The Book Cove

One thing that I haven't gotten too caught up in around the blogesphere (luckily) is the "follow for follow" schtick. Anyone who has tried to promote anything has heard of it -- writers, reviewers, bloggers, etc. -- "If you follow my blog/author site and all of my social media, then I'll follow back." The problem is that it doesn't get you very far. Usually. I can't speak for everyone's experience. 1. many will end up unfollowing in a week or month 2. you're lost in the crowd Following people:  I just purged my Twitter and I'm feeling great about it. While I didn't do the follow for a follow routine, I just naturally accumulated a bunch of twitter accounts. Hitting on 800 (which is no where near what some people have), I noticed that maybe 25% of those I was following were showing up in my feed. Others were buried, not tweeting, or tweeting spam. This goes for any social media site. Of course, there are those annoying Twitter...

What to include in a book media kit. www.thebookcove.com We do a lot of promotions on here. From author interviews to book and author spotlights, cover reveals, giveaways, and more, we've done a bit of everything. We've worked with multiple media outlets, publishers, and marketers. Marketing kits and styles have varied greatly with these experiences, and over time we've been able to figure out what works best on our end -- which usually carries over to the author as well. Figuring out effective marketing tactics is something that comes with experience -- and perhaps a bit of luck. Sometimes less is more. You don't want to overwhelm a potential buyer by throwing five book trailers, three chapter excerpts, and a bunch of teaser posters all in one sitting. On the other hand, you need to provide enough information to peak interest, generate book clicks, and hopefully positively influence sales.

For those of you switching from Facebook to Tsu, you can find us there too ! It is yet to be decided which one we will keep. It depends on how well the audience responds. We were having a lot of problems with Facebook which is a big reason we are trying Tsu out. We're not in it for the monetary potential (I don't have time to promote enough to make it worth anything -- on my own anyways). Stop by and let us know which one you prefer!

Part III: Letter to my Earlier Self about #Preorders By Sally Ember, EdD This is Letter Three of Four of my "open letter to my earlier self" series that first appears on The Book Cove Reviews , http://www.thebookcove.com , late November - December, 2014 on consecutive Mondays.  Letter One will appear on my site, http://www.sallyember.com/blog , on 3/26/15, Letter Two on 4/4/15; Letter Four re-posts on April 18, 2015 on consecutive Mondays as well. I published my first ebook in December, 2013, and my second in June, 2014. My third will release late in the Spring of 2015. This is a letter to describe all that I wish I had known about Pre-Orders before my first ebook went into Pre-orders in November, 2013, and what I used somewhat for Volume II's Pre-order period in the Spring of 2014 before its release in June of 2014. I will certainly build upon these experiences for subsequent releases of Volumes of The Spanners Series in preparation for their Pre-Or...

Blog maintenance can be one of those necessary evils. The process doesn't bother me too much as long as issues do not involve major coding glitches or platform issues that take a lot of time to resolve. There are some very simple maintenance checks that should be done frequently that many blogs, including mine, may forget to do. A big one is to check follow links.  It's easy for follow links to go dead. Links can get partially deleted during coding updates, the platform may change enough to where a new code is needed, there may be misspelled links, and links may no longer work if your site has changed titles. The latter is especially important for many RSS links . Sometimes the links just don't agree with browsers (which I tend to have a problem with), but the blog owner doesn't know that because they don't work with that browser. These are all easy mistakes to make and they happen quite frequently. I notice it a lot when I'm on blog hops and try to follow ...

Something that I once stumbled upon was how to enable auto-post to social media sites when using blogger (also available on other sites). What it does is create a direct link to social media accounts and automatically updates the accounts with new posts from your blog via RSS feed.   Some may not know about this feature and its pros and cons. If you are one of those, I hope this post is helpful. This a great for a few reasons: 1.) It's a huge time saver 2.) Memory lapses won't stop your various social audiences from knowing what's new 3.) It's a huge time saver A lot of times I have scheduled posts on my blog. Because I work during the day (during the time when I would normally have my highest visitor response when posting) I try to make sure that I have a scheduled post ready to go at a certain time. The great thing about RSS feeds on blogs is that whether you have scheduled posts or manual posts, you can create a set-up to automatically update your so...

We are currently seeking additional contributors for the site. The Book Cove is looking to diversify its posts,add to the content, and make the site more user friendly. However, reviewing alone takes a lot of time. Thus, we are hoping to find trustworthy and reliable people to help us out. The type of work we are looking for includes: Reviewers Blog topic contributors (co-bloggers) Newsletter contributors Web design Social media help If you fit into one or more of these categories - please contact bookcovereviews@gmail.com