Member Blog

It’s free to join SPR and blog about your writing experiences. Read the latest blog entries from our community

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics for Authors

Whether you’re self-publishing or you went the traditional route, you’ve likely been told that you need to have a blog and a website. But, if you’re like a lot of authors, independent and otherwise, you don’t get many visitors to your site.

Leaning a little about search engine optimization or SEO can help.

SE-what, you ask? Some strange computer virus?

No, nothing so scary. Let’s take a look at the basics.

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the art of making your site/blog seem particularly useful and important to Google, so it’ll list your pages higher than those of […]

2011-10-02T10:03:47+02:00October 2nd, 2011|Categories: Member Blog, Resources|Tags: , |

What Happened to Suzy Wins Book Award

Readers Favorite Book Contest Award Winner

This is a fictional book based on actual facts; the names and locations are changed. This is a story of child abuse and how Suzy learned to forgive.

Suzy (Carol Denise Brown) was the 6th child out of 16 children. Her father seldom lived at the home. From the day she was born her mother seemed to hate her more than any of the other children. Their older brother was in charge of the kids when their mother was at work. He was very abusive at times, more so than their mother. Suzy was abused, not only by her family, […]

2011-10-08T13:55:10+02:00September 3rd, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Chris Turner: Author Interview

Wolf's-head, Rogues of Bindar Book I

Hi, I’m the author of “Wolf’shead”, Book 1 of the  Rogues of Bindar trilogy.

Welcome to Bindar: a world of scoundrels, opportunists and glib talkers.

A conniving fisherman/adventurer discovers a new meaning for the words mischief and scandal when he falls on the wrong side of a macabre magician, propelling him and his jokester poet friend into outlandish adventures. All illusions of a just and fair world are shattered!

First it is prison, then it is the precarious life of outlaws. To meet a dazzling shapeshifter, shrunken and imprisoned in the magician’s bottle of brine, and then liberate her is […]

2011-09-01T12:55:22+02:00September 1st, 2011|Categories: Interviews, Member Blog|

Beating them off with a Schtick

I’ve written a book with a schtick.

If I tell you that when I first drafted my collection of Christmas-themed horror shorts they were as a gift for my wife, who loves the holidays like no doe-eyed child ever did, and that I genuinely wanted to explore the notion of ‘giving’ creatively, while reveling in a mythology that is all too rarely untouched by serious genre writers, precisely because the associated tinsel-trimmed gimmickry makes them seem corny or hackneyed: you still won’t care. If I tell you these things they will only ring as excuses: as the book enters the […]

2011-09-01T12:27:24+02:00September 1st, 2011|Categories: Features, Member Blog|Tags: |

The Perils of a Self-Publishing Author

Self-publishing isn’t exactly the newest game in town for me; I’ve already self-published two ebooks. However, this time it’s personal, and I just gambled everything I have on a talent and a genre.

Previously, I’ve written two free ebooks, which I use to promote Octane, my business. One is a beginner’s guide to social media (which is in need of an update), while the other is a guide to using WordPress for businesses.

So I’m not exactly the debutant self-publisher, and I have enjoyed reasonable success with the aforementioned ebooks. So what’s new? Now I’m writing science fiction and I […]

2014-05-06T10:23:18+02:00August 25th, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Author Interview: Amy Miles

1. How did you come to self-publish? Did you try to get published traditionally?

I chose to self-publish my new teen romance book, Defiance Rising, because I wanted control over my book.  I wanted to use my talented sister-in-law to create my book cover as well as be able to control the price at which my book could be downloaded.  I did contact a few agents throughout the previous year, and a couple showed some interest in my book, but it wasn’t the “in thing” at the moment.  So I decided to devote the time and effort into myself, instead […]

2014-05-06T10:20:29+02:00August 25th, 2011|Categories: Interviews, Member Blog|

Author Interview: Nicholas Andrews

The Adventure Tournament

by Nicholas Andrews

Available at Amazon.com

Ebook coming soon!

Personalized Copies: www.facebook.com/NicholasRAndrews

With the kingdom of Bolognia under attack by independent forces of random malcontents, it’s time to send out the army to deal with these troublemakers, right? No, first there’s money to be made! Send out the adventurers, those rogues who wander the countryside in search of fame and treasure, and take up all the good seats at the local pubs. Then, organize brackets, stage it for the public’s entertainment, offer a prize and call it The Adventure Tournament.

Remy Fairwyn is a ne’er-do-well academic who […]

2011-08-22T12:38:48+02:00August 22nd, 2011|Categories: Interviews, Member Blog|

So! You Want To Be A Writer?

This blog is inspired by Alan Rinzler, Zoe Winters, David Kazzie, JA Konrath, and Dean Wesley Smith.  Because everything I ever learned about being a writer – a person who makes money writing – I learned from these individuals.  So, if in the next five minutes you read something that you don’t believe, they are the ones to blame.

Do you know how to write?  I’m not kidding.  One day I was reading the autobiography of a bus stop mate.   He had self-published the saga of his journey from gang member to solid citizen.  The thesis of his book was […]

2011-08-22T12:32:16+02:00August 22nd, 2011|Categories: Features, Member Blog|
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