Cheryl Cowtan on Writing

Figment is a personal space that allows you to promote and showcase your writing, in groups, on the site and on your blog. The layout is very user friendly and easy to understand. I signed up yesterday.  I create a profile, joined some groups containing potential readers of my favourite genre for writing and then I posted a flash fiction. For you writers out there who are dying to get some feedback on your writing, there are a few things you can do. Have a friend read it. Or, post a synopsis on your Web site and hopefully receive some responses to your upcoming work. I did that at my Web site and I did receive some nice feedback. See how it looks using WIX gallery.  Another way, is to create some writing that showcases your style and talent and post it on Figment.  The Figment writing tool allows you to create a cover, choose limited styles of text and layout and then make it available to the many readers on the site. See my example below. Notice how many respo...

Make Book Trailers with Smilebox Authors started using book trailers to persuade viewers to purchase their novels in 2003. Though there are many programs you can use to create your own book trailer, each one requires different levels of expertise. For example: using MovieMaker or another film editing program would require more skill in film editing, and access to copyright free images and music. However, the benefits of using film editing software is the flexibility you have as a designer. If you don't have a lot of film editing skill, Smilebox offers a number of template designs that you can manipulate into a trailer. They also have two to three music choices and a fairly good music library to choose from for each template. The many choices of templates allow you to set your mood in the trailer using imagery, animation, colour and symbols. You can also add your own images. I made this book trailer for my novel "The Precious Quest" in about 2 hours. The novel is a d...

Present yourself to your readers online by creating a multitude of professional profiles. Remember that whenever a reader hears of your book, reads a review on your book, or reads your book, he/she will probably search you online. Set up your profiles on the following: facebook which will give you a personalized URL  http://www.facebook.com/cheryl.cowtan LinkIn which provides a more structured, but more detailed space for your qualifications Google+ offers another place to have an online presence https://plus.google.com  Twitter  https://twitter.com/ All of the above will allow you to interlink between the profiles, which will attract search engine attention. Plus, you now have access to all of the potential readers and supportive writing colleagues, publishing houses and book reviewers.  facebook - over 900 million people twitter - 140 million active users Set up your profiles with pictures you want your readers to see. Make sure there are n...