HEARTICLES: Articles with Heart

Welcome crime writer, Sue Coletta, to Hearticles. She is guest posting about adding pets and animals to your writing. Take it away, Sue! • • • I love writing pets into my stories. Not only is a great way to  show a killer’s soft side , but they become important family members for the main characters. In my stories, I’ve used a Rottweiler, mastiff, and St. Bernard ( MARRED  and CLEAVED), a calico, tabby, and all-black cat ( Wings of Mayhem ), pet crows (Blessed Mayhem), and a black bear (A Sultry Abyss in  SCREAM ). I’ve even borrowed  a friend’s Bulldog  for Black Out ( RUN ), but I felt so responsible for him, I couldn’t include him like I’d originally planned. God forbid I returned him emotionally scarred from the experience. It’s much safer to use fictional pets. Need a way to show your character’s quirky side? Include a bearded dragon, snapping turtle, boa, tarantula, or exotic bird. Is your character adventurous? Give him a pet moose, lion, leopa...

Hashtags are an essential tool for any promotion. For the sake of conversation, let's talk books. What is a hashtag? Firstly, a hashtag is made up of two components...the hash and the tag or keyword. Using the two together creates a type of label or metatag used on social media to make it easier for users to find messages with a specific theme or similar content. The has looks like this #. Back in the old days, we called this the pound sign, but with most things, over time, names and meanings can change. In a time of social media, this innocent looking character has become something which holds much power. Why? Using this symbol alerts social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to share the topic on the hash, much like a neon arrow that's blinking, "Hey, over here...someone's talking about your book!" And with luck, that person will be inspired to buy your book, or whatever you're promoting. Each social media site uses the hashtags a little dif...

You've written your book, typed 'the end', and are now looking for a place to publish. STOP! Is your book ready? Of course, you'll need to edit, re-edit, and edit some more before you have a submittable project. But there are some things you want to pay special attention to before hitting send on your submission or query to a publisher. Here are some helpful hints that will get your book read with TirgearrPublishing : First, every publisher's guidelines are different, so it's important that you follow each publisher's specific guidelines, even if it means tailoring your basic submission. Tirgearr Publishing strives to make the submission process easy, so be sure to take a moment to ensure your submission is not only formatted correctly, but that the story is actually what we're looking for. Check our guidelines here Keep in mind that editors can read dozens of books per week, so the more well-presented your submission is...

Official FBI Book Piracy Info Here Book piracy is the #1 bane of an author's existence. While the divide between traditional publishing and self publishing seems to be widening, there will always be one thing that joins us together...fighting book pirates and those people who download our books from these sites. I posted about this last December with the basic DMCA notice and how to use it , but last week, Google's own Fusion Tables came under scrutiny, as a number of books were found there, being offered for free. I sent four DMCA notices on behalf of Tirgearr Publishing to those involved with this database: • Google/Fusion Tables •  The wesbite itself •  The server host who lets the website park on their server •  The domain registrant Our complaint to Google was also registered by Google with Lumen, which shows up today as an active case. Lumen (see below) is one of the main go-to sites for DMCA cases. Perhaps this was why the links from that G...

Book piracy is on the rise...as if we didn't have enough to contend with from Amazon and such, right? As the author of your book and the copyright holder, you are obliged to send the offending site who's giving away your book a DMCA Takedown Notice . It does not matter if you're self publishing or with a publisher, you are the author and the ultimate copyright holder so this is your responsibility. Where are pirated books coming from? Well, mostly from Amazon! If you look at the page source for books, you'll see book covers are coming out of Amazon's images files, and the books are filed by the book's ASIN, which is ONLY available from Amazon. Perhaps there are come consolations to pirated books: 1) Most pirated books which are being given away almost always have data mining viruses embedded in the book files. No one gains anything from giving away your book. But by embedding a virus to infiltrate the user's system, they can sell that information to ...

Like so many others today, I've been reading Smashwords' Mark Coker's blog post about Amazon's recent reduction in the Kindle Unlimited pricing structure in India . Currently, KU is $9.99 per month for unlimited book downloads, but Amazon has lowered this to $3 in India, and has made insinuation that this pricing structure can and will filter to other Amazon sites in the future. While KU is systematically killing publishing, I have my own views on why books have been devalued and it's not all Amazon's fault. There has come a very strong trend in the industry from self-publishing authors who only price books at 99c. Some small press do this as a regular thing, but the trend has come from self-publishing. What started off as introductory sales and short-term promotions has quickly become the pricing standard if we want to 'play the game.' Worse, 99c box sets--often up to 10 books in one download--have become the norm, knocking out the above single tit...

THE ART OF SELF-PROMOTION: The ability to market one's work is the difference between a hobby and a career Writers, like it or not, cannot escape the fact they are small business owners. And to succeed in any small business, we need a business plan and a steady stream of activities to generate buyer awareness and desire for the product. Here are some easy tips to help you with self-promotion. 1) PROMOTION AND MARKETING - Learn the difference here . Promotion is the 'what' in sales. Marketing is the 'why'. Don't just show potential readers your book. Tell them why they need to read it. 2) BRANDING - Do you write a series, or excel in a particular time period or genre? Recognize your brand and focus your efforts in that direction. This will also help you target your reading audience. 3) ENGAGE - Be more social on social networking sites. Go to the readers, don't expect they'll find you . Being social means talking to people, sharing ...

No, I’m not talking about 50 Shades of Gray. In fact, if you are thinking of writing something similar, or titling your book, novella, or story Fifty Shades of [insert any color or item here], please don’t . I’m talking about submitting to a small press. While I would love for you to submit to Tirgearr Publishing , where I act as Senior Editor, some things I have seen on the acquisitions side are now fueling a short rant, hopefully filled with some useful advice, no matter where you decide to submit. Some of you are great at self-publishing. You hire great cover designers, editors, proof readers, and formatters. You understand the need and the value of investing in your work, treating your writing like a business, and making your book the best product it can be . This post is not for you, unless, like me, you want to be a hybrid author , and self-publish some things while you submit others. For the rest of you let me simply say this : If you don’t have the money to in...

Probably one of the most confusing parts of selling books, or any product, is marketing and promotion, but not many understand the difference in the terms. Before we begin, we must go back to the 5 Ws: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Marketing includes all of those things. Promotion is just part of it. In the simplest terms, Promotion tells a customer WHAT you have for sale. Marketing tells the customer WHY they need it. You can't have one without the other. And if your book is on sale, you can include your WHERE and WHEN to that. WHO? That's your audience. Let's break it down with a few examples -- Promotion -- what = the product: Just Desserts Cookbook Marketing -- why =  you need this book because . . . It's full of dozens of seasonal recipes that can be used year-round. All recipes were written and donated by many Tirgearr authors. There are recipes for most occasions. The recipes are easy to make, so even beginners can make them. There are twi...