Nine Rules for Effective Tweeting – Written in Tweets

My wife is always telling me how she doesn’t get Twitter. So – in the interest enlightenment and education – and to fill up time when I REALLY should be writing – I’ve put together nine entirely nonessential guidelines for Tweeting.

1 –  If you want to learn how to tweet listen to the birds. They sing so sweetly – but it all boils down to worms-worms-CAT!!!-worms…

2 – Tweeting – or twittering – is best done at a regular random intervals – say like whenever you fart.

3 – The better you are at tweeting the worse you get. Don’t ask me why. It’s one of those Zen things.

4 – 140 characters isn’t much forget about punctuashn

5 – And spellin

6 – You don’t need to know anything to tweet. Even Lady Gaga can do it.

7 – Forget about italics, Twitter doesn’t allow for nuance…

8 – Tweeting is small talk for geeks.

9 – Tweeting effectively probably sells books – except when it doesn’t.

Yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Kobo Writing Life

Earlier this year I was approached by the folks at Kobo to help Beta Test their new KOBO WRITING LIFE program. I jumped at the opportunity because it fit perfectly in my plans. I had been inching my way towards exploring the world of the self-published author – and this new program seemed tailor-made for me.

My progress has been slow. I have only released the one e-book so far – FIGHTING WORDS – through Kobo Writing Life. Sales haven’t exactly been heroic – and I hold that to be my fault – because I have done very little to help market that particular e-book, beyond mentioning it in my blog and posting a few notices on Facebook. That is my fault – like I said – and I will not offer up a bag full of excuses.

So just the fact that there have been any sales whatsoever is a promising sign of the marketing possibilities with Kobo Writing Life. I’m just putting the finishing touches on my next Kobo release and hope to have a third release by the end of the summer – although this summer is getting awfully busy.

So I am woefully ill-prepared to offer up any sort of “this-is-how-to-do-it” advice on using the Kobo Writing Life portal beyond this. Kobo makes their portal very user-friendly. It is dead easy for a complete moron to figure out how to use it. They have gone out of their way to make it easy for a technologically handicapped old fart such as myself to figure out how to get his words into e-book format. The support folk have been very helpful with aiding me at every step of the way and I can only whole-heartedly recommend getting into this new self-publishing program.

Here’s a link to the Kobo Writing Life introductory page.

http://www.kobobooks.com/kobowritinglife

I really like the way that Kobo does not seek to bind you into only marketing through Kobo. And I like the way that you can keep the epub file of your book once it is released – which makes offering review copies very easy. The Kobo dashboard – which is where my sales figures are made visible to me as a Kobo author is very old-fart-friendly.

For more info on writing for Kobo check my blog entries -

http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/615/

http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/619/

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

NEW YA NOVEL – FINALLY RELEASED!

Attention, Attention.

…loudly clearing throat…

 

I am very pleased and proud to announce the release of my very first YA novel FIGHTING WORDS.

The e-book was released today as part of the KOBO WRITING LIFE beta test program.

Have a look at the cover!

So what is it about?

FIGHTING WORDS

Max was just a thirteen year old nobody – until the fight.

He didn’t plan the fight. He didn’t even want the fight to happen – but after he stood up to Rodney freaking Hammerhead to protect his sort-of-best-friend Tommy – Max decided that fighting could be a good thing.

People looked up to fighters.

Girls liked fighters.

Now Tommy and Max have decided to create their own personal fight club.

It seemed like a good idea – but what can I tell you?

Sometimes stupid just gets in your eyes.

Please download a copy today.

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/FIGHTING-WORDS/book-UK8eJY4woUaS5728pKnQ-w/page1.html?s=2KMFhr-f6kqR-3u7tgmGWg&r=3

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon