500 Words was launched on this morning’s Chris Evans Breakfast Show.  All you have to do is write and submit a story of 500 words or under, and you could win some fabulous prizes – including Chris’s height in books, and £500 worth of books for your school library!

So, check out the competition home page, and get writing!

Full details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/500words/2012/

Anyone hoping for a sequel to Where the Wild Things Are might want to prepare themselves for bad news, though. ;p

Sam

“Do you have any ideas about activities I could do with my Year 13s to help them think about how to end a story?”

She’s a teacher. Did I mention that? Cool, right?

Anyway, while I didn’t really have any practical ideas to help her, I did have a little rant about story endings. Here it is in its entirety, as I typed it. Yes, this is how I type messages on facebook, including all the random capitalisations and exclamations.

I said:

PICK MY BRAINS! OK. I’ll not write my new book for the next few minutes, I’ll give myself entirely to YOU.

The way I look at it, the ending of a story MUST be planned out before you start. Great director Alexander Mackendrick (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0533241/) said: “If you’ve got a beginning, but don’t yet have an end, then you’re mistaken. You don’t have the right beginning.”

So being stuck on your ending just means you haven’t planned things out properly or you haven’t written the beginning and the middle properly.

The trick is to START WITH THE ENDING. You need to do a session on story structure – ACTS. Do it like a mountain range.

Or watch this video and translate it into whatever you like:
http://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ

Once you’re comfortable with the concept of a story being a series of UPS and DOWNS on that graph (or mountain range, or roller coaster or whatever) then an ENDING must be the final UP or DOWN. It’s the completion or final failure of the task that originated at the BEGINNING. (That’s why the beginning is so important to your ending. The ending is contained within everything implied by the beginning.)

Whatever desire or need drives the story is fulfilled or finally dashed at the end. If anyone is struggling with their ending, it’s usually because there isn’t a strong enough desire or need driving their story. This is a problem with their story, their character, their entire world and everything they’ve written.

You need to picture everything about your ending at every point that you’re writing the rest of your story. To be honest, it’s what keeps me writing: the desperate fear that I might DIE before reaching the point where I write the ending that’s living in my head and in my plans.

The magnitude of that final UP or DOWN of the ending must be bigger than any of the UPS orDOWNS along the way (the act climaxes).

There are also clever endings: the character fulfils his need/desire in stunning fashion (a big UP) but at the same time realises that wasn’t what he was really after all along, he really wanted something else (to find hinmself, to reconcile with his mother, whatever). That’s called an IRONIC ending (in the trade).

I suggest you get a short story they can read the entirety of pretty quickly (maybe LIFTERS? Hahahahahahaha advertising my own books in my facebook rants – EXCELLENT!) and get them comfortable with charting the ups & downs of a character’s fortunes.

*****SPOILERS HERE***** So don’t read the next paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens at the end of LIFTERS *****

At the end of LIFTERS, for example, Adaq achieves what he thought his desire was at the beginning of the story – he now has the means to forget his life of crime and start a new life on his own two feet. But it’s come at a price. He no longer has his sister – perhaps what he really wanted, deep down, was to fix that relationship. He is also less sure about his own identity than he was at the start – maybe finding his own identity was really what he wanted all along, not money or independence.

*****OK YOU CAN CARRY ON READING NOW - BUT WHY HAVEN’T YOU READ LIFTERS YET?*****

So is it an UP ending or a DOWN ending? I don’t know, but it’s a GOOD ending. Superficially it should be an UP, but it feels more like a DOWN.

Get them to think up ENDINGS that are either big UPS, big DOWNS or something more complicated. Then you can work backwards to plan out the rest of the story.

And now I will just finish. A surprise ending.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR PLEASE.

Bringing Boys to Books looks at everything from plotting with boys in mind, to writing techniques that will help reluctant readers stick with your story and root for your characters.  I also included a list of top tips…

* Find the story boys will want to read.

* Create aspirational characters with clear goals.

* Stick to one or two viewpoints.

* Keep chapters, paragraphs and sentences short.

* Envision your story as a roller coaster.

* No tricks – allow your readers to stay in control.

I’d be interested to hear whether my fellow TBMers agree, or have tips of their own…

If you’d like to know more, check out the latest edition of Writing Magazine.

—

Dear Tommy,
                 It’s me again, Emily. I’ve written to you before and sent you a picture and I said I wanted to be an author when I grew up? I’m sorry to bother you again, but I’m typing out my book at the moment. The books are a series. So far, there are eight book, and I am nearly finished the ninth. I turned 15 two months ago, and have begun typing out the first book. The books are all written out by hand in A5 copies. But I’m not sure how to go about typing them out.
The books are in the fantasy/adventure genre. I’m pitching it to be for age 9+ readers.
When typing out the books, before sending them to publishers, can you give me some tips? I’d like to know things like, what font size should I use? Also, I have pictures in the books. When adding in the pictures, should I simply leave gaps in the text? The book is a series, so should I send off ALL the books, typed out as manuscripts, or should I just send off the first and see what they think?
I really, really value your thoughts! Thank you very, very much!

Yours sincerely,
Emily,
Ireland.

—

Formatting your manuscript is something you should strive to get right – but not obsess over. Here’s what I said to Emily in my reply…

—

Hi Emily

Thanks for your email – and a great question!  Many, many people who want to be authors simply ignore the important aspect for how to format their work before sending it to publishers – and they’re always rejected as a result.  It doesn’t take much effort to format correctly, but it puts you in the top 10% of submissions.

Here’s what to do…

Type everything double-spaced (i.e. there will be a blank line between each line of text).

Use a simple font, size 12.  I always use Arial, but some other writers use Courier or Times New Roman.  Just don’t pick anything fancy.  

Make sure there’s around an inch of white space on all four sides on your page.

Put your name and contact details on the title page, along with the word count.  On every other page, put your name and the book title in the header, and the page number in the footer.  This will help put things back in order if any of the pages get separated.

When printing your manuscript off, only ever use plain, white paper and print on one side of the page only.  Don’t bind your manuscript together in any way – no paperclips, no fasteners, nothing.  If you really need a way to keep the pages together, put a single elastic band around the manuscript.  Don’t try to make a cover for your manuscript, or include anything else other than the printed pages and a cover letter.  Some new writers send pictures or photographs or even gifts – but all that does is mark you out as an amateur.  Act professionally, and you’ll be treated that way.

Choose which publishers you contact carefully.  Sending your science-fiction novel to a publisher that only produces cook books or romance stories is just a waste of time.  Check publisher’s websites to see what type of books they publish.

Each publisher has  different instructions on what to send them.  Some of them just want a letter introducing your book for series in the first instance, others want a letter and the first three chapters.  Always check first.  Many of them will say what to send on their website but, if not, you can write or call to ask.  Then, if the publisher wants to see the finished book, they’ll ask for it.  never just send in the whole book (unless that’s what the publisher asks for).  In the case of a series, you can mention the other books in the covering letter.  Again, if the publisher wants to read them, they’ll ask.

At first – you will be rejected.  Everyone is.  I have two filing cabinets of rejection letters -  but you have to keep writing and keep submitting.  Never give up, keep writing, and you’ll get there.

Hope that helps!

Best wishes

Tommy

—

How are you formatting your manuscripts?

In this article, I’m going to try to show you how you can use the various social networks to your advantage – but please be aware that site layouts and options are regularly updated or changed, so you may have to dig around a little to follow exactly what I’ve written.  It’s also worth remembering that what works for one person may not be the best choice for another.  So, play around with the platforms and find a combination that works right for you.

MySpace

There was once a time when almost everyone on-line was using MySpace.  As the first real social network, MySpace was learning what its users wanted as it went along and – for that reason – it quickly became a mixed up jumble of just about everything.

If you go to www.myspace.com today and sign up for a free account, you’ll find dozens and dozens of garish, badly designed pages, blaring music at the end of every link and more spam messages than you can fit in a teenage hacker’s inbox.  In short – leave MySpace well alone.

That’s not to say there aren’t authors making MySpace work for them – I know of one horror author who has given his antagonist a terrifying yet hilarious page and teen horror scribe, Darren Shan, regularly cross-posts new entries from his own blog – but those guys were there from the start.  Nowadays, MySpace is full of wannabe bands trying to play you their latest composition and teenage girls who like glittery lettering and converse in text speak.

MySpace is dead; long live Facebook.  Perhaps…

Facebook

This one splits authors right down the middle.  There are those who use Facebook effectively to promote their work, and others who believe the site is just one short step away from eternity in the cold, hard earth next to MySpace.  I think the truth is somewhere in-between.

I use Facebook to promote my work and stay in touch with my readers.  But there are a few simple guidelines to follow if you want to make the site work for you.  These aren’t hard and fast rules – just suggestions that have worked for me…

First – adjust your privacy settings.

At the top right hand corner of your main Facebook page, you’ll find a menu labelled ‘Account’.  Click on that and choose ‘Privacy Settings’.  Here you can decide which parts of your profile other people see.  I recommend setting everything to ‘Friends only’.  That way, only people you approve will have access to your personal information.  If you are going to allow your readers to add you as a friend – you may want to go a step further and keep some information – such as your address and ‘phone numbers – off the profile completely.

Decide whether to use Facebook for keeping in touch with friends and family OR for promoting your work.  Using the site for both is a tricky road to navigate.

If your readers find you on Facebook, they will try to add you as friends.  Whether they’re too young to officially be members of the site or not (the current sign-up age is 13), they will try to track you down.  If you do decide to accept their friend requests, remember to keep your photos and status updates suitable for the age group that will see them (no snapshots of boozy barbecues or explicit rants about your personal life).

Don’t start chatting!

If you do allow your fans to add you as a friend – do yourself a favour and log out of the internal Facebook chat system (currently at the bottom right of your page).  If your readers spot you online, they’ll bombard you with messages and you won’t get any work done ever again!  Just click ‘Go offline’, and they won’t be able to bother you.

If the chat system is something you want to use, you may want to consider not adding your readers and keeping Facebook for your friends and family alone.

Leave Farmville alone!

And not just Farmville – I’d suggest you don’t sign up to any of the seemingly endless supply of time-wasting applications you can now add on Facebook.  I’m not trying to be a killjoy – but for every app you add, your readers can use that app on their own profile page to interact with you.

I prefer to keep a clean and streamlined Facebook page – and limit my Newsfeed to status updates or newly added pictures.  I really don’t want to hear how Billy found a vole on his farm and successfully reared it for 150 points so – any time anything like that appears on my home page, I hover my mouse over it and click the ‘Hide’ button that appears.

You may find that you are constantly invited to sign up for certain applications – often by the same people over and over again.  This can be dealt with by choosing to ignore the app in question, or to ignore any further requests from that friend.

Again, I’m not meaning to sound harsh – but if you want to use Facebook as a promotional tool – you simply can’t fill your profile full of games and puzzles.

Start a fan page.

Another way to use Facebook to promote your books is to start a fan page about your work, or even about yourself.  At the time of writing, this is done by clicking on ‘Adverts and Pages’ from the menu at the left of the page, and choosing ‘Create Page’.

You can now fill the page with information about your books and invite people to become a fan of or ‘Like’ your page.  You can then post photos to the gallery, start message board style discussions or message everyone of your fans at the same time.

Before Facebook introduced Pages, the same result could be achieved by starting a Group.  You can still do this (Groups > Create a Group), but they’re more or less exactly the same as Pages, so choose one and stick with it.

Just like with a blog – you should try to update your page regularly with news, links to reviews, forthcoming release dates, etc.  I’m often guilty of forgetting to keep on top of my Facebook pages, but there’s nothing that looks less appealing to a fan than logging on to find the last comment you posted was six months ago – so if you promise to keep your pages updated, so will I!

Remember that people can access what you post!

I can’t stress this enough – everything you post online stays online.  Even with the most draconian of privacy settings, there’s nothing to stop someone in your friends list copying and pasting your status update with “Hey, look what my favourite author just said…” in front of it.  If you don’t want people to see it – don’t post it!

That’s about it for Facebook.  But what about the other social networks out there, are they any good to use?

Bebo and Friendster and Diaspora, Oh My…

I’ve really not found a way to make the smaller social networks work for book promotion.  They all do more or less the same as Facebook – and that’s where the greatest number of people are.  So, if I were you, I’d leave the others alone.

There are, however, more niche oriented social media sites from Library Thing and Shelfari (books) to Last.FM (music) and Linked.In (professional contacts).  You can now even add people as friends on YouTube!  Whether you should use these sites or not is up to you – just remember that every profile you have to update is time taken away from your writing.

Twitter

You’ve probably heard plenty of things – both good and bad – about what Twitter is.  But let’s start out by clarifying what it isn’t: Twitter isn’t a way of finding out what other people are having for lunch, or other such mundane trivia.  Sure – there are people who use the service in that way – but you can simply ignore them.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service where you sign up for a free account (www.twitter.com) and post short messages, called Tweets, of up to 140 characters (including spaces and punctuation).  When signing up, you may find that your preferred name has already been taken (there are millions of users, after all), see if your book title is free for use – or try adding ‘author’ or ‘books’ to the end of your name until you find one you’re able to use.  Then you’re ready to start tweeting…

The only people who can read your tweets are those who sign up to ‘follow’ you and, in the same way, the only tweets you get to see are those sent by people you have chosen to follow.

There is a thriving publishing community on Twitter with authors, agents, publishers and booksellers announcing new titles, running competitions, posting links to articles of interest and even doing business with one another.  I have been approached by several schools and bookshops to arrange author visits via Twitter.  Plus, I’ve met some valuable new contacts and even made a few friends there.

You’d be amazed at some of the people you can have direct access to via the service (as I finished writing that last sentence, I glanced up at my screen to see tweets from Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, US author JA Konrath, actor Noel Clarke and a certain MC Hammer – yes, that one!)  They can all be followed on Twitter – and they may even follow you back.

Of course, Twitter isn’t just about following celebrities (although if a link to your site is tweeted by Stephen Fry, you’ll be swamped with new visitors) – it’s a place to chat and share ideas.  Here’s how to get stuck in…

Get a client.

Once you’ve signed up for a free account at www.twitter.com, you can begin to follow people and send tweets right there from the website – but it’s much easier to use a dedicated piece of software called a ‘client’.  There are dozens of free Twitter clients out there (just do a search in Google) and they all work in pretty much the same way, so try a few until you find one you like.  A lot of people use Tweetdeck (although I find it a bit too big for my needs) or, if you’re on a Mac, I recommend Tweetie.

Once you’ve set up your account with your Twitter name (that thing that starts with an ‘@’ symbol – I’m @tommydonbavand) and password, you can start sending out tweets.  But there are a couple of things to consider first…

Listen in for a while.

Take a bit of time to follow a handful of people and listen to (or rather, read) what they have to say.  You’ll very quickly pick up the style of conversation that’s used and get an idea for what others are chatting about.

Ask for followers.

There’s no point tweeting if no-one’s going to hear you – so don’t be shy in asking for others to follow you.  You’ll often find that, when you add a user to your list, they’ll add you to theirs in return.  Post your new Twitter name on your Facebook update, or email your friends and ask them to follow you.  So long as you’re tweeting interesting or entertaining stuff, you’ll quickly start to build up a following (which is why the ‘what I’m having for lunch’ crowd soon fade away).

Hashtags.

One way of finding new people to follow – or simply to learn more about a particular topic – is to use hashtags.  A hashtag is simply a word with the hash symbol – # – in front of it.  When you click on a hashtag, your Twitter client should show you all the tweets (by everyone – not just those you follow) that have used that tag.  So, if you want to find people on Twitter with whom to discuss the latest episode of Doctor Who, simply search for tweets with the hashtag #doctorwho.

One of the most popular hashtags is #ff – or Follow Friday.  This is used every Friday for people to recommend twitter users as good individuals to follow.  Post a few of these, and you should find yourself names as a recommended tweeter by someone else.

If hashtags don’t make sense just yet – don’t worry!  It’s much simpler to see them in action than to describe it on paper!

Promote sensibly.

Just as you wouldn’t go to a party and try to sell copies of your books to everyone there (at least, I hope you wouldn’t), out and out sales talk is frowned upon on Twitter.  Yes, you can talk about your books and what you have coming out – but if you ram it down your followers’ throats, you could very quickly find yourself unfollowed or blocked by them.

Retweeting.

If you see something you like on Twitter and think your own followers would be interested in it, you can choose to resend that message or ‘retweet’ it.  Quite simply, all that does is send the message out to your followers along with the name of the person who originally posted it.  Having your tweets retweeted is a great way to find new followers so, the more entertaining your posts, the further they’ll go!

Links.

With just 140 characters per tweet – every letter counts!  So, when posting a link (also called a URL) to a web page (such as http://www.tommydonbavand.com/blog/) you should find that your Twitter client has the ability to shorten that link.  My client, Tweetie, has just shortened it to http://bit.ly/6Vbke – a link that still goes to the exact same page, but has saved me some precious message space.

Pictures, Audio and Video.

Twitter can also handle the tweeting of pictures, audio files and even video clips.  Each of these has one or more free services linked in with Twitter to host and display the media in question (for example, pictures are often sent through sites such as Twitpic or the bizarrely named Yfrog).  Have a root around in your client’s menu for ways to attach photos and more to your tweets.

Have a go!

As with any new communication tool, the quickest way to learn how it works is simply to dive right in and try it out.  And with Twitter clients now available for most recent models of mobile phone, there’s no reason why you can’t promote yourself and your books wherever you are.  Good luck!

The problem is, no-one tells you how to promote yourself on the Internet.  Everyone says you should use the wonderful range on online resources to reach new readers but, whenever you log on and run a quick search through Google, the seemingly millions of results are confusing enough to make you switch off and reach for a glass of wine.

So, I’m going to be different.  I’m not going to tell you why you should embrace new media – I’m going to show you how you can easily set up the most important of promotional tools: the writer’s website.  For some of you, I’ll be going over old ground but, hopefully, there’ll be something for everyone in the information that follows.  So, roll up your sleeves, power up that PC, and let’s dive in…

Get a website!

You need a website.  No ifs, no buts.  I promise you that everyone from curious agents to devoted fans will search for you online.  If they don’t find your presence on the web, they may still read what you’ve written – but you’ve just made them work that little bit harder for it.

Designing websites used to mean learning a host of new coding disciplines, such as HTML and CSS – not to mention expensive or confusing new software.  Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.  A website of your own is just a few clicks away and, in the majority of cases, either completely free or at very low cost indeed.

The website service I use is WordPress – www.wordpress.com (where you host the site on their server) and www.wordpress.org (where you host the site on your own rented webspace).  I use the latter, as using your own webspace gives you more options to refine and tweak your site.  Both options are 100% free of charge.

To sign up for a website hosted on their webspace, go to www.wordpress.com and click on ‘Sign up now’ to get started.  You’ll find that the focus of these sites are the blog pages – but don’t be put off.  While writing a regular blog is a great way to promote yourself and your books (constant fresh content – which the search engines love), you can choose in the settings to have a static welcome page as the first page visitors see when they arrive.

To host the site on your own webspace, go to www.wordpress.org and download the latest version.  This method is a little trickier, as it requires you to upload and set up the framework and database to your pre-rented webspace yourself – but there’s even a simple way to do this…

I rent my webspace from a company called Hostgator – www.hostgator.com – which costs $10.00 (around £6.60) a month.  For this, I get all the webspace I need (I’ve got 5 sites on there and counting), unlimited email addresses (having a separate ‘events’ address really helps), free 24-hour online technical support, and a feature called Fantastico, that sets up additional software – including WordPress – automatically with a few clicks of the mouse.  So, whenever I want to set up a website, I log into my Hostgator control panel, click on Fantastico, choose WordPress and click ‘Install’.  It’s as simple as that.

The wonderful thing about WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System) is that there are literally thousands of free template designs out there to choose from to make your site look exactly the way you want it.  Please take a moment to see what I mean by entering ‘free WordPress themes’ in Google.  Once you have WordPress up and running, any and all of these templates are installed and activated with a few clicks of the mouse.  Plus, almost all of these design themes can be tweaked and adapted to fit your needs perfectly (although that does require you to get your hands dirty with a little code).

As if near limitless designs wasn’t enough, WordPress allows you to install ‘plug-ins’ which add extra functionality to your site.  There are thousands of free plug-ins available, covering everything from user statistics (find out what your readers are searching for to find you), to contact forms and podcasting features.  If you think your site needs it – someone’s created a plug-in for it.  And, as ever, the vast majority of them are 100% free.

A comparable alternative to WordPress is Google’s own Blogger service – go to www.blogger.com and click on ‘Create A Blog’ – which allows you to set up a site, either on the Blogger servers or your own.  As with WordPress, Blogger allows you to customise your site with numerous free templates and plug-ins – although there aren’t nearly as many, and the functionality is much more limited.

Whether you choose WordPress or Blogger (or one of the other available services), you need your own domain name.  In simple terms, this means that people get to your website by typing in www.YOURNAME.com (in my case, www.tommydonbavand.com).  There are many top level domains (TLDs) available, but the only two you need to worry about are .com and .co.uk  If you own both the YOURNAME.com and YOURNAME.co.uk domains, you’re pretty much covered.

I use a company called 123-Reg to register all my domain names – www.123-reg.co.uk - and it couldn’t be simpler.  Go to the 123-Reg site, enter the name you’d like (usually either your own name, or the name of your book/series) into the search field, and check if it’s available.  If so, you can add the .co.uk and .com domains to your basket and proceed to the checkout to buy them (at the time of writing, a .co.uk domain costs £5.98 for 2 years, and a .com domain costs £19.98 for the same period).  If you want to add extra TLDs, such as .biz, .net or .org – go ahead, although I’ve never found these to be useful.

If your domain name isn’t available, don’t despair.  Try a few alternatives to see if you can get something that’s free (add a hyphen, or the word ‘books’ or ‘author’ to the end).  This doesn’t always work; I registered the UK domain for my Scream Street series – www.screamstreet.co.uk - early on, but the .com version had already been registered by another individual.  You can often find out who the current owner of a domain name is by clicking on the ‘Taken’ or ‘Who is’ link after the name.  I did this for www.screamstreet.com and contacted the current owner, eventually buying the domain for $250 from him.  Hopefully, you’ll be luckier than me!

A purchased domain takes up to 24 hours to propagate the Internet (register on all available servers) after which time, you can log into the settings page and set up the domain to ‘point’ to your current WordPress or Blogger website.  This means, for example, whenever a user types in www.YOURNAME.com, they’ll automatically be sent to www.YOURNAME.blogspot.com and won’t see the Blogger or WordPress part of the website title.

Now your website is up and running, and all you have to do is add the content…

How to post on a WordPress website

Here’s the step by step guide showing how to post on a WordPress site.  If you’ve set yourself up on Blogger, you should still be able to follow through by clicking on the responding buttons and links. My apologies if I’ve made this too simplistic – but I wanted to make sure everyone could follow it.

OK, roll up your sleeves, and let’s go…

1) Go to http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/wp-login.php You might want to bookmark this page, as you’ll be going to it a lot.

2) Enter the username and password that you chose during the WordPress setup and click enter.

3) Welcome to the WordPress dashboard.  You can now choose to add a new page to your site – or a new post to your blog.  To add a post, click on ‘Posts’ on the left hand menu, then ‘Add New’.  You can also click on the little down arrow to the right of the word ‘Posts’ and that will allow you to click directly on the ‘Add New’ link.  (You’ll see a ‘Quick Post’ option on the right, but I find it better to use the main post window as Quick Post misses out on useful features).  If you want to make an entire new page – such as ‘About Me’ or ‘Events’, do the exactly the same, but choosing from the ‘New Page’ menu.

4) On the ‘Add New Post’ page, click in the title bar below ‘Add New Post’ and type in the name of your post.  Then, write the piece itself in the main box, formatting as you would in a word processor (bold, italics, underline, centre, etc.)  If you want to add an image to your post, click on the image symbol to the right of Upload/Insert at the top of the box.  This will bring up a window where you can browse for your photo, resize it, etc.  There are two options for uploading in this window – Flash or Browser.  I sometimes have problems with the Flash uploader, so usually use the Browser – but play about with it and see what works best for you.

5) WordPress will autosave as you write, so there shouldn’t be any problem with losing your post before it is finished.  If something does go wrong, log back in and see if your post is saved as a draft.

6) You can add plug-ins at any time by clicking on Plugins in the left hand menu and choosing Add New.  Enter keywords for the type of plug-in you’re looking for, then choose from the results and click ‘Install’ to add this plug-in to your site.  Once installed, a plug-in must be activated in order to work, so click to do that next.

The plug-ins I recommend using include:

Askimet – this will stop people from leaving spam comments on your blog posts.  You need what’s called an API  Key for this to work, and you get one simply by registering your details at wordpress.com.

All In One SEO Pack – explained below.

WordPress Database Backup – just in case something goes wrong – this plug-in saves a back-up copy of your site’s raw data every hour, day, or week depending on which option you choose.  It can also automatically email a copy of that back-up to you.  I have all my sites automatically back-up and email those files to me every Saturday.

CyStat – a great plug-in for tracking your visitors and seeing just how they found your site.

7) To use the All In One SEO Pack plug-in – click on the ‘All In One’ SEO bar at the bottom of the page to open that section.  This provides the post with information that search engines like Google can use to find what you’ve written.  It’s NOT, however, essential – so if it doesn’t make sense – don’t worry!  If you do decide to fill in the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) information, just repeat your title, add a short sentence describing the post (i.e. “Tommy borrows the latest exciting Artemis Fowl adventure from his local library!”), then add some keywords that people might search for so they can find your post, separated by commas (i.e. Tommy Donbavand, Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer, library, book, exciting)  You only need a couple of words or phrases (and this is why it’s better to use the main posting page then the ‘Quick Post’ option as you can’t add the SEO stuff that way).

Choose a category or categories for your post and tick the box(es) on the right. – or click the plus sign (+) to add a category of your own.  I use categories such as ‘Books’, ‘Scream Street’, ‘Events’, and so on.  Users can then browse the site by category to see what you’ve written on the subject of ‘Books’ for example).

9) When you’re happy with your post, click ‘Publish’ and WordPress will add your piece to the site.  Your name will be automatically added to the post.

10) If you want to edit or change the post in any way, Go back to the ‘Posts’ menu on the left and choose ‘Edit’.  This will bring up a list of all posts.  Hover your mouse over the name of the post, and a mini menu will appear that says Edit | Quick Edit | Delete | View.  Again, ‘Edit’ is the one to choose, rather than ‘Quick Edit’.

Hopefully, this article will have helped you get started on the road to setting up your own website.  The important thing to remember is not to worry if you get stuck.  You can’t destroy the Internet – or even your own site – by clicking around in the Dashboard and seeing what everything does.

If you get stuck, simply run a search in Google for the problem and I guarantee that someone, somewhere has had the same issue and described a way around it.

It might help you to click through the pages and blog posts on this website to see exactly what WordPress can do for you and your books.

Good luck!

Tommy

PS – Coming in part 2 – promoting your books using social media!

Commas, full stops (called periods in America), and exclamation marks are just a few of the tools we can use in written language to make sure that what we want to say is understood by someone else.

But what about spoken language?  Could punctuation be used there?  Check out this video where the late, great Danish comedian and pianist, Victor Borge, takes a look at what phonetic punctuation might sound like…

Then Wordies is for you!

Wordies is a new podcast for writers and by writers – featuring myself and author, Invisible FiendsBarry Hutchison.  We recently recorded episode 3 while in Glasgow, having escaped the caves to appear at the Aye Write Book Festival – and you can listen to it here: http://bit.ly/hdIUMS