Caren Gussoff and the Birthday Problem
In an industry where success is difficult to quantify, there are certain writing benchmarks that denote achievement and validate your work to your peers and your readers. Becoming SFWA-qualified is one of them.
Posts Tagged ‘cat rambo’
New Board Members at SFWA
On July 1st, 2014, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers welcome Cat Rambo as the new Vice President and Sarah Pinsker as incoming Director at Large (elected from the Eastern Region*).
Guest Post: Five Ways to Increase Your Blog Readership
by Cat Rambo
Those of us living a solitary writing life can sometimes get a little too addicted to Google Analytics. It’s a validation to us if people are reading our blog — and comments are like gold.
SFWA Bulletin Returns
Issue 203 of the SFWA Bulletin went to the printer this week. It contains articles from members experienced and new, information on SFWA’s opportunities, projects, and activism, and messages from the Board. This issue, guest-edited by Tansy Rayner Roberts, with Jaym Gates as Production Editor, was specially created to be used as an outreach tool for conventions and other events.
Tools for Writers: Namechk
by Cat Rambo
One of the tools I mention to students in my online class Building An Online Presence for Writers is a website called Namechk. You can input the user name you want to use and see whether or not it is taken on a number of social networks and well as domains.
Tools for Writers: Shelfari
Shelfari is, like GoodReads and LibraryThing, another social book cataloging website. Online book retailer AbeBooks owns a large percentage of the company. Users catalog the books they own or have read and can rate, review, and tag those books as well as discussing them on the site.
Tools for Authors: Goodreads
Goodreads is the largest reader community site in the world, with over thirteen million members. Users can track their reading, find or make book recommendations, and discuss what they’re reading.
Tools for Writers: Rafflecopter
A long-standing practice in book promotion is giveaways, particularly since book giveaways may help drum up reviews as well. You can conduct such giveaways in a simple fashion, asking people to leave a comment on a blog post or social network page in order to be entered.
Reader Communities: LibraryThing
LibraryThing, which was the first social book site, allowed users to enter their own books in order to catalog their library. People signed up immediately.
Tools for Writers: Wikis
If your writing features a richly detailed universe, full of names, places, and historical events, you may want to explore using a wiki to chronicle it. A wiki’s structure allows intricate details to be recorded in a way that both preserves it in an easy to locate fashion but also allows devoted fans to browse the longtime story of your work.
