sites so you could keep the old and new content separate (see Rocket Bomber and its archive for an example), but lately what I have been doing is using the "Custom Post Type" feature of WordPress to set up a second (or third, or fourth) blog on a WordPress site just to act as an archive for an old blog.
I’ve used this trick three times in the past year to give a client’s site a second blog. In one case it was an archive for old blog posts, and in the other two cases my clients just wanted two separate blogs on one site. (BTW, I will soon be using this trick on The Digital Reader so I can continue to write posts like this one and yet keep them out of the main blog. TDR is a news blog, and the post you’re reading right now – while very interesting – doesn’t quite fit.)
The cool thing about this second blog idea is that you still get to use things like categories, tags, and featured images on the extra blog(s) – it even has its own RSS feed which readers can follow. But best of all, a second blog is relatively easy to set up. (Now, if you want to move posts from a whole other site, for example a Blogger or Tumblr blog, it is going to be a little more difficult to put them on the second blog on a WordPress site. But it can be done.)
To set up the second blog, I use a plugin called Custom Post Type UI to create the second blog (CPT UI does a lot more than just make a second blog, but that is the topic of another post). All I have to do is fill in certain key technical details, and click the blue button, and most of the work is taken care of for me.
Now, this plugin doesn’t work with all WP themes, but generally I have found that it is a quick and easy way to create a second blog.
Word is circulating through KBoards and Facebook today that Amazon is testing a new site where authors can track their sales data. It’s called KDP Reports, and looks something like this:
I have no ebooks in the Kindle Store, so I can’t show you the site in action, but it does sound useful:
Welcome to the new KDP Reports beta! We’ll be adding more reports — including historical data for Sales, KENP Read, and Royalties — in the future, so stay tuned!
It would appear this site is intended to compete with the sales analytics tools like AKReport and Book Report.
Names are important. Choose the wrong name for a book or series and you can kill its sales before it even reaches the market. This is why it is so critical to find out what readers think when they read a title, and what words they use when talking about it.
Guess what? I can help you with that. The Digital Reader has just completed an extensive survey where we asked librarians to list the most commonly requested book titles. We will soon publish a report on this topic, but in the meantime here is a sampling of our results.
If you use one of these titles for your next book, it will be the first result that comes up when someone searches for the name.
I Saw A Dragon on the Cover
That One About Werewolves
Sexy Vampires
It Had Spaceships?
I Heard About It On the Radio
Oprah Liked It
There was a Woman on the Cover – I Think She Had a Sword?
Earlier today I did some behind the scenes work to speed up my site, and I thought it might be helpful if I walked you through the process and shared a bunch of tech tips that don’t really translate to list posts.
As you may recall, I spent last Saturday night replacing my blog theme. One of the reasons I wanted to make the change was that my site was slow when running the old theme (Magazine from MH Themes).*
The blog posts and pages were loading in four to six seconds. That is an acceptable load time if your site is on a terrible hosting company like EIG, InMotion, Godaddy, BlueHost, LiquidWeb, or 1&1,** but my sites are on my own server. I don’t have to share resources with anyone other than clients, so my site should really be loading faster than four seconds. ***
I did have a plugin called WP Rocket that was supposed to speed up my site, but it wasn’t really helping any more. (Plus, it broke every so often and showed visitors random code in place of blog posts.) I wanted to replace WP Rocket, but my preferred alternative was not compatible with my old theme.
But then this morning I got another bug report from someone seeing random code in place of the blog post they wanted to read, so I decided it was time to stop putting off fixing this problem.
I spent some time today installing and configuring a plugin called Swift Performance Lite. This free plugin is not widely used yet, but it is currently very popular in WordPress tech support circles because it is easy to set up and is highly effective at speeding up WP sites.
The first thing I did was make a backup of my site, and then I deactivated WP Rocket. Performance plugins sometimes do not play well together, so you should take care not to use two plugins to do the same job.
Next, I installed Swift Performance Lite, made sure my site was still running (sometimes you don’t know a plugin will cause problems until after you turn it on), and let it run its setup wizard.
The great thing about Swift Lite is that this plugin does most of the work for you. I have seen client sites go from loading in eight seconds to loading in three seconds after running the setup wizard (it really is that good).
Swift Lite improved my site’s load time to around three and a half seconds. I know this because I tested the site with GTmetrix, a free, online, comprehensive site performance test.
But as good as that was, I wanted to see if I could do better. So what I did next was to go into Swift Lite’s settings menu and enable its options one by one. My process worked something like this:
Check a box to activate a feature.
Save the settings, and clear the cache.
Re-run the GTmetrix test to see if performance improved.
If the site is slower, uncheck the box and save the settings again.
Go on to the next feature, and repeat the process.
After a half hour of testing one feature at a time, I managed to get my site to load in under two and a quarter seconds. Some pages are even loading in as little as 1.7 seconds.
That is a great load time, enough so that I can declare victory and stop. (For one thing, my time would be better spent optimizing my clients’s sites.)
I do actually know how to make my site load even faster, but at this point the trade off isn’t worth it. I’ve already taken a lot of steps to speed up my site, including doing things like removing non-essential plugins, so what I would have to do next is to look at my essential plugins and decide which feature I no longer wanted on my site. Since I am kinda attached to things like a spam filter, firewall, and mailing list sign up form, I can’t exactly give them up.
All in all, this was definitely worth an hour of my time. My site is faster, and I got a blog post out of it as well.
If you have a site, you should definitely take some time to see if it can run faster. Or better yet, hire me. This is one of the services I offer under my monthly support plans.
* * *
P.S. One of the reasons I chose my new theme (SiteOrigin Corp) was that in my experience SiteOrigin themes loaded quickly. I sped up my site by replacing a slow theme with a fast one.
P. P.S. Yes, those are terrible hosting companies, and yes, your site would be faster if it were hosted elsewhere. I have horror stories about each and every one of those hosting companies, and would not wish them on my worst enemy.
P.P.P.S. If you want a recommendation for a better alternative with great service at an excellent price, I’ll let you in on a secret known to very few: Peopleshost. I have my server with them, and I also have a client on their managed WordPress hosting. I was surprised by the performance given the price they charge for WP hosting.
We have known for the past 18 months that Gutenberg was going to one day change just about every aspect of running a WordPress site from publishing posts to designing pages.
Now we know when the Gutenberg is going to happen. Earlier this week the official word came down that Gutenberg will be released with the next major release of WordPress 5.0 on 19 November.
WordPress 5.0 will be focussed on merging the Gutenberg plugin into trunk. In addition, there are two related areas of new development:
Updating the default themes to work well with the block editor, and creating the new Twenty Nineteen theme.
Creating an upgrade experience to remove the Gutenberg plugin and offer the Classic Editor plugin.
Given the scope of this change, there won’t be any extra feature focuses. In order to ensure that we can keep the release schedule, minor changes, and bug fixes will only be included on a case-by-case basis.
I have written about Gutenberg a couple times, so I won’t repeat myself. Instead, I will discuss what I plan to do.
My current Gutenberg mitigation plan is to do my best to avoid it for as long as possible. Yes, I fully plan to build test sites in Gutenberg in the next few weeks, and I might even build new sites for clients, but I will not be using Gutenberg with existing sites because in its current form it could wreck perfectly functional sites.
Keeping a site up and running is more important than adopting the latest shiny tech, which is why I plan to install either the Classic Editor plugin or the Disable Gutenberg plugin on all of my sites and my clients' sites.
These two plugins can each restore the older editor interface, making it possible to continue to use plugins and other customizations that depend on the previous editor.
I will be installing and testing these plugins in the weeks leading up to 19 November, and I would recommend that you do the same.
A lot of this advice is good, but I also think it is incomplete.
I recently attended a Meetup hosted by Robin Sullivan, wife and business manager of fantasy author Michael Sullivan, where she covered the topic of author branding (the following post draws heavily upon her presentation). One of the points she raised was how to write an author bio. Robin argues that authors need more than just the one bio because they are going to be used for more than one purpose.
Authors need bios that can be used on social media profiles, Goodreads and Amazon author pages, and on the web. Since we are looking at radically different lengths, this essentially means multiple different bios.
Update: I’ve just been working on my Facebook profile. It has space two bios, one of which is 101 characters long.
the Facebook intro bio: 101 characters
the Twitter bio: 160 characters
the podcast intro: 20 words
the speaker bio: 50 words
the Amazon/Goodreads profile bio: 250 to 400 words
Sidenote: Robin told me that the profile bio should be 800 words or more, but that’s actually longer than the examples she shared. I checked both of Michael Sullivan’s bios she provided and found that they were 247 and 387 words long. I changed the word count to reflect that detail.
I would recommend that you put all four bios on the about page on your author site so that anyone who is writing about you cam find it.
Of course, first you have to write them, but don’t stress too much because this is one of those things where you can start with "pretty good" and improve it over time.
You don’t have to put your entire life out on display, but you do need to concentrate on the things you want to be known for. Your goal is to establish your brand, and consistently display it across all platforms (freelancers have the same issue, if that helps).
Try to define yourself in a single word or phrase. For example, Joe Konrath could be described as contentious self-pub evangelist, and anyone who knows Check Wendig would describe him as inventively foul-mouthed.
You should also try to answer the following questions.
What’s your purpose, your cause, your belief?
Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
Why should anyone care?
I happen to be sorely in need of better-written bios, so why don’t I go walk us through the process of rewriting my bios.
Let’s start with my goal: I want to be known as the guy who can fix your website.
As a first step, let’s change that so it reflects why I do what I do: I want to be known as the guy who can I live to fix your website. (That sounds a little obsessive, but it is okay.)
With the exception of my long bio, none of my bios really make that point, especially my Twitter bio.
Not only is it too short, it’s out of date; I don’t maintain the second account anymore. The following bio might work better:
Speaker to websites. WordPress wizard. Slayer of bugs. Error code breaker. I know why tech goes thump in the night. Fixing your tech problem is my nirvana.
With its references to SF and fantasy, this Twitter bio is intriguing while at the same time explaining what I do and why. And according to LetterCount.com, it is 155 characters long. Add in 5 pound symbols to turn keywords into hashtags, and we reach exactly 160 characters allowed by Twitter.
While this might not be the perfect Twitter bio, it’s also not boring or stale. It is good enough for now, so let’s move on to the profile bio.
Amazon/Goodreads profile bio
The thing you should know about the profile bio is that it is long enough that you can use the one bio for a couple different purposes. Also, you will probably want to tailor your bio to each site you use it on.
I won’t link to my profile bio; it was written to serve a very different purpose. Instead, I want to show you a a couple examples.
On Amazon the bio is going to be displayed in a sidebar on the left side of the screen next to a column of books. That’s why in this situation Michael Sullivan’s bio focuses first on the author’s origin story before listing his bibliography, current projects, and contact info.
Over on Goodreads, however, an author’s bio is displayed at the top of the page, followed by the FAQ and a lit of the author’s books. That’s why Sullivan’s bio on Goodreads focuses first on the works he is currently promoting and second on the author.
You should read both, and compare/contrast.
Podcast / Speaker bio
Here’s the speaker bio I provided to Bookbaby for the Indie Author Con (FYI: I am on a panel!). At 54 words, it is perfectly workable but still rather bland.
Nate Hoffelder has been building and running WordPress sites since 2010. He blogs about indie publishing and helps authors connect with readers by customizing websites to suit each author’s voice. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group. You can find him over at The Digital Reader.
One problem with the above bio is that it is little more than a Dragnet-esque recital of the facts. That is not necessarily a bad thing (in fact, I think I’ll save this bio just in case I can use it again), but it doesn’t really tell you why I do what I do.
Let’s try again:
Nate Hoffelder is here to chew bubble gum and fix broken websites, and he is all out of bubble gum. He has been blogging about indie authors since 2010 while learning new tech skills at the drop of a hat. He fixes author sites, and shares what he learns at The Digital Reader.
The bold text is the podcast bio, while the full text is the speaker bio.
TBH I am not sure that my second bio is better than the first; I think I may need y’all to A-B test it for me. Which one do you like?
Edit: I have decided to combine the old and new bios, and add a new sentence:
Nate Hoffelder has been building and running WordPress sites since 2010. He blogs about indie publishing and helps authors connect with readers by customizing websites to suit each author’s voice. You may have heard his site, The Digital Reader, mentioned on podcasts such as The Creative Penn, Wordslinger, or Sell More Books Show. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group.
I’d love to hear what you think; please leave a comment.
Between marketing, social media, ads, writing, and book formatting, there are a million and one skills authors and other creators need to learn over the course of their career. And to make matters worse, sometimes we don’t even realize we need to learn a skill or that there are free resources which can teach us that skill.
For example, I taught myself how to make blog graphics one brutal, error-filled, frustrating step at a time because I didn’t know there was a free course that could have saved me a lot of time and effort.
In the interest of saving you from repeating my mistakes, I have pulled together a list of courses that authors and other creatives can take for free. I actually came across a few of these courses earlier this week and found them so useful that I wanted to share my good fortune.
All of the courses listed here are free, and I will continue to add courses over time. If you want to recommend a course for inclusion please fill out the form at the end of this post. (This goes double if it’s your course; one other reason for this post is that I wanted to give experts who teach these courses a reason to reach out to me.)
For the most part these are video courses, and that may present accessibility problems. (Reedsy is the exception; most/all of their courses are text-based.)
Let’s start with the course platforms. If you can’t find the course you need in this post there is a chance you’ll find it on one of these sites.
Along with Pluralsight, Udemy is a leading online learning platform. Udemy has an extensive catalog of free courses, including nearly 500 just in the marketing category.
Would you like your writing to flow, not flounder? Is your lack of focus holding you back? Join this free, 5-part mini course, delivered in bite-size email lessons.
TBD
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I’d like to thank the many people who suggested courses on Facebook, as well as Kirsten of Create If for pointing me to her post on free courses.
If you know of a course not listed above, please let me know!
Fill out the form below, and I’ll add the course to the list.
What do you call a group of 3 or more adults under 40? (a podcast)
Podcasts are now so widespread that they inspired me to write the above joke, but that prevalence is also a curse. There are so many podcasts in production right now that it can be difficult to find one with a focus on the topics that interest you.
With that in mind, over the last month I have been looking for podcasts that cover book publishing. I have so far found ten nineteen podcasts, and gathered them into the following list. (Fun fact: I have been a guest on two of the podcasts, and have also been mentioned on at least five of them.)
This has been an interesting project for me because it helped me refine my thinking on podcasts. As I see it, there are two ways to classify podcasts: industry and topic. The difference is that some podcasts cover a topic that applies to many industries, while others focus on several topics within a single industry.
Almost all of the podcasts listed below are industry podcasts, not topic podcasts. These are great podcasts, but one way topic podcasts may be better is they will introduce you to ideas from other industries, possibly inspiring out of the box solutions to your problems.
If you are looking for more podcasts to follow, that is worth keeping in mind.
Kevin Tumlinson talks to authors and entrepreneurs to get their behind-the-scenes story. Tune in to a full hour of wisdom and insight from some of the most intriguing people on the planet. It’s all about the story here.
Authors, are you struggling to get the word out about your books? Discover the latest book marketing and self publishing news, tools and strategies. Every week you’ll get helpful tips and ideas to make your book sales soar.
In the Frontmatter podcast authors talk about their careers and their areas of expertise, making it a general interest podcast covering everything authors write books about, from startups to biology to software development and the future of labor.
The “AskALLi Self-Publishing Advice Broadcast" is a rotating series of four monthly podcasts crafted to help you cut through the noise to get only the most up-to-date and important self-publishing advice.
Two writers. One just starting out. The other a best-selling indie author. Join James Blatch and Mark Dawson and their amazing guests as they discuss how you can make a living telling stories. There’s never been a better time to be a writer.
Interviews with members of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and those involved in RMFW conferences, workshops and other writing-related events. Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers is a non-profit, volunteer-run organization dedicated to supporting, encouraging, and educating writers seeking publication in commercial fiction.
Tune in for weekly discussions about LGBTQ storytelling in all genres and mediums. Our guests share personal accounts on living the artistic life and their personal experiences writing, crafting, and reading stories that explore the edges of what’s accepted and where storytelling should be headed.
Cheryl Phipps, Trudi Jaye, Shar Barratt and Wendy Vella are four writers (romance & urban fantasy) from New Zealand who podcast weekly about self-publishing. Especially for those new or curious about self publishing, our podcast is full of full of tips, resources and honest tales from the trenches!
Stories turn songs into symphonies, events into memories, and lives into legends. In our crowded world, “knowing your story” cuts through the noise so you can make your mark — whether you want to sell more books, increase profits, or just make a difference. At Sterling & Stone, Story is our business. The Story Studio Podcast is where we explore ways we can all tell our stories better.
The Self Publishing Journeys podcast is a weekly show for all indie authors. Show host Paul Teague interviews self- published authors about their writing journeys, passing on hints, tips and tricks along the way.
Valerie Khoo and Allison Tait, both successful journalists and authors, bring you the latest in news, opportunities, trends – and gossip – in the world of writing blogging and publishing. Whether you love the creative inspiration of Elizabeth Gilbert, the life-hacking non-fiction of Tim Ferriss or the phenomena that is JK Rowling, you’ll find it here.
Hear how bestselling authors such as Mark Edwards, Miranda Dickinson, C.L. Taylor, Mel Sherratt and Julie Cohen write, and follow their top tips for getting the work done.
The Authorpreneur Podcast is a virtual writing and business coach for fiction writers, hosted by Amelia D. Hay. The podcast will teach you how to develop a story idea, create compelling characters and outline your novel. Learn how to write your first draft, revise your story, self-publish, establish your author platform, and reach readers in less than fifteen minutes a day. Every week, Amelia releases a Behind the Scenes Podcast Diary (BTS) where she shares an honest account of her journey to self-publishing her novels.
Kirsten Oliphant interviews experts to find out how they are building email lists, connecting through Twitter, and using Facebook groups. These practical episodes are balanced out with inspirational interviews from successful writers and bloggers who have made it big and want to share the struggles, the creative process, and tips for reaching your goals whether you are an author publishing books or creating an online presence through blogging.
oin author and screenwriter Mark Stay with coach, entrepreneur and recording artist Mark Desvaux, as they discover the secrets to writing a bestseller and challenge themselves and you to write, market and self-published a bestselling book in just one year. Each week, they are guided by and interview million-selling, chart-topping authors, publishers on the inside, editors, agents, social media specialists, and many more big names who play a part in the bestseller process. From the writing to marketing, plotting to publishing, learn the secrets to help you write your way to the top of the charts.
The Kobo Writing Life Podcast features exciting interviews with bestselling authors, tips on the craft and business of writing, and advice for successfully self-publishing. Millions of readers are waiting to discover your book – self-publish today at www.kobo.com/writinglife
Each episode features an interview. Topics cover in-depth insights on the writing and publishing processes, from breakout successes to authors with staying power, featuring inspirational personal anecdotes, advice, and encouragement.
Tthis podcast focuses on providing encouragement, writing tips, and publishing advice to aspiring authors via success stories from authors releasing new books. The interviews focus on the goal of achieving traditional publication, so they only feature traditionally published authors.
Features interviews with agents and editors, who share plenty of behind-the-scenes publishing insights. It’s part of #MSWL (Manuscript Wish List), which helps authors more effectively connect with agents and editors seeking projects like theirs, and includes plenty of query tips for authors looking to sign with an agent.
HWBA covers a variety of topics on the craft of writing — from creating characters to outlining novels to polishing prose — as well as getting into the creative mindset, being productive, and writing mistakes to avoid.
Cheryl Phipps, Shar Barratt, Trudi Jaye, and Wendy Vella
weekly
A weekly podcast on indie publishing tips, resources, advice, and real-life case studies. Some episodes dive deep into a specific topic, but most feature interviews with successful self-published authors or industry professionals.
Often times in publishing we only hear about the quick sales and overnight successes – but for most of us, publishing is hard AF! This podcast shares those stories – the real, gritty, pull your hair out because it’s been years – stories of writers who didn’t give up despite it all, and are now living out their dream.
This podcast’s aim is simple: to have the conversations surrounding the book and writing industries that too often are glossed over by conventional wisdom, institutional optimism, and false seriousness.
The Creative Writer’s Toolbelt gives practical, accessible that you can apply straight away to your own writing. Each episode explores an aspect of the craft, with examples. We also throw in occasional interviews with writers, editors, marketers and other artists.
The Joined Up Writing Podcast is for writers and readers alike. It features loads of great interviews with authors, editors, publishers and anyone else who can help and inspire you on your Writing or Reading journey. Our main episodes feature long-form interviews packed with fascinating stories and insight. Our shorter ‘Epilogue’ shows are quick-hit ten minute episodes based on a bonus topic or question not included in the main interview.
IngramSpark’s Director, Robin Cutler, and Manager of IngramSpark’s Author Acquisition Program, Justine Bylo, will be joined by experts throughout essential fields in the publishing industry to provide you with self-publishing resources in a new format. These short episodes are an easy way to gain quick insights for how to self-publish.
Perspectives and reflections on the writing and publishing life. Mark Leslie Lefebvre, a writer, bookseller, digital publishing advocate, professional speaker, and publishing consultant explores inclusive and collaborative opportunities for writers and book publishing professionals via interviews, discussions, and reflections about the industry.
If the DIY MFA website were a campus, the DIY MFA podcast would be the school’s radio station. Hosted by instigator Gabriela Pereira, this show emulates the traditional MFA speaker series where authors and industry experts speak to students about writing, but makes these conversations accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
The Career Author Podcast
Becoming a full-time writer can be overwhelming. Join J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon as they help you improve your craft and find your audience, so you too can become…a career author. This is The Career Author Podcast.
Join The Fearless Storyteller, as we explore the heart and soul of writing stories, songs, and scripts that sell—with the people who write them. Each guest has their own unique Hero’s Journey and insights into the intersections between limiting beliefs and success.
Weekly episodes feature interviews, inspiration, and insights for writers of any level.
WCRI is a webcomic podcast devoted to the creation and monetization of webcomics. There are how-to shows on how to create, draw, write, and market webcomics, as well as reviews on webcomics. There are also interview shows with creators, businessmen and others involved with webcomics. In short, if you want to create and make money from webcomics, this is where you start. Potential subjects can e-mail [email protected] to set up interviews.
(your podcast)
host s
frequency
details
If you know of a podcast on writing, publishing, or book marketing which isn’t mentioned here, please fill out the form below.
A reader left a comment on last night’s infographic post, and I thought it deserved its own post. Mark Williams asked:
The possibilities are endless, but can you point us to any beginner’s guides to actually making these things?
That is a good question; while I know of any number of comprehensive guides to making infographics (The Creative Penn has a good one) I have never been able to find a post that helped me figure out how to make infographics.
I had always had the requisite tools at hand; for example, Canva is free, online, and has dozens of infographic templates you can take apart and modify, thus learning by doing.
But all the tools and all the guides were useless because I struggled with the first step in making anything, which is understanding the concept of the activity.
I made my first infographic in January, and once I did I realized what no one had told me before. I already had the requisite skills and knowledge, but what I lacked was the understanding how to apply them.
In fact, most of those who are reading this post have the skills you need to make an infographic, you just don’t know it yet. Luckily, I can help you make the conceptual leap with a single word.
Are you ready?
Powerpoint.
If you can make a Powerpoint presentation, you can make an infographic. The skills are that similar. (Coincidentally, you can also make an infographic using Powerpoint, but that is not what I am talking about.)
Infographics can look intimidating uninitiated, but the process of making one can be broken down into two simple parts: researching and writing the content, and then laying it out in an interesting manner.
Those are essentially the same steps as making a Powerpoint presentation, only instead of a slide deck, you make one really detailed graphic.
The trick to writing the content for an infographic is to take notes for a 1,000- to 1500-word blog post and then summarize the notes as 15 to 20 tweet-length factoids.
No, seriously, an infographic really is that light on content.
One of my activities over the 2017 holidays was making handouts for Valiant Chicken, my WordPress support business. Those weren’t infographics but what that that project taught me was that if you want to cover 10 to 15 points in a three page handout then you had to be as brief as possible.
One handout consisted of 9 ways to speed up a WordPress site (PDF). The handout’s text consisted of 260 words, which I later expanded into an 800-word blog post.
When you make an infographic, you should take whatever blog post you were thinking of writing, and plan on paring your text down by at least a factor of three. That’s all the room you’ll have in the infographic.
Luckily, you can combine a lot of stats into charts or graphs, reducing your word count while still conveying a lot of information.
But to do that you will need to learn a thing or two about layouts – just not from me.
To be perfectly honest, I am still learning about infographic design myself, which is why I am still using the stock designs at Canva as the basis for my custom infographics.
As someone who is just past the beginner phase, I think you should start there and learn as you go. That’s what I am doing.
Infographics are a popular marketing tool in the business world because they are a great way to get a company’s name out in front of potential customers. A popular infographic could be shared widely, giving a company both an SEO boost and adding to its brand recognition.
We don’t see infographics used much in the book world, but they could be a boon for authors who are willing to invest the time and energy. They’re really not that hard to make once you get over the first hurdle.
Here are five ways authors could use infographics. If you have another use for them, we’d love to hear about it in the comments.
1. Reveal background details for setting, characters, or events
There’s no better way to keep fans coming back for more than to reveal how a character got their scar, or explain the history of a royal guard, a gang of cutthroats, or a secret society.
JK Rowling, for example, even has a whole site built on background details for the Harry Potter books, and has published several spin off books.
2. Show how your book is similar to popular books
Readers are always looking for books similar to their favorites, If your book shares themes and tropes with popular series like the Foundation, Narnia, or with a famous author’s books, you should point that out.
The more connections the better.
3. Share what you found while conducting research
If a reader likes your stories, chances are they will enjoy it when you reveal the work that went into the stories but never made it into the text.
If you had to consult with a bladesmith or herbalist in order to write your book, share the more interesting details you learned from the expert.
4. Create a timeline for the events in your book
When fans are reading book eight in a series and you reference events in book three, they’re going to appreciate a timeline that makes it clear the order of events, and what sudden but inevitable betrayal lead to war.
5. Build a relationship graph
If you are writing books with a large cast of characters and multiple plotlines, chances are your readers will appreciate the help in identifying who did what to whom.
You can use a relationship graph to explain details referenced in the text, such as political alliances, familial connections, or dynastic inheritance.
P.S. If you do decide to make an infographic, please let me know. I am not a good enough artist to charge for making an infographic, but I still get a kick out of them and would be happy to give you feedback on your work.
P.P.S. The infographic is licensed CC-BY, and can be shared freely.
If you have a WordPress site, chances are you have heard of something called Gutenberg. You could have seen one of the posts written about it over the past 18 months (such as mine), or you may have seen the notice when you updated your WordPress site to v4.9.8.
Either way, if you are the average user you are probably wondering what Gutenberg is and how it will affect your site.
The following post is a short explainer that will delve into what Gutenberg is, why it matters, and how it will affect you. I’ll explain the motivations that drove Gutenberg development, lay out your options, and point you to sites where you can learn more.
What
Gutenberg is a new official part of WordPress. It is currently in beta, and is scheduled to launch with the release of WordPress 5.0.
I have been following the development of Gutenberg for over a year, and in that time I have learned that the easiest way to explain what Gutenberg is to ask whether you are familiar with one of the mailing list services like Mailchimp or Mailerlite. Have you used one of their newsletter builders?
If you have used one then you will better understand Gutenberg when you see it for the first time.
Gutenberg replaces the existing post and page editor menu in WordPress with one that behaves more like Mailerlite’s newsletter builder. Where the existing editor resembled old word processor apps (think MS Word, circa 2002) and was designed on the concept of typing out paragraphs of text, the new Gutenberg editor is built on the idea of blocks.
It is not supposed to affect your existing content, but I cannot guarantee that will be true 100% of the time. (A WordPress site is just too complex to make that promise.) What I can say is that Gutenberg is intended to let you make new richer content, not force you go fix your existing content.
It looks like this:
Each paragraph of text,image, quote, or what have you, is treated as a separate block in the Gutenberg editor. This is a concept similar to what you would find in one of the aforementioned newsletter builders, although they do look very different.
Mailerlite and other services give you a limited selection of blocks to build a newsletter, and they usually show you the options in a panel on the right. Gutenberg, on the other hand, has a pop-up menu where you can select a block. You can open that menu by clicking the plus sign icon (see the screenshot above for an example) and then selecting one of the options.
Once you chose the next block, you can style it with settings that only apply to this one block, add content, etc. That custom styling is perhaps the biggest difference between Gutenberg and the existing content editor.
But you don’t have to take my word for it; you can test Gutenberg itself.
If you want to play around with Gutenberg before installing it on your site, there is a public demo over on WordPress.org. If you want to try it on your site, you can install the Gutenberg beta app.
And if you would like to learn more about the options for styling blocks, Kinsta just published a post that goes into this in considerable depth.
Why
The why question I have heard the most in re Gutenberg is why Gutenberg is being added to WordPress.
The answer will vary depending on who you ask, but in my opinion it all comes down to a desire to give users a tool so they can make prettier blog posts and pages.
If we wanted to get into web industry insider gossip, someone would tell you that Gutenberg is a response to WordPress competitors such as Squarespace who already have this type of content editor. That has the ring of truth, but it’s also true that the WordPress editor hasn’t significantly changed since it was released in 2003. It looks and functions like a 20-year-old word processor app, and that outdated design limited what you could write and publish on a WordPress site.
The content editor was sorely in need of an update, but did it need to be replaced? Well, that depends on why you are using WordPress.
The typical blogger is fine with banging out paragraphs of text, but WordPress is much more than a blogging platform. It hosts all kinds of sites which are used for all types of purposes, and designers who are building those sites need the more sophisticated content editor.
While that sounds like a good justification, it is also true that those designers had their choice of sophisticated content editors; this type of tool is called either page builder or site builder, and there are a double dozen different competing tools to choose from. I use one from a company called SiteOrigin to build pages on this blog, and some of the more popular options include Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Divi.
This has lead some to argue Gutenberg is designed to fill a need that has already been met, but that debate is beyond the scope of this post.
How
The how question has two parts; how do you use Gutenberg, and how to do avoid it and keep using the old editor.
Gutenberg will be a part of WordPress 5.0, which will be released some time in the next few months. But if you want to use it now, you can install the Gutenberg beta plugin. Activating this plugin will replace the current content editor, giving you a chance to play with Gutenberg on your site.
Be sure to back up your site before you install the plugin. I don’t think it will break anything on most sites, but I operate under the assumption that about 1% of the time things will go awry. We have no way to tell who is the 1% this time around.
If you never want to use Gutenberg, ever, you can install a plugin called "Classic Editor". This will guarantee that the current editor will not be replaced when Wordpress 5.0 is released.
O O O
I have installed the Classic editor, and I plan to regard Gutenberg as a project rather than a tool for the time being. I’ll learn how to use it and how to support sites that use it, but I won’t use it on my site. I’ll wait until it is out of beta and is a reliable tool; then it will be safe to use.
In my morning coffee link post this morning I included a post on The Book Designer where a so-called "expert" made various claims about PDFs, including that PDFs aren’t ebooks and that PDFs "can’t be uploaded to any of the major ebook commercial retailer sites".
Sidenote: This guy has a long-running FUD campaign about PDFs. He has been bad-mouthing PDFs for years, and he is just as wrong today as he was two years ago.
My first inclination is to retort that any well-informed publishing industry insider could tell you that neither statement is true, but then I realized that if The Book Designer could publish a post rife with factual errors, maybe it was time for an explainer post that set the record straight.
Yes, you can upload and sell PDF in the major ebookstores – some of them, anyway. Amazon accepts PDFs, and so does Google. Barnes & Noble used to accept PDFs, but according to their current help pages they no longer do so.
And there are even times where you should sell a PDF. For example, there are certain types of non-fiction that just work better in a fixed layout format, and frankly a PDF is still more versatile and accessible than a fixed layout Epub.
Also, there are markets – such as O’Reilly technical manuals – where a sizable part of the audience insists on PDFs. You will need to find a way to provide what the market wants.
Here’s a summary of where and how you can sell PDFs in the major ebookstores.
Google Play Books
Google will let you upload a PDF through its publisher portal. Play Books users can also upload a PDF and read it in the Play Books app for Android or iOS.
It is not clear at this time, however, whether you can sell a PDF in Play Books and have it arrive in that format. (While I was trying to test this, I discovered that the Play Books web app is no longer compatible with Chrome.)
I will investigate further and update this post at a later date.
Nook / B&N Press / Nook Press
At one time B&N was so committed to PDF that they gave their Android app a PDF renderer that had been customized for B&N’s hardware.
Alas, that was a different time. Now, B&N Press no longer lists PDF as a format you can upload.
Kobo Writing Life
You cannot upload a PDF to Kobo Writing Life; it is not listed as an accepted format.
But even if it were allowed, no one could buy your PDF. Kobo stopped selling and supporting PDFs in November 2017. The PDF would need to be converted before it could be sold, so you might as well submit an Epub instead.
eBooks.com
This is not a major ebookstore, no, but it is one of the best places to find PDFs for sale.
When O’Reilly shut down its ebookstore and found that the market demanded PDFs, their solution was to sell the PDFs through eBooks.com. The O’Reilly PDFs are sold DRM-free, but I have also bought DRMed PDFs from that site. The PDFs came with Adobe Digital Editions DRM at that time.
I do not know how authors can sell their PDFs at ebooks.com, but I am listing the site here so that those who want to sell PDFs can pursue the matter. (I am also hoping that ebooks.com will reach out and give me the details we need.)
Kindle
Here’s something I thought everyone knew: Amazon sells PDFs. Amazon calls their PDFs "Kindle Print Replicas" but that is just a fancy name for a PDF in a proprietary wrapper.
Authors can sell PDFs in the Kindle Store, and Amazon has even provided a couple apps for that purpose.
You will need to use one or the other app to prep your PDF so you can upload it to KDP. Simply load your PDF in either KC or KTC, make your finishing touches, and then save the ebook. The apps will give you a project file that you can upload to KDP.
If you try to upload a PDF itself, Amazon will try to convert it to Mobi.
BTW, you will probably want to use Kindle Textbook Creator; I am told that it makes smaller PDF files than Kindle Create. Since Amazon charges for the delivery of ebooks, reducing file size can significantly increase your earnings.
Amazon has been shipping the Echo smart speakers for several years now, but the tech is still new to some of us. For example, I just got my first Echo, an Echo Dot. I’m still finding out what it can and can’t do (it can’t actually read my Kindle ebooks to me, but it is great at being aggravating).
While I have been putting the Dot through its paces, I also took some time to find ways that writers could use Alexa as the virtual replacement for the office assistant that many of us want but few can afford.
I couldn’t actually find very many current features, but I did find five. For starters, Alexa can keep your calendar for you.
Calendar
Alexa can keep track of your Google, iCloud, Outlook, or Exchange calendar for you. You’ll need to first integrate your calendar with Alexa by going to alexa.amazon.com, but once you do you will be able to ask Alexa to schedule an event, read back what’s on your calendar, etc.
Here are a few of the commands that Alexa support:
Alexa, create event …
Alexa, what’s on my calendar?
Alexa, what’s happening next week?
To Do List
Alexa can also keep track of your to do list. Again, you’ll need to integrate Alexa with your Any.do, Todoist, or Any List account, but once you do you can tell Alexa to add tasks to the list or read the list back to you.
Here are a few commands to try:
Alexa, add "kill my main character" to my todo list
Alexa, add "finish book" to my todo list
Spelling
Got a word that you can say but can’t spell? Alexa can help! Simply say "Alexa, spell X", and in just a few seconds it will be spelled back to you.
This is a useful trick, but Amazon doesn’t quite have it perfect. I just tested Alexa, and while it got "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "antidisestablishmentarianism" right, it couldn’t spell simpler words like "jalapeño". It mangled the enye character, instead spelling it as "entildao". (Apparently Alexa needs more training on compound characters.)
Definitions
Alexa might struggle with unexpected characters, but it has better luck with definitions. If you want to make sure you are using a word correctly, just say "Alexa, define X" and it will read the definition back to you. You can also ask whether a word is a noun, verb, or other part of speech.
Writing Sprints
Alexa has a timer feature that authors can use as, well, a timer. This is a good way to engage in writing sprints whenever you just want to get words down on a page.
Simply say "Alexa, set a time for 15/20/60 minutes", and it will start tracking the time, and then beep when the time period ends. Alexa is limited to only setting a timer for the next 24 hours or less, but it can handle seconds, minutes, or hours.
What Alexa skills have you found useful? Let us know in the comments below!
When it comes to world-building, some authors just make up a world as they write the story, while others take the time to invent cultural rules defining gremlin marriages and divorces.
No matter which group you fall into, the simple truth is that collecting all of a story’s important details in a single place is really the best way to keep track of all the many different and possibly conflicting details and avoid mistakes like changing the name of the hero’s horse halfway through the book.
And it helps to have the entries cataloged and indexed by keyword so that you can avoid running into the same problem as the creators of Lost, who recorded all of their background details in a paper notebook and were themselves lost as the seasons added up.
Here are five tools that you can use to construct a world as background for your next story.
If your favorite tool isn’t listed here, why not tell us about it in the comments?
This platform is still in beta, but when it’s done it will be specifically designed for world-building. It enables you to organize your world, search through everything and anything with ease, present it publicly and get feedback from a community of world-builders around the globe.
You can start out with a private project, and then invite feedback from fans as well as other users on World Anvil. The world can be organized both geographically as well as chronologically across multiple story timelines. You can even create maps to tie it all together.
Mediawiki is an open source website platform that was originally designed for Wikipedia, and is now used on dozens of sites. Setting it up takes a fair amount of technical skill, but once you’re done you can build a wiki that looks as professional as Wikipedia.
On the other hand, your wiki will also be as public as Wikipedia unless you take steps to keep it private and secret. This can be a bad idea if you want to keep plot twists from leaking.
Originally crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2015, Story Shop was developed by creators for creators. it has everything – story planning, the option to build a series bible, unlimited character bios, an integrated writing app that keeps your research nearby, and more!
This service isn’t free – although it does have a 7-day free trial – so investing in this tool takes a serious commitment.
If you don’t mind letting spoilers get out, or perhaps if you want to bond with your readers by working with them to build the wiki, you could try Wikia. This is a service that hosts fan-made wikis.
This is very much a platform for fan-supported projects, so if you need to organize the plots for your next three epic maga-fantasy novels, it’s not for you. But if you want to draw in your readers and form a community then this could be it. All the software management details are taken care of, leaving only community management.
But if secrecy or privacy is desirable then try Notebook.ai.
This service bills itself as a digital notebook for writers, dungeon masters, designers, and other creators. It is designed from the ground up to let you name and describe characters, locations, organizations, belief systems, and equipment.
"Instead of reading backward in your story to find out how old you said that one character was, every little detail about them is organized and just a click away."
The basic plan is free and let’s you build up to 5 universes, while the unlimited plan is only $9 a month.
If you want to organize your source material into a notebook then why not use Evernote?
This is probably not the first thing you think of when the topic of world-building comes up, but there’s no reason why you can’t use it this way – in fact, Evernote has a lot to recommend it for this purpose.
While it is a general purpose notebook and thus not as niche focused as some of the alternatives mentioned above, Evernote has so many extensions and integrations that it would be a great tool for gathering all your background research together in one place.
With some of the above tools, you have to copy content to a new entry and catalog, but Evernote has browser extensions that you can use to clip content from web pages, save it in Evernote, and automatically link back to your source.
Conclusion
As enticing as these tools may be, you should keep in mind why you are building the world. It shouldn’t be an exercise in building an intricate castle in your own private sandbox; instead, it should always serve to enhance the story or bring more enjoyment to the reader and fan.
If you use one of these tools, just make sure they drive you back to the open page so you can finish the story so you can share it with others.
Apple is notorious for the ridiculously pointless rule that if you want to sell ebooks on their platform, you have to use their app and their hardware to do so (or go through an aggregator). While all the other major platforms will let you use just about any web browser to upload and sell your ebooks in their store, Apple insists that you have to use macOS-only iTunes Producer to upload ebooks to sell, effectively imposing an Apple tax on those who want to deal directly with Apple.
Anyone with the technical skill to install macOS on their existing computer could get around that tax, but there is also a solution for the rest of us.
I was at one of Robin Sullivan’s Meetups yesterday when another attendee mentioned a service called MacInCloud where one could lease a Mac online and run apps on it.
It turns out there are a bunch of online startups that will lease either a Mac or a Mac server to you online. You can access that virtual Mac through your web browser, install apps like iTunes Producer, and even upload ebooks.
Depending on how much time you spend managing your ebooks, this is potentially a cost-effective alternative to buying a Mac or to using an aggregator.
The following list details five of the services I found, and includes info on their prices, quirks, etc. I would include reviews except I could not find any recent ones for most of these companies. (It appears that kind of detail is shared word of mouth rather than via written reviews.)
If you know of a similar service not listed below, please use the comment form at the end of the post to send me an email. We’d also love to hear about your experiences using any of these services.
This is potentially the cheapest option if you know what you’re doing with a Mac. A good solution might be to start with one of its better plans and then scale back to the dollar per hour plan once you are all set up.
At the lower tiers, this service lets you share a Mac with other users and access it for one or three hours each day. If you opt for the upper tiers you will be renting your own Mac.
This feels very much like a one man band operation. Its site is much less polished than the competition, and there’s no clear definition of the quality of the service it is selling (number of CPUs, RAM, etc)
tbd
tbd
tbd
Most (?all?) of the services mentioned above offer far more computing power that you will need to run iTunes Producer, which is why I’d make my choice based on price and support. You might also consider whether paying for one of these services will cost you more than you would pay to an aggregator to distribute your ebooks for you.
If you know of a similar service not mentioned here, please fill out the form below.
