Very Short, Very Powerful Review of My Book on #Wattpad . . .

It was only 12 days ago that I published the post, Two Women Writers Convince Me to Experiment on Wattpad . . . 

I referenced an article on the Alliance of Independent Authors site that led to a video that’s at the end of that post ( a conversation between Orna Ross and Elizabeth S. Craig ); and, I indicated the two reasons I was going to do my WattpadExperiment:

“Authors don’t have to write serially, they just need to publish serially.”

“If you already have a free book, it makes sense to leverage it on Wattpad. Use it as a funnel to your other books.”

Naturally, you can (and many folks do) write serially and you don’t have to already have a free book laying around…

So, I’ve posted the prologue and two chapters of Notes from An Alien and I have 70 “Reads” and 8 “Votes”—will post a new chapter every Wednesday (17 more chapters…)…

I’m putting a note after every posting with a link back here—to the blog and the full book (and, of course, my other free stuff…).

So, the “experiment” was going fairly well and then………

I get this message from PAHughes:

“Picked this up and could not put it down. Astoundingly gripping , your words just dance on the page and every little bit comes to life. 

“I have downloaded a full copy of the book and will read it to the end. A brilliant book, well done sir.”

Whew!

Sure didn’t see that one coming…

So, I asked them if I could blog something about them and received this:

Name: Peter A Hughes

Location: Scotland, United Kingdom

Age: 20's

And, I’m Scottish on my mom’s side :-)

So, folks, check out Wattpad and go read some of Peter A Hughes stories…

More updates on the WattpadExperiment soon………
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Oh, I also, just the other day, started posting the poems from my book Is Your Soul In Here?—one each Friday :-) {that book is downloadable, free Here…}
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Read Some Strange Fantasies
Grab A Free Novel…
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To Leave A Comment, Use The Link At The Top-Right of The Post :-)
For Private Comments or Questions, Email: amzolt {at} gmail {dot} com

Two Women Writers Convince Me to Experiment on Wattpad . . .

I’ve known about Wattpad for quite awhile but let it linger in the hinterlands of my interest, with all the other wonderful, fabulous, must-engage-on spaces that writers are nearly shamed into using… 

However, Orna Ross, founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and Elizabeth S. Craig, bestselling author of the Southern Quilting mysteries and Memphis Barbeque mysteries and link-curator for the Writer’s Knowledge Base, have convinced me to use Wattpad in a very specific way.

My experiment got its first nudge when I saw an article on the ALLi site about Wattpad Insights for Indie Authors.

There’s a video at the end of this post that was the clincher for my experimental use of Wattpad; but, first, here are some takeaways the ALLi article has from that video:

1. Wattpad users are very mobile savvy and skew towards a younger demographic.
2. Authors don’t have to write serially, they just need to publish serially.
3. The Wattpad mobile app is free, and a Wattpad account is also free.
4. Set a consistent publishing schedule for your chapter releases.
5. If you already have a free book, it makes sense to leverage it on Wattpad. Use it as a funnel to your other books.
6. At the end of each Wattpad chapter you can add an author call to action (e.g. sign up to the author’s mailing list, or letting your readers know where to buy the book if they can’t wait for the next installment).
7. A demographics tab gives you insights into the age demographics of your readers and their geographic location.
8. Authors can add images or a video to each chapter to increase engagement.
9. It’ll take about 4-6 chapters to get some audience traction.
10. Wattpad increases your opportunity of reaching your share of the 40 Million global readers.

#2 & #5 were the prime reasons I got interested in using Wattpad.

And, in case you’re new around here or you just never noticed, I give away my novel (even though it’s also for sale) over in the left side-bar; so, I decided I’d add a new chapter to Wattpad every Wednesday for the next 20 weeks and append a comment there to draw folks back here…

So, if you’d rather read just a bit of my book each week (instead of downloading it for free and reading the whole thing in about two days {it’s rather short but quite deep…}) Take This Link (you’ll have to register with Wattpad if you aren’t already a member…)

I’ll be periodically reporting results…

And, now, here’s the video with Orna and Elizabeth that convinced me to do the WattpadExperiment:

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Read Some Strange Fantasies
Grab A Free Novel…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Leave A Comment, Use The Link At The Top-Right of The Post :-)
For Private Comments or Questions, Email: amzolt {at} gmail {dot} com

Beyond Google ~ a Search Engine Just for Writers

Most blogs have a built-in search engine (look up and to the right…)

Image Courtesy of Alfonso Romero ~ http://www.freeimages.com/photographer/creactions-38246

Many blogs also have a Top Tags feature—selecting groups of posts by keywords (mine is called Subject Index Links—right over there on the left…)

So, writers can go to other writers’ sites and find information about writing, right?

Of course, there is the work of finding the other writers that you want to read…

And, speaking of reading, I simply have to direct you toward a post I wrote early in the life of this blog—Learning How To Be An Author Means Much More Than Reading About How To Write…—which cautions about reading too much about how to write and gives other advice for the aspiring writer…

Still, there’s a certain amount of reading about writing that all writers do and many regularly go to Google (often, for valid research for what they’re writing about)…

However, here’s a comment from author Elizabeth S. Craig:

“Trying to find an article on POV, internal conflict, scene structure, dialogue? The highest ranking post in Google for any given writing search is frequently an assignment that a college professor has posted (an assignment on the topic, not a resource), or a vague article by a content mill site that doesn’t address the topic in any kind of depth. It’s just not what writers are looking for.”

Elizabeth is an interesting person—she’s collected over 30,000 links to timely and informative articles by writers (and, is still collecting more…); and, she also “…monitors over 1500 websites for great articles on writing and then posts the links on Twitter.”

But, you don’t have to follow her on Twitter to find those links…

Mike Fleming, creator of an on-line Fiction Organizer, has helped Elizabeth create the Writer’s Knowledge Base—enter some words and go straight to carefully selected articles—well, I’ll let Mike tell you:

“While Elizabeth supplies the content I develop and maintain the WKB from a technical perspective. We both see the WKB as an extension of the service Elizabeth provides to the writing community via her tweets. Over time, we have plans for making the WKB experience better for both readers and article writers. If you are an article provider we hope you’ll start to see more traffic to your site as the WKB gets more popular.”

Also, with MyWKB, the Writer’s Knowledge Base “can remember what you like and present the best articles on writing to you in a variety of ways. It’s free!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Read Some Strange Fantasies
Grab A Free Novel…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Leave A Comment, Use The Link At The Top-Right of The Post :-)
For Private Comments or Questions, Email: amzolt {at} gmail {dot} com