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All-You-Can-Read Kindle E-book Subscriptions

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Kindle-Unlimited

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Just hours after I wrote about an upcoming rental service it is now officially announced by Amazon…
Amazon is offering an e-book rental service: “Kindle Unlimited”. The “all-you-can-read” book service will cost $9.99 per month. Amazon’s big advantage here: they are offering nearly 8,000 titles in Audio-book format and over 600,000 book titles. The current Kindle Owner’s Lending Library has a one-book-per-month cap, so this could be an option for Prime users who want more access.

Lots of Competition Already 
Amazon certainly enters a crowded field and will have to compete with Scribd and Oyster. Scribd, which launched a book subscription service last October, charges $8.99 for access to best-sellers, classic books and new releases from bigger trade publishers. They have 80 million users and offer works from 900 publishers. They allow users to contribute works.
Oyster boasts access for $9.95 to more than 500,000 books, but the majority of those titles come from self-publishing service companies, such as Smashwords.

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How Much will Authors Receive?
Amazon’s official announcement for writers/publishers:  “KDP authors and publishers who enroll their books with U.S. rights in KDP Select are automatically enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Inclusion in Kindle Unlimited can help drive discovery of your book, and when your book is accessed and read past 10% you will earn a share of the KDP Select global fund. For the month of July we have added $800,000 to the KDP Select global fund bringing the total to $2 million.

KDP Select is an optional program that makes your book exclusive to Kindle and eligible for the following benefits:

  • Reach more readers – With each 90-day enrollment period, your book will appear in Kindle Unlimited in the U.S. and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) in the U.S, U.K., Germany, France, and Japan which can help readers discover your book.
  • Earn more money – When your book is selected and read past 10% from Kindle Unlimited or borrowed from KOLL, you’ll earn your share of the monthly KDP Select Global Fund. You can also earn a 70% royalty for sales to customers in Japan, Brazil, India, and Mexico.
  • Maximize your sales potential – Choose from two promotional tools including: Kindle Countdown Deals, time-bound promotional discounts for your book, available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, while earning royalties; or Free Book Promotion, where readers can get your book free for a limited time.

Gigaom.com explains:  “If you’re a self-published author participating in KDP Select, however, it looks as if your book can be included without your explicit permission simply under the terms and conditions you already agreed to: According to one poster on the Kindle Boards, “Books in Select will automatically be enrolled. Like the KOLL you won’t be able to opt-out if you’re in Select.  You will be payed [sic] if you someone reads 10% or more of your book. The payment will come out of the same KOLL fund, just as if it was a borrow.” That “same KOLL fund” is a set pool of money from which self-published authors are paid each time their book is borrowed.”

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Author-publishers have an advantage: Amazon doesn’t have any books from the so-called “Big Five” publishers: Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hatchette. Some of these big houses have agreements with Oyster, as well as Scribd, and are likely not cooperating with Amazon’s new service.  Read also Joe Wikerts‘ commenting blog post on this.
Amazon seems to become the 21st century’s digital library.  “Kindle Unlimited” could completely change the market.  Why purchase individual e-Books or bulky physical copies when you can read hundreds of thousands of books for just $9.99?

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Also Available: “Kindle FreeTime Unlimited” for Children
Amazon already offers a and-curated subscription of kid-safe apps, books and videos. They explain on their website:
“Kindle ‘FreeTime Unlimited’ is the first-ever all-in-one subscription that brings together all the types of content that kids and parents love – books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows. With unlimited access to thousands of hand-picked titles for kids ages 3-8, parents don’t have to spend time (and money) guessing what their kids will enjoy, and kids can explore a world of age-appropriate content on their own – NO ads, NO in-app purchases.”
“Kindle FreeTime Unlimited gives kids the freedom to choose from thousands of the most popular books, games, apps, and shows for hours of fun and learning. Unlimited access starts at just $4.99 per month, with special pricing for Amazon Prime members from $2.99 per month.”

Screen Limits
“Many parents choose to limit their child’s screen time, but doing so without the proper tools is difficult. With Kindle FreeTime, parents can set daily limits, or restrict certain categories – like games and video – while leaving unlimited time for reading. In Kindle “FreeTime” mode, web browsing and purchasing content are also disabled.”
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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,100 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://www.111publishing.com

http://www.e-Book-PR.com/

http://www.international-ebooks.com/

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: Amazon Kindle Unlimited, audio-book lending, e-book lending, Kindle FreeTime Unlimited for Children, Oyster, Scribd, Spotify, unlimited book lending for $9.99 per month

Social Media: Is it a Total Waste of Time?

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Airshow-Acrobatics

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It’s always surprising: when searching on Google for a certain word or topic, I often find our own articles and blog posts, as well as re-posted content from our Google+ sites on Google’s first page. This very high ranking on Google’s Search Engine means that users find easily our content. And if YOU, as an author, write a lot of posts, blog articles etc. – always with a link to your website or Amazon author page – you will be high in Google ranking too and more people will learn about your books.

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Total Waste of Time
Authors flock to Social Media sites to get the word out about their books. However, many writers see it as a waste of time and would rather write on their next book. Smart authors combine the best of the two worlds and post small snippets of their writing or interesting details of their research on Google+ posts. Think about it: if you combine your Google+ page with your Twitter presence, explained here in detail, you post only once on Google+ and it appears on Twitter as well. You save 50% of your time on Social Media!

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Your Goal for Being Online:
Unless you have ten-thousands of dollars every month to spend on advertising for your book, you might use the more subtle way of book marketing and meet your readers online on Social Media sites. But what would your (potential) readers be interested in or want to hear from you? They certainly want to learn more about you as a writer and they want to learn about your books and get samples of your writing. It means you can do what you like most: WRITING and at the same time give your potential readers and buyers of your book reasons to follow you and tell others, or re-post and re-tweet your content.

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Use Your Creativity
Authors often ask: “what should I post on Google+ or on Social Media sites in general?” Nothing easier than that. You can use every word, every fact, every location or scene in your book to write a short post, blog or even a long article. Even novels, such as a Science Fiction story has lots of potential to be used to write short articles. Just one example: I recently thumbed through a clients’ book and found on the first page, under acknowledgements, that she thanked the police chief of her town for giving her a tour and explaining her certain laws when she did the research for her book. Her meeting with the police chief and each one of the laws she learned about, could be the topic of a short article or blog!

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For Authors: It’s a Must to Be on Google+
Google has been using Google+ to discover new content, and many authors have discovered that URLs (links to their sites or articles), but also posts that they commented and shared on Google+ are indexed very quickly – and they find themselves often on page 1 on Google’s search results – one of the main reason to be on Google+ or to post on Google+ communities.
Compare this to Facebook, where privacy settings and restrictions on data sharing, make it rather often impossible for posts to never be crawled or indexed by Google at all. Unlike Facebook, which hides data from Google, or Twitter – which directs Google not to follow most of its links – Google+ data will be immediately and fully accessible on the Internet and readers can find you and your books easily. Each post on Google+ acts like a mini blog post and adds highly share-able, link-able context to the search engines. Last but not least: Don’t miss to link to all relevant profiles from your Google+ “About” page.

To sum it up:  Use your research and your manuscript to write lots of blog posts, articles and Social Media content and post it first on your Google+ page.  Combine your Social Media sites, linking to each of them.  Post with one click on several of your Social Media sites, which can be done by using scheduling sites, such as Hootsuite.com or Shortening Sites, such as Bit.ly. This is just for posting your articles – not for directly connecting with your followers or readers. The time you save when linking your Social Media sites is not only time you save to write, but also some time you can spend to connect directly with your readers!  Social Media = Social Networking.

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More About the Benefits of Google+

http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/how-to-get-your-author-page-on-googles-page-1/

http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/5-tips-for-a-successful-google-presence/

http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/3-top-reasons-to-be-on-googles-page-1/

http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/15-reasons-to-be-on-google/

http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/how-to-get-more-followers-on-your-google-page/

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars   Or visit http://www.e-book-pr.com/book-promo/ to advertise your new book, specials, your KDP Select Free Days or the new Kindle Countdown Deals.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,030 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing
http://www.111publishing.com
http://www.e-Book-PR.com/
http://www.international-ebooks.com/
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+
http://pinterest.com/111publishing/

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Tagged: Google+ a MUST for authors, GooglePlus is the best Social Media site, how to link all your Social Media sites, how to write great content, leverage your manuscript, Social Media Content, Social Media: Waste of Time?, your reason for being online

The 15 World Top Websites in Alexa Ranking

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Alexa Ranking

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Alexa.com, the web information and measure company, let you know the traffic relation between your website / blog and the rest of the almost one billion sites worldwide. At www.Alexa.om you can search by country, by category and global. As lower your ranking is as better. Check out your own site: Just go to Alexa.com and type in your blog or website.
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Why is the Alexa Ranking so Relevant? 
Website ranking, as a concept, is stressed as an important component of search engines, particularly by Google themselves. Sites with higher Alexa Ranks become more likely to attract potential advertisers and/or marketing offers. And if you are looking for promotion of your books, compare the companies’ Alexa Ranking, among other variables, before you make a decision!
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The Examiner.com Wrote:
“The first thing you need to know about Alexa, that like a golf score, a lower number is better. What Alexa does is rank your website based on traffic.  Data collected provides a 3-month view of how many people visited your site, how long they stayed, how many pages were read and search queries used to find your site.  Most sites never go under 1 million, simply because they don’t rank well on search engines, others get really good scores (less than 100,000) because they are viewed so often.
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Tips to increase your Alexa Ranking:

  • The better the content of your blog or website, the stronger the readership. It would also attract good traffic and your Alexa ratings would soar. If you are a novice blogger, you need to regularly post at least a blog/day to keep your blog alive and breathing. Promote your blog on social networking sites and it will no longer clog.
  • A great way to increase the Alexa rank, is to write guest posts. The numbers of your Alexa rank will scale to a much higher level if you build the back links and your own readership will soar to great heights.
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Alexa-Ranking

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Our latest numbers on Alexa.com out of 1 Billion websites:
Global rank 105,556 for SavvyBookWriters @111Publishing
USA Rank 48,970

We welcome guest blogs from writers that fit into our topics. If you are interested, read the more about guest blogging.  Got some ideas? Drop us a line, including your own website / blog link at 111Publishing gmail com

Top 15 Websites as of October 22, 2013

  • 1

    google.com

    Enables users to search the world’s information, including webpages, images, and videos. Offers… More
  • 2

    facebook.com

    A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and … More
  • 3

    youtube.com

    YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your… More
  • 4

    yahoo.com

    A major internet portal and service provider offering search results, customizable content, cha… More
  • 5

    baidu.com

    The leading Chinese language search engine, provides “simple and reliable” search exp… More
  • 6

    wikipedia.org

    A free encyclopedia built collaboratively using wiki software. (Creative Commons Attribution-Sh… More
  • 7

    qq.com

    China’s largest and most used Internet service portal owned by Tencent, Inc founded in Nov… More
  • 8

    linkedin.com

    A networking tool to find connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and busin… More
  • 9

    live.com

    Search engine from Microsoft.
  • 10

    twitter.com

    Social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface.
  • 11

    amazon.com

    Amazon.com seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and disc…More
  • 12

    taobao.com

    Launched in 2003, Taobao Marketplace (www.taobao.com) is a popular consumer-to-consumer (C2C) o…More
  • 13
  • 14

    google.co.in

    Indian version of this popular search engine. Search the whole web or only webpages from India…. More
  • 15

    wordpress.com

    Free blogs managed by the developers of the WordPress software. Includes custom design template…More
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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
Or visit http://www.international-ebooks.com/book-promo to advertise your new book, specials or KDP Select Free Days.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 900 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: Alexa Ranking, Alexa Ranking global, Alexa Ranking national, Alexa.com, Guest blogging, how to improve your Alexa Ranking, SEO, why is Alexa Ranking important

7 Tips for Successful Author Speaking Engagements

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7-Tips

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Nina Amir, Book Marketing guru once said: “For some reason, aspiring and published authors seem to cling to the outdated idea that a publisher will do the hard work of promoting their book for them. That’s why writers often want to become traditionally published. But that’s not a good reason to pursue this publishing route. If you want your book to succeed, you will have to do the same amount of work to promote your book whether you self-publish or traditionally publish.”
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One of the things authors can do to promote their books, other than to write blog posts, guest blogs, write magazine/newspaper articles or apply for writing contests is to get as many speaking engagements as possible. No matter if at writer conferences, library presentations or – if you are writing non-fiction books – at association meetings. One more way to create your author brand and extend your platform.  At the same time sell more books and get your author name out. Best of all: Many speakers make more money with their talks than with selling their books. 

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So, How Do You Find Speaking Engagements?
Search for Writer Conferences and Book Fairs, contact libraries, bookstores, museums and book clubs – or just search the internet for keywords such as speakers wanted, key note speaker for … conference or book event. Find more through Google search under “How to find speaking engagements” or “Tips to get more speaking engagements”.
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Practice your speeches
A great help to polish your speaking skills is to attend Toastmaster club meetings that can be found in practically every city in North America and worldwide, no matter if you are in Japan, South Africa, India, Israel or anywhere in Europe and where you can practice in small groups of like-minded people.
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Author Hope Clark, who organized herself dozens of speaking engagements per year, gave great advice to fellow authors in one of her terrific newsletters:

“What you do is the following

1) Write a lot.
2) Write well.
3) Pitch a lot.
4) Pitch well.
5) Get depressed at rejections
6) Get over it.
7) Repeat.

The events I speak at came about from me hearing/reading about it . . . and asking to be involved.
The year before my book “Lowcountry Bribe” came out, I spent weeks pitching to every event I could find. Dozens. I chose to tag events where writers congregated because I spoke not only about my mysteries, but about FundsforWriters as well. My rejection rate was pretty disenchanting. But I still hit twenty-six events in nine states in nine months. The bottom line is people saw me, heard me, and decided they wanted me. I keep receiving requests out of the blue. And that’s how it works.

Sure, you’ll have bad events. They are the best lessons you’ll ever learn. But you’ll have great ones, too, and you’ll float on their success for a week afterwards.”

Read more about Hope Clark and her speaking engagements:  http://www.hopeclark.blogspot.com

More tips on how to get speaking engagements and great examples of (author) websites, respectively their convincing speaker pages, can be found on Erno Hanninks’ website.

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
Or visit http://www.e-Book-PR.com/book-promo to advertise your new book, specials or KDP Select Free Days.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 900 of them : ) – if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: building your author brand, how to learn speaking publicly, learn to speak to the public, speaking at writer conferences, speaking engagement, Toastmasters, where to find speaking engagements

What is Your Reason for Blogging?

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Blogging Stats, published by Technorati:

The only way to become a better writer is to write – pages and pages, day after day. That’s exactly what an active blogger spends her or his time doing. The more you blog, the more you write – and the better a writer you become. Additionally, you can sell your best articles to newspapers and magazines, even getting more attention to your writing and more authority.

Search engines are looking for results that are helpful to their users.  When you write a series of in-depth, valuable articles around a topic, Google’s Search Engines take notice.  Each high-quality blog post that you publish is another opportunity to get traffic from search. It’s called CONTENT MARKETING.
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The State of Blogging

by jxtr.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

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Who Are the Most Avid Bloggers?
13% of the blogosphere are entrepreneurs, or individuals blogging for a company or organization they own. 84% of these bloggers blog primarily about the industry they work in, with 46% blogging about business and 40% about technology. 76% blog to share expertise; 70% blog to gain professional recognition; and 68% to attract new clients for their business – or readers and reviewers for their books.
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Static websites don’t attract many new clients or customers. However, a regularly updated blog can produce a constant stream of good leads from all around the world.  
Blogs have so much influence on purchase decisions. A blog allows the luxury of space and the time to develop a writer’s points of view.  Blog content provides added value and it will always trump advertising.
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Sometimes a blog starts out as a hobby only to become a full-time business. That type of growth is not typical – only if you are willing to commit to it. Trust is a rare and valuable commodity online. You can’t buy trust. It has to be earned by demonstrating your commitment to your readers, time and time again.
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Blogging is the foundation of Social Networking:
“The richest people in the world build networks. Everyone else looks for work.”  - Robert Kiyosaki

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Tagged: active blogger, blog have lots of influence, blogosphere, earn trust through blogging, Reason for Blogging, use your blogs to feed social media, why blog

How to Make Use of Google+ as an Author

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Everyone wants to be listed high on Google’s search engine results.  You write a blog post, tweet, update your website or add otherwise content to the web.  Google bots, crawling the web, are coming across your post.  The page is indexed within seconds. Google estimates the domain and pages’ overall authority, based on links.

Page rank depends on a few factors, such as the number of Web pages that link to your site, the frequency of keywords within your site and how long your site exists on the internet.  However, with Google+ it’s completely different:  your presence at Google+ means you are high-ranked from the moment you post something on your Google+ timeline or your Google+ pages.
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64 Google+ Content Strategies [Infographic]

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Use hashtags on Google+ too

Just like Twitter, Google+ offers  #hashtag benefits to make searching for topics easy. It’s a great way to get found, not only inside Google+, but in the larger world of Google search. If you create a separate page for each of your books and post frequently there, using keywords and  #hashtags, your books will appear prominently on Google’s Search Engine – making it easy for potential readers to find you.
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Link to your blog posts
As the main search engine Google indexes and ranks its own site much higher than any other content. Google+ posts are easily indexed by Google search, and unlike tweets or Facebook posts, are treated much like regular web pages.  Whenever you have a new blog post, link to it from Google+, and make that post public. By doing this, you have made your post publicly available both inside Google+ and in Google search results worldwide.
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Want engagement? Write resource-type articles
Google+ posts that receive the most comments are resource-type articles with a lot of links. Those covering Google+ how-to information are heavily shared, along with any tutorials. Write a killer post and link back to your own blog for additional resources. Use #hashtags with relevant topics so it’s easily found, and you have created an outstanding resource that will get you noticed, and will increase traffic to your blog.
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Connect your profile with your blog’s homepage
The first step in getting results from Google+ is connecting your profile with your blog’s home page. This is the gateway step to claiming your content in the eyes of Google. It will also go far in generating incredible results, including displaying your photo next to your blog post links and a Wikipedia-style profile listing in Google search results whenever anyone searches for your name. For WordPress blog publishers, there’s a very easy way to accomplish this. Google+ shows you how to use Google+ “Direct Connect“.
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Display your photo in Google search results
All you need is a Google+ page, and to connect it to the home page of your blog. See how important that #1 step was? Your photo will eventually appear next to your blog posts in Google search results.
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What the Plus?
Take the time to learn Google+ (e.g. with Guy Kawasaki’s book What the Plus?) and engage with your community there. You’ll see results far beyond what any other social network can offer: both social engagement within Google+, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Google.
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Free copies of What the Plus!
Courtesy of Google. Please share this post so as many people as possible can get a copy. http://goo.gl/eRy6z  
Read also a short description:  How to Get More Followers on Your Google+ Page

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/ Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are 880+ of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: Facebook posts, Google indexes, Google search results, Google+ posts, Google’s Search Engine, resource-type articles, Use hashtags, what the plus

Benefits of Creating Your Own Newspaper Online

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Paper.li-Online-Newspaper

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What is Paper.li?  
It’s been around for a while and I have been following Paper.li sporadically – if content was created by one of my Twitter followers/authors. If you haven’t paid attention to these Paper.li articles yet: Creating your own Paper.li means, you can add your own Twitter / Google+ / Pinterest / FB content to it – not only that of your followers. One tool more for authors, to attract attention to their tweets and certainly to their writing!
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Benefits of creating an online daily newspaper:

  • Paper.li is FREE for up to 10 newspapers daily
  • Build relationships with the people from whom you get content for your online daily newspaper. They are happy to see you get their content in front of your readers
  • Provide consistent and valuable information about a topic relevant to your readers
  • Set your online daily newspaper up once and it updates automatically every 24 hours – You need only to promote it daily

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See what others wrote about Paper.li
Kelly Hungerford wrote:
“Paper.li is content curation service that enables you to become Editor-in-Chief of your own news site and publish a topic based newspaper from content you find anywhere on the web, such as Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube or Facebook.

What is online content curation?
Simply put, online content curation is the organizing, filtering, presenting and sharing of the most relevant digital content for a specific audience.  People (and not machines) are the ones, qualified to make that final selection of content needed in order to identify the content that matters most to them, and for their audiences. We also think that these same people can greatly help their own communities to find their way through this “massive content world” we live in.

Why should I make a Paper.li?
The act of content curation and the filtering of content for specific audiences is strongly tied to the future of content. Millions of people are sharing content daily through social media channels and the numbers are growing, making it increasingly difficult to find, organize, share, discover and enjoy.
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What’s the Secret of a fabulous Paper.li site?

  • Add your personal touch, greet your readers with an Editor’s note, make them feel at home
  • Choose the best content sources and news that apply to your audience
  • Edit each of your Paper.li with love, make sure your readers are getting a rich and relevant blend of news
  • Create an appealing custom background that ties into your passion
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From Bloomberg BusinessWeek:
“When it comes to news, many Twitter users say they rely on the social network and the community of people they follow— rather than a big news organization—for links to important or interesting news stories. A Swiss start-up called Small Rivers has taken that idea and turned it into a service called Paper.li, which gathers links that your network has shared and turns them into a kind of social newspaper, complete with different sections for different topics. Is Paper.li  now the future of news? Perhaps not, but it fills a niche in the social ecosystem of news.

Paper.li takes your Twitter stream and extracts links to any news stories, photos, videos, and so forth, which it then analyzes, using what the company calls “semantic text analysis tools,” in order to determine whether or not the stories are relevant. The site then displays the links and related content in sections based on the context of the link. The service also creates themed pages based on specific topics using #hashtags, such as #privacy or #climate, in much the same way that newspapers create special sections around an event or topic. Paper.li also automatically creates topical sections such as technology, arts & entertainment, photos, politics, and business. Users can also now create papers using a Twitter list. Embedded in a sidebar on each user’s customized paper is their Twitter stream.”
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Setting up your dialy news is easy:

  • Go to Paper.li on Twitter. Click the “Sign In” button on the top right. As you are logged into your Twitter account, Paper.li will recognize your Twitter handle and ask you to confirm.
  • Click on “Create a Newspaper” and fill in your Twitter handle in the first box. Click on “create” and wait for your paper to be published.
  • You can change the title of your paper in “settings”, set the time for which it will generate the daily updates and choose whether you want Twitter to automatically tweet your paper when it’s updated.

More on YouTube:

How to grow your Twitter Following

Curating Twitter Content with Paper.li

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/ Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.

Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are 840+ of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

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Tagged: Bloomberg Businessweek, creating your own newspaper, curating, filtering content, Paper.li, social media channels

Save Lots of Money With Skype “Telephone”

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Antique-Phone

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I am a total fan of Skype, from its early days on, and barely ever use a land line phone in my office any more. In fact it’s battery is empty for sure, as it sits in a drawer and hasn’t seen the light for months.  Wildly popular Skype was one of the pioneers in voice communication over the Internet. 
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Remember the times when watching how much time you spent on international calls?
Nowadays people are using Skype to communicate from PC to PC – for FREE. From anywhere in the world, you can make unlimited and totally free calls to anyone in the world provided that person is using Skype too. With now more than 360 million registered users, Skype is the most popular voice “phone” communication service in the world. It is now owned by Microsoft.
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What if the person you want to speak to has no access to internet?
No problem, with Skype you can “phone” from your laptop or PC to land lines or cell phones anywhere in the world. The fee? Within North America $30 per year! and approximately $70 per year worldwide. You can use this credits also to send SMS for less, and to Access WiFi hotspots at over a million public places.

You can even receive calls from these phones on your PC. That is not free, but very cheap compared to traditional land line and mobile international rates. These services are called SkypeOut and SkypeIn respectively.
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Dial-Phone
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Skype is used in nearly all countries of the world; it has been developed in view of delivering clear and consistent calls over the Internet. Skype software is freely downloadable to your device from www.skype.com. Here is a list of all you need to have to be able to use Skype:

  • A computer with decent processing power and memory
  • keyboard and mouse/pad
  • A good Internet connection, preferably broadband
  • Sound. Make sure your sound card is working properly
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Save money with video calls on Skype
Call and conference with anyone else on Skype for free and reduce cost of calling mobiles and land lines. Share info and ideas with your team using instant messaging, file sharing and group video. If standard, one-on-one video calling is all you need, stick with a free account. But, if you are interested in using Skype for group video calls with all your webcam-connected friends, you will need a Skype Premium subscription. Group webcam chat is only supported with this plan and allows users to host up to nine business partners or friends on a call at once.
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Skype lists its features:
• Find all your friends and family in an instant – With over 250 million people using Skype,
you’re bound to bump into someone you know.
• Talk with your fingers – No matter where you are, your friends are always at your fingertips
with free instant messaging.
• Call your world from Skype – Talk to your heart’s content with free voice and video calls to
all your friends and family on Skype.
• Low cost calls to mobiles and land lines too – Keep in touch, even if they’re not on Skype,
with low cost calls and SMS to mobiles and land lines on the other side of town or the
world.
• Share your favorite snaps – Got a great photo to share? Send it over Skype to friends
and family and you won’t have to worry about email size limits or expensive MMS charges.
• Chat with anyone, anywhere – Skype’s available on smartphones, tablets, PCs, Macs,
and even TVs. Whatever device your friends or family use, Skype just works. Simple.
• Video messaging – Record life’s everyday moments and share them with the people
who matter most, with free and unlimited video messaging over Skype.
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Sounds like I am a sales rep for Skype, right? 
NO, not at all, but I am using it for over fifteen years now, from the days when it often had a lousy connection, when it sounded as you were sitting in a bath tub, when the connections broke down in the middle of your conversation… But it got better and better and now since it was bought by Microsoft in Spring of 2011, there are no problems anymore.  It sounds like calling from a regular land line, often much better than from a cell phone.  Why pay AT&T, Bell or Rogers a fortune if it is not necessary?  You are almost always in reach of a laptop, tablet or computer – why not use Skype, the FREE “phone”?
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Skype-Logo.

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/ Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.

Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are 840+ of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

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100 Years of Change

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An interesting look at life as it was back in 1913 compared to life today.

Maybe some ideas if you write historical novels?

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How to Organize a Book Sweepstake

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European-Robin

European Robin

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To gain a maximum of exposure for your book(s): creating a book sweep-stake is an interesting marketing tool. Thanks to social media, such as Google+, Chime.in, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr etc. where you can announce the sweepstakes, it works like a snow ball system. It may start with only one person (you) who invites friends and acquaintances to the sweep-stake, who in turn invite their friends, who invite their friends…. well, you get the point.
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An invitation for a sweep-stake could be for example:
“You and five friends are invited to experience a marvelous evening of fine dining and wining, a delicious five-course dinner, prepared by a talented chef, perfectly paired with exquisite wines, value $500.”  ”Enter your name and email address”.
Then a window pops up: “Congratulations! Your entry was successfully submitted. Thanks for your entry. Now invite the five friends you would like to share your gourmet dinner & wine with, and log-in with Facebook.”
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It might even go viral…
This way, word is spread already 5 times…. and these 5 friends also want to win and enter the contest, and tell their friends about it, and these friends…  The first prize could also be a ski-outing, a surf-lesson, a nostalgic train trip or a scenic flight, depending on how much you want to spend for this marketing campaign.
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Sweep-stake costs are tax-deduct-able
You certainly can deduct the cost for this campaign from your tax, provided you document it.
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Regulations
Sweep-stakes are regulated in many countries, the USA, Canada and many European states all have laws governing sweep-stakes. In Canada and several European countries the entrants have to solve a math puzzle – which you can use to bring expose the title of your book(s) even more into the spotlight.

You could ask for example: If 15,600 copies of my book “How to make a Million in one year?” has been sold in 2011, and 12,000 books in the first quarter of 2012, how many of this book “How to make a Million in one year?” have been sold in total so far?
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Important:
Don’t forget to link the title of your book to the online retailer (Amazon, Apple, Google, Sony) or even better: your own e-commerce (book sales) website.
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Smaller book sweep-stakes:
If you want to participate (or win yourself) in a book sweep-stake, enter as a writer/publisher or as a participant yourself on sites such as Goodreads.com, BookDivas.com, FreshFiction.com, BookLoons.com, or even on James Patterson’s homepage.
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Everyone dreams about winning large sums of money, but we also like to win smaller prizes too. We like to being called “the winner”. Sweep-stake promotions are a great way to increase your visibility and your book sales. Joel Friedlander wrote in a great article at CreateSpace: “There’s a whole science to running contests that focuses on social media sites. If you have a good-sized following on Facebook or Twitter, a contest can be a great way to engage with your readers, at the same time spread the word about your books, and make a lot of new fans.  You might run an entire contest on Twitter and gain a lot of new Twitter followers at the same time. On Facebook, the most common request is to ask readers to “like” your fan page in order to enter.”

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book heavily promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only a “token” of $1 / day for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/seminar

Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are 780+ of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing
http://pinterest.com/111publishing/
http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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