Are you looking for new ways to engage readers before your next book is available for sale? Believe it or not, you can create a public Book Inspiration Pinterest Board to start telling readers about your book before it becomes available for sale. Look at it this way, it’s important to market your book before it becomes available right? While many authors do this by posting excerpts to their blog, and yes, you should do this too, you have to find other ways to draw interest to your story. One of those ways is to show your readers your inspiration board for the book you’re working on. So, how do you do this? It’s easy!

1. Create a Pinterest account if you don’t already have one.

2. Sign in to your Pinterest account.

3. Click on Create a Board.

4. Name your board. Since you want readers to know this is the inspiration board for your book, you should name your board something that has your book title in it. For example: The Lord by Laura Tolomei Inspiration Board.

5. Search for photos that represent, people, clothing styles, religions, planets, cities, towns, nationalities and such from your book. You can …

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There are companies and authors that have been saying for years that you should just give away your latest release for a short period and this will help you to drive more sales to your backlist. Yeah, well I’m not convinced. With the advent of the KDP program at Amazon and the rise of e-book piracy, there is a devaluation of books, particularly if they are e-books. While some may argue that giving your books away means readers will read the free book, like it and buy from your backlist, there are no guarantees.

There are four reasons I think you should never give your latest releases away:

1. It devalues not just the book itself but also all the hard work you put into it.

2. Authors who think nothing of giving away their latest release are disrespecting themselves as authors. And in many cases, it makes an author seem as though they are desperate to make sales. If your publisher is enrolling your latest release in Amazon’s KDP program then they also are not respecting your hard work. And here’s another thing to think about, if you don’t value your latest release enough to sell it at a …

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Do you have a friend or family member who’s a writer? I’ll bet you’re wondering what the heck to get that person for the holidays aren’t you? Writers can be some of the most difficult people to buy for. I mean I don’t know about you, but most of my family and friends seem to think giving me an unending supply of those lined journals with flowers and or cute animals on the cover is what I want. I mean I have a drawer full of those things, and umm…hate to tell you this family and friends, but they aren’t getting used any time soon!

So, what do you give the writer in your life for Christmas? There are many more gifts that writers will appreciate than the oft-used lined journal. Here are ten ideas to get you started!

1. The latest version of Microsoft Word. Yup, you guessed it, a word processing program. This can be an expensive item for writers and most of us would just as soon use our 2007 or 2010 version than buy a new version. So, make sure they don’t have the latest version first but if not this is a great gift for …

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