March 4, 2014

Made It Moment Guidelines

Filed under: — jenny @ 7:38 am

Thank you for your interest in doing a Made It Moment. This forum is near and dear to my heart: It inspired me during the long years when I was struggling to get published, and it’s what first allowed me to feel like I was a member of the writing world. I hope that after you share your Moment, you will feel part of the community of over 300 Moment-ers, and this place will be a part of many of your writing dreams come true.

This page offers some guidelines to make it easy for my resident tech guru to post your Moment, as well as some tips that, in my experience, make for the most popular Moments with my readers.

  • A word count of 300-500 words works best.
  • Please send a photo of yourself that works well at 200 pixels wide.  Generally, this means a close up of your face, not a big landscape shot.
  • Please send a photo of the book that you would like me to feature.  This should also be at least 200 pixels wide.
  • Please include your author web site url.  If you don’t have one, please use the website that best identifies you on the web, such as a blog, or a public Facebook, Goodreads, or Amazon author page.  But if you don’t have an author website, I’d recommend that you create one, because my readers are going to want to find you online!
  • Please include a link to the website where you would like me to direct people so they can buy your book. Amazon, IndieBound, B&N, your own site. Or ask people to go out and support their local bookstore!
  • Please send your Moment in a plain text file, a Microsoft Word file, or an HTML file, with a minimum of formatting.  I can keep basic stuff like block quotes, bullet lists, bold, italic, and the like, but anything more complicated than that may not make the transition to the web.
  • You may include hyperlinks in your Moment, but please limit this to significant concepts in the post, rather than a list of references or buy links.  As a general rule of the web (not just my blog), link text should be a significant phrase, not just the link text itself, nor the word “here”.  This gives search engines more data about what you’re trying to communicate, and the links work better. By the way, in case you think I am waaaay more capable than I am, this is all the resident tech guru!
    Examples:

  • The Made It Moment is generally written in the first person, because it’s a personal reflection from you. The more personal, unique, and heartfelt your Moment, the more people seem to respond. But if you feel embittered about this business, feel free to share that, too, because we’ve all been there.
  • Moments can range from small to big. There is no moment too small to be a Moment. If it made you feel like you’d accomplished something, then you’ve made it, as far as I’m concerned.
  • Please include a short bio, no more than a paragraph, either as a separate file, in the file with your Moment, or in the email that you send me.  Please identify the bio as such when you write to me. Please write the bio in the third person.  It appears right after the Moment text, and if it’s in the first person, people think it’s part of the Moment and that’s confusing.
  • Please let me know a couple of dates when you would like this to post, to coincide with your release date, or another time that would be best for you.  I can’t always post exactly then, but I’ll do my best.  If you truly don’t care, pick a date anyway!
  • After your Moment posts, please visit the post and answer comments that people make.  Generally, readers address the Moment-er directly and it’s nice to make it a conversation. I promise, you will almost always meet readers this way, and if a book is a relationship, then this is a great way to begin it. If you can’t be available to respond individually to comments–which can take some time if you get the traffic many do get–then unfortunately, I won’t be able to feature you. I do a lot of word-spreading for Moments, encouraging people to come, and it doesn’t feel respectful to respond with a blanket ‘thank you’. I find that treating people on the blog as you would a reader who came up to you in person and said, “I just got your book!” is a good rule of thumb. Also, please find me on Twitter and Facebook, so that you see my promotion of your Moment there, and can retweet, like, comment, etc. This will help my people become your people.

I am happy and proud to be able to begin one with you. Thank you for being part of the forum.






No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

Powered by WordPress