Hiring Book Editors

We are hiring book editors this week, a frustrating task. It isn't that we lack applications. It is just that there are people out there who think they are qualified, who have no idea what they are doing.

We had one applicant say that they average about 300 hours per manuscript? If each session was five hours of their work, and then the ms went back to the author, it would take about 2 years to finish the project.

We had another applicant who charged $2000 - but all they did was a line edit. So, their poor clients were paying $2000 for a proofreader, or they were paying about $6 a page for what should only cost them $1.50 - $2.50 a page.

Then there are the dozens of applicants who listed that they could edit more than 10 genres - but when asked what genres they read, the answer was 0 - 2. How in the world can you edit a genre if you do not read it?

I don't think we found a single editor who swore they were qualified to edit thrillers who actually took the time to map a thriller and create a story arc. So, if you do not have a story arc, how in the world do you know if the climax is in the right place, there are the right number of breathers, the conflicts work together. Not to mention training yourself to find plot holes, pacing problems, or loose ends.

And - don't get me started on character development.

It explains why so many writers languish in the slush pile. If the editors do not have a clue of what they are doing - who is teaching the writers how to create a good novel.

So, the quest for editors continues. We have about five people willing to train, who we will turn into great editors.

Coffee Time Romance Gave Me 3 Cup Rating

I am so pleased. Coffee Time Romance gave me 3 cups (out of five) GREAT for a 'sweet' historical with only a little romance in it. Read The First 2 Chapters Here:
http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookReviews/Thepledge.html

THE PLEDGE
KATHERINE HUNTER
ISBN# 978-0-9784865-0-1
November 2007
Enspiren Press
2060 Victoria Street, Box 193, Gorrie, Ontario, N0G 1X0, Canada
Trade Paperback / E-Book
$12.99 / $4.99 E-book
245 Pages
Historical Romance
Rating: 3 Cups

Gillian Winston, secluded daughter of an English Baron, was raised by nuns away from her childhood home. When she receives notice that her family has been murdered by reivers, she immediately heads for home to assess the damage and help in any way.

Laird Calum MacKenna, known as The Wolf, was also a reiver. When he discovered that his enemy, Baron Winston, had been defeated, he heads south to Winston Holdings.

Gillian encounters nothing but death and destruction at her family’s estate. When Laird Mackenna arrives, she has no choice but to marry him to protect her serfs and she also needs his wealth to rebuild her lands. Calum is a hard-nosed fighting Scot. He did not expect to be brought to his knees by a small English lady. When she is in danger, he will stop at nothing to find and protect her, not from a Baron determined to marry her and not even from the Queen of England.

The Pledge is a fun and exciting novel. Sweeping descriptions of scenery add to the authentic historical feeling of the story. The hero and heroine are traditional. Gillian is spunky yet stubborn as she ends up making some poor decisions. Ms. Hunter’s Scottish romance is sweet and classic.

Bonnie-Lass
Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance
Reviewer for Karen Find Out About New Books

Does Your Book Have a Website?

One of the newest trends at sites like myspace.com, and facebook.com, and gather.com, is to create a website for your blog. The website www.bebo.com has a 'book' feature built in that lets writers build a website for their book, feature it, and then link it to their bebo websites.

Not all free site hosts are equal. I have checked all sites mentioned above, and they all are searchable by google.

This is the URL of my book's website: http://www.bebo.com/The-Pledge

This is the URL of my profile: http://www.bebo.com/KatherineH75

You'll notice that the urls are not that good, so you might want to link them. To make the most of these sites you need to do a lot of promoting. Building links is a good way to promote, also, use the links in your signature line.

I created the site so I can write more about my characters. However, I am also creating a blog that is similar to my friend's. http://bloodstonecastle.blogspot.com/ If you want to see an amazing book website -then go to my friend's site.




Learn to Write Free
Novel Writer Magazine
Writers Online Courses
Get Paid To Write

Should You Put Google Ads On Your Ecommerce Site

NOTE: I notice that most author websites have google ads. There are better alternatives, like commission junction, so I thought I would post some 'facts' about Google Ads.

One of the biggest debates in the ecommerce world is whether to post PayPerClick advertisements on a website, or not. Many sites are using video advertisements to improve the look and feel of their sites. Others are hoping that PayPerClick will offer a passive source of income, but this short-term thinking may cost the company serious profits.

The purpose of a PayPerClick ad is to take a visitor from your website and put them on another website. This person leaves before they ever see the host company’s squeeze page, buy-now page, or Social Networking tools. This means that a potential customer is gone for good. The problem is - the ads on the host company’s website represent the competition.

PayPerClick Passive Income

On one side of the debate is the idea that PayPerClick lets ecommerce businesses generate some revenue from people who were going to leave the website anyway. The problem arises when the website looks at the actual numbers.

It takes several months before Google starts registering clicks, even if thousands of people have already clicked the link. Even when Google does start registering links, they rarely register more than one half of the actual links. In many cases, Google counts less than half.

Then, there is the Page Rank Trap. Google only pays a percentage of the money promised, based on the site’s page rank. A site can build more than 10 000 inbound links and 1000 pages of content and still have only Page Rank 3, earning about .05% of Google’s promised payout. Many sites (non MFA - Made For Adsense) work for 2 - 3 years before they earn $100 a month.

A website can make hundreds of dollars a month from Adsense, as long as the primary purpose of the site is to generate PayPerClick traffic.

PayPerClick Traffic

Many ecommerce businesses sign up for a PayPerClick program through Yahoo or Google to generate traffic. While the search engine advertising companies promise that they do not favor their advertisers, it is foolish not to. They are only cutting their throats letting sites which do not use their ads to rank higher than the sites who do use their ads.

From this side of the fence, PayPerClick is a good deal, because you are the company stealing customers from the competition. However, very few PayPerClick programs give the advertiser control over sites they appear on.

Google does, to a certain extent. It is possible to visit a major competitor’s site, which generates millions more hits than your site does, and place an ad on their pages. However, this does not guarantee that these same people will not click off your website.

Rule #1 of Sales
The first rule of sales is to hook a potential customer. This means keeping them on the host ecommerce site, and encouraging them to click through the links until they reach the buy now page.

There are some crafty ways to do this. For example, make the link bar to squeeze pages and buy-now pages look like PayPerClick ads. Another trick is to lead people from one website owned by the host company to another of their sites, in effect, creating a big circle.

However, make sure that the main pages are optimized with no=follow code in the links. Search engines penalize this type of ‘black hat’ SEO trick. The no=follow code in the ads will prevent the search engines from penalizing the site.

Both of these tricks will keep potential visitors inside the company’s ecommerce sites.

Another trick is to use a ‘default’ internal search tool. Instead of Google’s search, use one that defaults inside the ecommerce network’s sites, instead of on the world wide web.

Keeping customers is the only way to increase profits, and retain customers.