WOW! Women On Writing Editor's Desk: Fireside with Authors

Fireside with Authors

Can you hear the snap, crackle, pop of the fireplace? Winter is upon us, and as the temperature drops, we feed the fire and keep it roaring and toasty this month. And what better place to curl up with a good book from your favorite author!

The holidays are upon us, and this season, why not give the gift of prose. Turning a loved one onto a great read is unlike any other experience out there. Not only does it support your profession as a writer, it�s a gift that gives back, stimulates the imagination, and helps you escape. There�s nothing better to me than cracking open the pages of a new book and then settling down in front of the fireplace to read with a cup of tea.

This month we support our dear authors, and all that comes with the business of authoring. And have we got a great issue for you!

A big, warm, thank you goes out to our freelancers:

D�lynne Plummer for interviewing the elusive Nell Freudenberger. It�s wonderful to have you back D�lynne! Last December, D�lynne garnered the interview with award-winning author Sue Miller, and this year, she does it again! You�ll be delighted by the extremely talented Nell Freudenberger and learn about her latest book, The Dissident.

Gayla Crosby heads up this month�s 20 Questions column by interviewing the inspiring Rosemary Daniell: seven-time author, and founder of the Zona Rosa living and writing workshops for women. Welcome to the family Gayla!

One of our regulars, Beth Morrissey, shows freelancers how to use their international resources in this month�s Freelancer�s Corner. It�s always a pleasure Beth!

Of course, where would we be without C. Hope Clark�s Funds for Writers column! Hope gives you the follow up to last month�s article The Literary Agent Shuffle. This month, Hope tells us what to do while waiting for that agent to reply, and gives us a great selection of competitions where we can enter our first chapters or manuscript in her article, Compete While You�re Waiting for that Contract.

An important thing for aspiring authors to do is network at a writer�s conference...but what if you�re shy? Thanks to Maria Zannini you�ll learn How to Shake off the Heebie Jeebies and get to networking! Thanks Maria for a fun and descriptive article.

Get ready to be inspired! Pat Matsueda, managing editor of Manoa, and my interviewee for September�s Inspiration Column, turns the interview-tables and freelances for us by interviewing author Wendy Miyake for this month�s Inspiration Column. Pat is a seasoned writer and her style blows me away. This is an extra special treat! Thank you Pat for taking the time to write for WOW!, Mahalo.

Another WOW! Alumni member, Susan Johnston, serves up a great article for our review column, Freelance Online Portfolios that Work. Susan provides a great selection of websites that work for their writers. Great job Susan!

TO THE WOW! STAFF:

A warm thank you goes out to Annette Fix, our new Senior Editor, for providing us with two fabulous features! Her interviews with the two Kelly�s: Kelly Love Johnson, and Kelly L. Stone�both of these features are not to miss! As you all may know, Annette has been with WOW! from the very beginning�since our September 2006 launch. We�re thrilled to welcome Annette to the Editor�s Desk, officially.

A huge, effervescent thank you goes out to our Managing Editor, Sue Donckels, for providing the thread that sews us all together. We couldn�t have pulled off the issue without you!

To our Contributing Editor, Chynna Laird, for heading our PREMIUM-GREEN MARKETS. Thank you Chynna for all your hard work in making our Markets a success!

WELCOME NEW INTERNS!

After much deliberation, we�ve narrowed down the queries from our call in November�s newsletter for interns and have officially accepted:

Del Sandeen
Margo Dill
Carrie Hulce
Susan Eberling
LuAnn Womach
Sharon E. Mortz
Marcia Peterson
Jill Earl
Janet Paszkowski
Valerie Fentress
AnnMarie Kolakowski

Welcome ladies! And GO TEAM! We�re THRILLED to have you aboard the S.S. WOW!

Stay tuned: we�ll have pics and bios of our new interns posted on the Editor�s Desk next month.

We also want to thank all of you who applied. We were surprised at the outcome and the enthusiasm! Thank you so much for taking the time to submit. We wish we could take everyone on, but unfortunately, we can�t at this moment. There will be openings in the future, so please don�t give up. All of you are qualified, and we want to support all of you. Just knowing that you have a love for helping women writers makes us strive to support you even more.

THANK YOU TO OUR LONG-TERM INTERNS!

Another special thank you goes out to our long-term interns who�ve been with us since the start. Nothing means more to us than your dedication:

Cherley Grogg
Joanne Stacey
Sally Franklin Christie
Kesha Grant

WELCOME NEW WEBMISTRESS:

Maria Reyes-McDavis

Check out the interview below for fabulous tips on how to create an author�s website! Maria knows her stuff, and we�re lucky to be in her angelic hands.

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The Editors:

Angela Miyuki Mackintosh is Publisher, CEO, and Art Director of WOW! Women On Writing. She has been published in Maxim, Transworld Surf and Skate, Vice Magazine, and numerous trade publications for the action-sports industry. She is an award-winning artist whose works have been commissioned for public art by the city of Long Beach, and has received grants from Funds for Women.

Angela lives in Placentia, California with her husband Michael and her cat Noodle.

Sue Donckels used to write for a living in an academic sense, as a composition and rhetoric instructor. Today, she lives to write fiction, non-fiction, and any style in between and beyond. "I've always walked along a writer's path, yet early on I veered off onto the wrong fork," she says. "My master's thesis on feminist dialogic silences in three 18th century British novels serves as a 21st century dust collector on my bookshelf."

Sue lives near the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with one husband, pairs of kids and dogs, and bowls of dark chocolate and sweets for regular jolts of joy.

Annette Fix is Senior Editor of WOW! Women On Writing. She began her writing career hawking her feature film spec scripts in Hollywood, nearly killed her muse by working as a freelance copywriter for various boring companies, and finally found her way to narrative writing, which feels like "dancing naked in a field of flowers" compared to her previous writing ventures. Annette is an author and a spoken-word storyteller who regularly performs in L.A. theaters.

Annette's memoir, The Break-Up Diet will be available Valentine's Day 2008.

She lives in Southern California with her husband, her son, and two dogs.

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Your Author Website

By Angela Mackintosh

We�ve heard time and time again from many of our interviewees about the importance of having an author website. Publishers and literary agents urge aspiring authors to start building their platform immediately. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to have an author website. It will reach a broader audience than if you were speaking at local engagements (although, both are recommended), and with the right components, marketing, and optimization, you will have a global marketing tool that works for you 24/7.

But what does it take to create an author website? What is the best type of site to have? What content should you have on it? How do you develop a strong internet presence using your website?

To properly answer these questions, WOW! talks with our new Webmistress and Web Success Diva, Maria Reyes-McDavis, who will help guide you through the process of developing your author website.

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WOW: Hi, Maria, thanks for taking the time out to answer our questions! We know how busy you are. So, tell us, what are the necessary components needed for an author�s website?

Maria: Hands down, the critical information you must get across is who you are, what you provide, why you are the best choice, and how to get a hold of you. That's it, simple enough, right? Not really. You have to organize this information in such a way as to appeal to your "market" (i.e. publishers, agents, et al.) Let me break it down:

Who? That's you, silly. Represented as a "Bio" page on the website, this is where you get to show a little bit about who you are, as an author and person. Depending on how you lay out the site, this will also house your accomplishments, maybe even a few accolades.
What? It's what you do. Think Portfolio. You�re showing what you have and can do. It�s that simple: make it simple and organized. How you do this will depend on the size of your portfolio, genre, etc. In other words, if you are just starting out, your portfolio will need to "look" as if you�re not just starting out. If you've been in the game for a long time, you'll have to make sure you can organize all your material in a way that is not overwhelming.
Why? Show and tell, baby! Show them your stuff...also known as a "clips" section. Provide samples of your best work. Make sure you have clips related to what you�re working on and toward, make it relevant to your efforts in marketing yourself or attempting to get an agent. Also, make sure the formats you provide actually serve the people you are directing to your site. Whatever format your viewers need and want, give it to them. Scanned clips? Simple text? PDF? Downloadable?
How? Obviously, give them your contact information. However, don't forget to make sure it�s all current. You'd be surprised how many author sites I see with outdated, no longer valid information�that sadly, is being distributed in marketing materials.

Also, depending on the stage of your game, you may need such optional components as a blog, media/press room, promotional pages for any books that have been published, etc.

Bottom Line? Look at your website as "you"�delivered digitally! Everything that you are, as an author, should come across to the majority of people who view it. Make it fit your personality, make it simple, and make it good�it�s the one self-marketing tool you have that works for you 24/7!

WOW: I love the way you explained that�it makes it easy to understand! So, if an aspiring author has never gotten her feet wet in the Internet world, what would you suggest for her?

Maria: I'm coming from the perspective that most authors (and really most people) need an effective, low-cost, timely presence on the web. You need it to work, without killing your pocketbook, AND be able to manage it yourself or at little expense. Hands down, the most effective way to develop your presence online, achieving all of these, is to have a website that is "technically" blog based.

Without getting into the technical details too much, here are two scenarios for you:

Typical, Static Website: You end up with an expensive, graphics based standard website. You'll need to either learn a complicated content management system, or pay a qualified person to maintain it, or learn to code the web yourself. Over time, you'll need to ensure that all the codes are current, sometimes paying to upgrade the coding to keep up with web compliance standards. Every time you need to add a page, maybe for a new book, you'll have to have it developed... again more money.
Custom Blog-Type, Dynamic Website: You end up with an inexpensive, custom website. You can quickly learn how to manage it yourself�in little time and effort, because of its simple content updating system, with a little training you've got it rollin'. You can add pages and sections as you wish.

If you�re new to the Internet and want something that is low-cost, and relatively low-maintenance, but still takes advantage of the wonderful marketing technology of the Internet, you've got to look at the idea of having a custom, blog-based website. Blogging based software, such as WordPress, can allow some of the following real benefits:

You can easily learn the technology, it is truly user-friendly.
Your cost of development can be significantly less, because your getting a fully dynamic, custom website, built on a standard technology platform. It�s all the good stuff of the Internet without the high price.
A blog-based website will be more likely to be found in search engines (like Google, Yahoo, and MSN), because they are updated more frequently and Google (among the others) looooooooves blog-based websites. Blogs get ranked higher, faster, and perform much better than standard websites across the board.

While you may not understand the technology difference between a standard website and a blog-based website, you surely can understand the difference between a high-cost, ineffective, high maintenance website and its low-cost, superbly effective, and low-maintenance alternative.

WOW: Excellent points, Maria. Those are some of the things I talk about in my on-again, off-again column, "SEO Sundays." I love, love, love the blog platform because of that reason. So, for an author starting out, what should she do to draw traffic to her website/blog?

Maria: There are tons of great, little or no cost ways to get traffic to your website/blog. Using any of them will depend on who you�re trying to reach. Here are some examples:

Optimize your site:

Do a proper keyword analysis and have an SEO professional look at your copy.
Make sure your websites MetaData is done correctly.
Ensure all necessary server files (.htaccess, robots.txt, sitemap.xml...) are present.

Search Engine/Directories Submission:

Get Connected Online:

Community:

Writing, Writing, Writing:

The important thing to remember is you've got an entire world of technology out there that can help you market yourself exponentially. Be creative, be thoughtful in your planning, and be diligent in your efforts. Developing traffic and marketing online takes time and effort. Beware of any program, person, or service provider that tells you they can get you "unbelievable traffic" in a short amount of time. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Most importantly, it's your future, embrace the technology that will help you catapult it.

WOW: You mentioned social networking sites, such as myspace.com. Would you recommend this for authors? And what�s the best way to get exposure?

Maria: Yes, yes, yes! One of the most effective things you can do online to market yourself is social networking. In particular, the top players: MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster command a HUGE amount of traffic. Not just any traffic, very targeted traffic, if you know what your doing. You can connect with other authors of a particular genre; you can find publishers and agents; you can even connect according to the location of others�all of which are very useful in marketing books, creating a "following" and networking.

WOW: Maria, you�ve given us some fantastic advice here today. I�m sure our writers would love to know what kinds of services you offer.

Maria: Everything from building your online presence to marketing it. This is a short list of the possibilities:

Custom blog-based website.
Search engine optimization and submission.
Social networking (think MySpace, MSN Live, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Hi5, Friendster, Bebo, etc.)
Social bookmarking (think Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Squidoo, Netscape, etc.)
Article optimization and submission (think eZineArticles, IdeaMarketers, BesteZines, etc.)
Blog development, submission, and marketing (think BlogTopList, Blogger, BlogCatalog, etc.)
Online press release optimization and submission.
Online branding development.

And so much more. Really, the idea behind how we work is that every online presence needs a custom plan. One size does not fit all, and we prefer to work with you, not for you...

WOW: That�s fantastic! Hear that ladies? I�m sure all of our freelance writers, editors, and aspiring authors will want to know how they can contact you.

Maria:
Website is: http://www.MariaReyesMcDavis.com
Email is: maria[at]mariareyesmcdavis[dot]com
Phone is: 626.667.8200

WOW: So, what�s next on your plate?

Maria: We are really expanding. January 2008 we are launching our all-new website with more free tools and resources to help authors, and others, learn to market themselves, without all the technical mumbo-jumbo. I'll also be hosting a series of tele-seminars and free teleconferences on such topics as blogging for traffic, using MySpace to develop traffic, social bookmarking effortlessly, and much more. My whole concept is to break it down for the non-tech savvy, so you can become your own internet marketing expert.

WOW: That�s perfect! In the short time we�ve spent together today, you�ve been able to break down complex topics in easy-to-understand language. I really appreciate that! Thanks Maria!