FNN Report: 2016 Predictions

Listen up, everyone! Hank Quense is back with some horrendously momentous and insignificant predictions for 2016! 

A group of Faux News Network prognosticators have worked long and hard to come up a list of predictions for 2016. 

Locked into a conference room and fueled by six-packs, pizza deliveries and an occasional bong, the group put together the following list

* Trump, denied the Republican nomination, runs as an independent and gets less than three percent of the total vote.  In disgusted he emigrates to Russia, changes his last name to Trumpovitch and launches an investment service with his buddy, Putin.  Together, they scam Russian investors out of 37 gazillion rubles.

* Hillary Clinton wins the election.  Her first act as President is to order the Secret Service to make sure her husband Bill Clinton is never allowed into the White House.

* The National Football League acknowledges that its rules are too complex for the referees to handle.  It fires all the referees and replaces them with on-field lawyers who will monitor game activity and argue penalty rulings to a panel of three celebrity judges holding court at the mid-field sidelines.  Fans will be able to text their opinion to the judges.

* ISIS gets angry over the rejection of their float proposal for NYC’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  According to ISIS, the float would have been tasteful done to show women peacefully living under the command of their husbands or masters.  It would also depict a painless beheading process. ISIS called the rejection blatant bias and poor judgement.

* Texas initiates a movement to succeed from the United States.  The Federal Government does nothing to stop the movement, but builds a wall along the entire Texas border to keep Texans from entering the other forty-nine states.

* The winning number for the year’s biggest lottery worldwide will be 127-45A-37B-987-^#*

Faux News Network is proud to announce that FNN now has its own Flipboard Magazine.  You can check it out at http://flip.it/Q88SK.  Subscribe and keep up the latest FNN reports.

Hank Quense is the author of 50 published short stories along with four novels and three collections of stories. All of these are humorous and/or satiric scifi and fantasy. In the non-fiction area, he has over a dozen articles published on fiction writing and he's the author of the Fiction Writing Guides series and the Self-publishing Guides series. Both series consist of a number of ebooks. The Fiction Writing Guides and the Self-Publishing Guides are an outgrowth of his lectures on both subjects.

As you may have heard, we have a new member to the IWSG admins, Chrys Fey. Chrys will be putting together our newsletter each month. Here's some info on it:

The Insecure Writer's Support Group Newsletter will feature articles by industry experts, IWSG members, and administrators. There will also be a dozen links to helpful articles for writers in each edition, as well as a special Member Spotlight. Even if you're not a member of the blogging group, you'll greatly benefit from these FREE monthly newsletters. 

First issue goes out on February 24! 

ARTICLES NEEDED!

Chrys Fey needs your articles for the IWSG Newsletter! If you’d like to submit an article for consideration, please follow the instructions below:

Who Can Submit: Insecure Writer's Support Group Members

Topic Ideas: your number one writing, publishing or marketing tip; a motivational pep talk or inspirational story; a snippet about something you used to be insecure about but overcame or an Aha moment you had about writing/publishing.

Length: 200 words or less

How to Submit: Send a DOC attachment to Chrys Fey at ChrysFey(at)yahoo(dot)com

Put “Member Article” in the Subject Line.

Deadline: March 2^nd (Next IWSG Day)

NOTE: Chrys needs a member article for our first newsletter coming out February 24^th. If you’d like to be considered for that issue, please send your article to her no later than February 17^th.

Thank you for reading! We hope to feature you!

Ask PZM - Jan 2016 - Pinterest, BookGrabbr, KDP Direct

I've decided to go out on a limb and have a new blog created out of this old one. The new one is still in the works, but as of now Ask PZM, hosted by my guest blogger, Phyllis Zimbler Miller, will air on the 10th day of each month. A new day but still the great content marketing guru Phyllis is famous for.


Ask PZM:

Q: Do you recommend any specific paid advertising options for book marketing?

I cannot recommend any specific paid advertising options because there are so many variables for a successful ad campaign.  I will, though, share where I have recently been spending limited-budget book marketing funds.

1.   Pinterest.com ads

I’m using this option for a pin of my nonfiction book HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE.  This pin had gotten some repins and I wanted to increase the repins in the hopes that some repinners would then click through and actually buy the ebook (or the paperback).

There are two Pinterest ad choices for Promoted Pins: engagement campaigns and traffic campaigns.  I am using traffic campaigns although for your books perhaps engagement campaigns may make more sense.  (The difference between the two campaigns is explained at https://business.pinterest.com/en/promoted-pins and note that I have not yet experimented with Rich Pins – see https://business.pinterest.com/en/rich-pins ) 

To date I have been pleased by the number of repins and “likes” the book pin has gotten through the Promoted Pins campaigns.  On the other hand, the book has had no extra sales that I can discern.  Still, if this book pin is now on other people’s boards, there may be extra sales in the future.

To start advertising with Promoted Pins you must have a U.S.-based business account.  You can go to https://business.pinterest.com/en to join as a business account or to convert your current account to a business account.

  2.   Bookgrabbr.com

This is an innovative site I discovered for book authors and book lovers.  Book authors pay a monthly fee for each book on the site, while book lovers can download books for free and promote these books/actions via social media.  The download is in either ePub or pdf format, and you can limit the number of free downloads.

I have been experimenting with this site in this way: I uploaded a pdf of a short story prequel – THE BLOOD GUILT PRICE – that I wrote for my fantasy adventure story ROAD TO ZANZICA, which is a Kindle ebook.  I’m hoping that people who download the prequel will then go to Amazon and either read ROAD TO ZANZICA for free via Kindle Unlimited or buy the ebook.

(You can help with this experiment by signing up for a free BookGrabbr account and then downloading THE BLOOD GUILT PRICE at http://budurl.com/BloodGuiltPrice – and you don’t even have to read the four pages of the story.  The important part is downloading the pdf so that this information is spread through social media.)

SIDE NOTE: Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited monthly subscriptions may be having a tremendous impact on ebook sales of unknown authors.  I just revisited all the book pages on my author website and added for each book that it is free via Kindle Unlimited.  This is true of my ebooks because they are all KDP Select, which automatically puts those books on Kindle Unlimited. 

3.    Amazon advertising for KDP Select

I tried this advertising option several months ago with two campaigns for my women’s friendship novel MRS. LIEUTENANT and wasn’t that impressed with the results.  But I don’t remember at that time that the choice of one of two options included an opportunity to have a book advertised on Kindle.  As I have a Kindle with ads enabled, I’d love to have my books advertised that way.

As Amazon explains (the boldface is mine as this is the option I chose):

“You can choose to have your ad delivered to customers who previously browsed the Kindle Store for a particular genre (targeting by interest), or to customers interested in specific products on Amazon (targeting by product). When you target by interest, your ads will automatically be considered for placement on Kindle E-readers. When you target by product, your ads will not be eligible to appear on Kindle E-readers.”

Now I am trying one campaign each for two different books – spy thriller CIA FALL GUY and cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.  It may be that different categories do better than others when using this advertising option.

You can learn more at https://kdp.amazon.com

In conclusion, I wish there were a magic bullet I could recommend that would make all our books bestsellers.  But in the absence of such an option, all we can do is keep experimenting and sharing our information with each other.  So do share in the comments below if you have had success with specific paid advertising opportunities.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books on Amazon.  She blogs on book-related topics at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

IWSG: I'm Like An Old Worn-out Shoe

It's that the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's Insecure Writer's Support Group Wednesday. Thanks to our noble Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh, it's time to share our fears and insecurities, or support and assistance. Doesn't matter which.

If you'd like to join us, click here. Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.

Our hashtag is #IWSG

Alex's awesome co-hosts for the January 6 posting of the IWSG are L.G. Keltner, Denise Covey, Sheri Larsen, J.Q. Rose, Chemist Ken, and Michelle Wallace! 

Please stop by and thank them for their time and effort.

And don’t forget we're announcing the winners of the Anthology Contest today! 

Thanks, Alex for creating Insecure Writer's Support Group. Thanks IWSG bloggers for making it a safe place to share. Over the years, many of your posts have moved me deeply. I've grieved with you. Laughed with you. Cheered for you. You have inspired me during my best and worst moments.

For a long time, sharing the worst moments felt redundant to me, as if giving those moments relevance was useful.

I believed that -- at the same time that you were putting it out there for everyone to see.

The Writing Life is difficult, you wrote. Also wondrous, exciting. Sometimes horrible.

That you continue to share personal feelings like that is appreciated. (I'm searching for a better word) Valued.

Sometimes I stand outside myself and look at the life I've lived. To the world I am a pleasant woman, a proud grandmother. Cheerful, optimistic, kind. On occasion: wise. People often say they look at me and sense joy.

Most days I look in the mirror and see the opposite, not only insecurities but despair. I often wake joyless. Even now, the child in me is horrified to see these words jump out at me: This is who you really are, Joylene -- fearful, anxious, sad. These negative emotions fill my cup, even while I live the best times of my life.

All this might sound alarming, but you must remember I am a storyteller. A contradiction. I channel my fear and write compelling novels about strong protagonists who overcome being broken. Life isn't easy, and while I can and should choose to be happy despite everything, most days it helps to incorporate the pain into a story. Which doesn't mean I can't be happy or that I don't love life.

I'm sharing this today because I know there are many who feel this way, and I want you to understand that you're not alone. Being brave and announcing to the world that you feel consumed by feelings of rejection or irrelevance won't bring the world to an end. It won't give birth to more havoc. Revealing those fears won't break you. It's simply a declaration that you're writing from your gut to announce that this is part of who you are.

Life is a struggle. Being a writer is a struggle. In the morning, before your eyes open, tell the universe what it is you want. Then let it go. If doubts surface, which of course they will, whisper your new mantra:

"Everything will be okay--everything will be okay--

Everything will be okay--"