It’s time for another edition of
The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, founded by Ninja Captain,
Alex J. Cavanaugh.
The co-hosts today are
Christine Rains, Dolarah @ Book Lover, Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Yvonne Ventresca, and
LG Keltner!
The optional August 2 question: What are your pet peeves when reading/writing/editing?
Reading - Something I used to do a lot myself - head-hopping.
Writing - When I write a line I know is passive but my brain can’t think of anything else.
Editing - Passive words and phrases.
Audio Book Giveaway Update and Findings
From mid-May to mid-July, Dancing Lemur Press ran a weekly audio book giveaway on Twitter. Retweet the pinned tweet to enter.
While the genre of the book didn’t appear to have an impact, the author’s online social presence did. The more involved they were online, the more retweets and entries, with those possessing the largest followings garnering the most. When the author had a very small following or did not get as involved in the promotion, the retweets were very low.
Many of the authors were smart enough to pin a tweet, pointing their followers to DLP’s pinned tweet and enticing more entries. On Twitter, retweeting others often means they will come to your site and retweet something of yours - and a pinned tweet is the easiest to retweet. (If they have to search for a tweet that originated from you, then doubtful they’ll retweet anything.) However, I noticed that a large following of retweeters didn’t help, because all they did was retweet the author’s pinned tweet - they didn’t come over and tweet the DLP tweet to enter.
All in all, the audio book with the most entries had 52 and the one with the lowest only 13, and those figures directly correlate with my findings above.
So, if you’re going to do any giveaway on Twitter, have a solid, devoted following online and be prepared to get involved.
July 27 was the very first IWSG Twitter pitch party, #IWSGPit. And it was a huge success! Alex had this to say about it:
Thanks to all who participated in or promoted the #IWSGPit Twitter pitch party. It was an incredible success – there were 2300 Tweets and we were a trending topic. The IWSG team learned a lot and the next #IWSGPit in January will be even better. Now that we’ve established ourselves and the site is a Writer’s Digest Top 101 Site for Writers, there will be five times the amount of publishers and agents watching the feed. Thanks again for such a successful event! - Alex
Dancing Lemur Press has participated in a lot of pitches. While nothing compares to #PitMad’s 900 Tweets per hour, our 200 Tweets per hour was the 2nd or 3rd most I have ever seen. And we got A LOT of submissions. Boo-yah!
On August 24th at 2:00 pm EST, Chrys Fey will be participating in a
LIVE YouTube interview with Evan Carmichael, an entrepreneur who she'll be interviewing about his book Your One Word and getting some great advice for IWSG members. You'll be able to watch the interview live
HERE. You can set a reminder if you click on the link, or you can watch it later.The video will be uploaded in the August 30th IWSG newsletter issue.
Show Us Your Writer Insecurity!
Are you proud to be an insecure writer?
Then show us!
On Wednesday, October 4 (IWSG Day), post a photo of yourself (or your alter ego) with any of the IWSG swag or with the IWSG logo. Then leave a comment that day at either the IWSG website’s post or the IWSG Facebook post directing us to your photo. (All blog, Facebook, Goodreads, and newsletter members welcome, but photo must be posted on a blog or Facebook to qualify.)
The IWSG site admins will visit each one and pick the top three. Why? Because there are cool prizes involved:
Third place – EBook of A Change of Mind and Other Stories by Nick Wilford, eBook of The Remnant by William Michael Davidson, eBook of Cling to God by Lynda R. Young, eBook of Already Home by Heather M. Gardner, and eBook of Dragon of the Stars by Alex. J. Cavanaugh.
Second place – The entire eBook collection of the Totem series by Christine Rains, eBooks of Princess of Las Pulgas by C. Lee McKenzie, audio book of CassaSeries by Alex J. Cavanaugh, eBook of Black and White by Nick Wilford, and your choice eBook from J.L. Campbell.
Grand prize winner - IWSG website interview, IWSG newsletter spotlight, IWSG pinned tweet for one week, C. Lee McKenzie's Featured Follower for the month, the IWSG Goodreads book club eBook for October/November, a short chapter critique, and a pair of IWSG erasers.
We have some great IWSG
swag – notebooks, pens, mugs, tote bags, etc. Proceeds go to fund the upkeep of the IWSG site.
You have two months to prepare – show us your best insecurity!
What are your pet peeves?
He Gave Me Barn Cats 
He Gave Me Barn Cats 
