Building a following is hard work. Anyone who says else wise is either lying or Taylor Swift. Having studied marketing in graduate school and worked several years in the Dell marketing department, I’ll be the first to tell you marketing is no easy feat.
There are, however, more effective ways to build a following. In this post, I’ll teach you how to craft a marketing strategy for your book.
Title: Storm Siren
Author: Mary Weber
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Genre: Fantasy, Dystopian
Rating: 5 out of 5
Mary Weber knows how to break a heart. For anyone who has yet to experience her debut novel, Storm Siren, you’ll understand what I mean once you dive into her incredible story world. From the lush settings to the descriptive and cleverly immersive vocabulary, the reader is immediately deposited in the middle of Elemental slave-girl Nym’s world, and will soon find yourself attending ridiculously lavish parties, running from bolcranes, dodging flesh-eating horses, preparing to enter the long-waged war against Bron, and hoping you don’t come in contact with the dreaded and infamous Draewulf—because if you do, you’re as good as dead.
Today we’re starting a series on amateur writers and librarians with radio-personality and YA-writer Kat! Kat isn’t just a radio-personality; she studied and performed in local theater productions, is a world traveler, and got her master’s degree in Sheffield, England!
When did you first start writing?
I’ve been making up stories before I could write. I draw a lot. When I was a little kid, I drew all the time, and I would take the pictures to my babysitter or my mom and dad, and make them write down what I was saying. Continue reading
We often talk about creating characters, but what about those stories that feature animals as the heroes? There are several great books (and series) with animals manning the cast, while other stories include animals playing side (yet still important) roles. Whether your animals speak, your human character happens to have the ability to speak to them, or you’re writing a story with fantasy creatures, the depth and breadth of possibilities with non-human characters are endless.
For today, we’ll tackle two kinds of characters:
Hey Writers and Readers!
I wanted to talk about the importance of writing communities and participating in contests and writing challenges. But first, I wanted to share my good news with you all: Continue reading
Pen Friends! We are pleased to announce that we have a new member on our team. Noah Dingman will be our first “In House Teen Contributor!” We are honored to have such a young talented writer for The Spinning Pen. Thanks Noah for joining us!
Hi! My name’s Noah. I live in the beautiful state of Washington. Seriously, I could never get tired of all the green (to be fair, it is my favorite color). I’ve loved to read for as long as I can remember and I’ve loved to write for nearly just as long. If I’m not reading or writing, you’ll find me singing, dancing, running, hanging out with friends or watching my younger siblings. If I’m not doing any of those, I’m probably sleeping.
It’s one thing to begin with a BANG; to get readers interested in our story, our characters. But what we really want–what every writer desires– is for the reader to keep turning pages, to stay engaged, to follow our characters through every twist and turn until the last page. Continue reading
After I started taking writing seriously, I decided that looking for better novel-writing software (say, better than Word) would likely help me to stay organized[1] as I tried to complete one of my stories.
I’ve had Scrivener recommended to me multiple times, along with other paid software, but as a mostly-poor working adult, I wanted to find something else that would serve my needs for free. And eventually I found yWriter5. Continue reading
Pen Friends ~ Welcome Debut YA author, Christina June as she talks about her forthcoming book, It Started With Goodbye (See below for bio and summary!) SP: Welcome Christina! Can you tell us a bit of who you are and when you started writing?
Sure! I’m a mom, a high school counselor, a wife, a daughter. And a writer! I’ve always been a writer, more when I was younger, but I began writing novels with the goal of publication about four years ago.
The Spinning Pen 