Category: Writing Life

Posts about living as a writer, and the associated struggles.

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With enormous pride (and a little relief), I can finally say that Build Your Author Platform: The New Rules should be sitting on a shelf at a bookstore near you any day now.  This guide to finding and growing an audience for your writing was more than a year in the making, and Carole Jelen and I are thrilled to offer it to you. Our friends at BenBella Books have been exceptionally helpful in bringing the book to fruition as well.

Cover: Build Your Author Platform
Cover: Build Your Author Platform: The New Rules

So what is Build Your Author Platform? In this book, we share a 14-step program for connecting with your present and future fans.  My literary agent, Carole Jelen, shares her experience marketing books and authors. I help you get comfortable with creating websites, accessing and participating in the Big Four social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+).

Not Just Social

While you already know that the Internet has changed book marketing forever, we don’t just talk about the online world. We’ll help you create audio and video clips, or just connect with traditional radio and TV. Nervous about speaking in public? We’ll help you get practice just speaking into your webcam and reviewing the results.

We help with writing and circulating articles for both online and offline markets, teaching mini-courses, and other wonderful ways to connect.

Expanding Your Comfort Zone

The 14 step program will make sure that you will cast the widest net possible in search of your audience. I will guarantee you, however, that at least one step in the book will make you a little queasy about getting into this writing business in the first place. For me it’s public speaking, for you it might be making a website, or figuring out Twitter.

Now the advantage of having so many steps is that you can pick your spots. Doing only the obviously fun parts of the program may well get you the audience you want, but here’s my challenge: After you read the book, try the one thing that scares you.

When you expand that zone even a little, the worst that can happen is you might embarrass yourself a little bit (and if that really scares you, do the thing with friends, or by yourself). At best, your confidence will expand with every inch of that comfort zone.

Speaking of Fun Things…

If you happen to be in New York for Book Expo America, Carole and I will be signing books on Thursday, May 29 at 11 AM.

Also, BenBella is giving away two copies of Build Your Author Platform at Goodreads. Enter here.

I’ll have more about the book and building your platform in the coming days. Let me know if you’ve got specific interests or questions.

While you’re waiting…

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Cover: Build Your Author PlatformIf you’ve ever wanted to make a career as a book author, or simply want to improve your social-media savvy, mark the date: May 13, 2014. This is when BenBella Books releases Build Your Author Platform: The New Rules, by my marvelous agent and collaborator, Carole Jelen and yours truly.

What is Build Your Author Platform, you ask? A 14-step guide to finding an audience for your writing, nurturing that audience, and selling your books to them when the time comes. Among other things, we’ll tell you how to make Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn work for you.

Welcome to BuildAuthorPlatform.com

Friday, the book’s website went live! On the site, you can:

Can’t wait to see the trailer? Oh, alright, here it is:

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Carole and I firmly believe this book will help any writer — published or not, Interested in traditional publishing or the indie/self-publishing route — establish authority, build an audience, and ideally sell a lot of books (paper or electrons) in the process.

Counting Down to May 13

Perhaps you noticed the countdown ticker over on the right side of the page. As time keeps flowing, you’ll see more stuff happening around here. I’ll be adding more information about the book over on the Books page in the coming days. Watch this site and BuildAuthorPlatform.com for events, giveaways and other fun stuff.

Please visit the site, and share widely! Thanks!

If you have questions about the book, getting started with your author platform or social media in general, feel free to comment here, or drop me a line.

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Ubuntu Linux Mobile
Ubuntu Linux Mobile (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Perhaps you’ve noticed, there’s been a bit of activity in the Ubuntu part of the universe, especially when it comes to mobile devices. I am pleased to announce that I’ve just started writing a book for QUE that we are currently calling Ubuntu Touch: Using the Ubuntu OS on your Smartphone or Tablet.

 

This book will not be a guide to the proposed advanced Ubuntu Edge phone, but will instead be a guide for using Ubuntu on any supported mobile device. I will have more to say about the book as time goes on.

 

Between the new book project and all the news surrounding Ubuntu these days, I’ll be bringing the first of a few changes here at MichaelMcCallister.com. This week marks the birth of “Notes from the Ubuntuverse,” a blog with news and commentary on various Ubuntu-related topics. The blog will probably be mostly about mobile Ubuntu, but I’m sure other things (like Kubuntu) will come up from time to time. I have a lot to say about the Edge project too–watch this space!

 

Finally, I’ve been redesigning the site to bring it into the Twenty Teens, and it’s coming real soon.

 

Longtime followers of my career (yes, all 15 of you) are probably wondering about a couple of things: I still spend most of my computing time running openSUSE Linux, and I don’t expect that to change substantially while I write this book. While I expect to get quite familiar with the (in)famous Unity desktop in the coming months, I’m still a KDE guy at heart. And you can count on this site running WordPress nigh on to forever.

 

I am excited to start a new Linux book, and hope you’ll join me on this journey through the Ubuntuverse. Is there something about Ubuntu that perplexes you? I want to help. I am also interested in your thoughts, and ideas for the next iteration of the site. That’s what the Comments area is for, you know.

 

 

 

 

 

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