Author PR Services by Donna McDine

Network with Fellow Writers at Working Writer's Club Facebook Fridays

2012-02-22T13:29:00.000-08:00

Join in the fun at the Working Writer's Club Facebook Fridays every week at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST.

Topic: All about Book Reviews
Facilitator: Mayra Calvani
Date: Friday, February 24, 2012
Time: 1 pm CST/2 pm EST - Please note when arriving to the Working Writer's Club Facebook Fridays Group Page the time will reflect 2 pm EST.

First, if you haven’t joined the Working Writer’s Club Facebook Fridays live chat page yet, please visit https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/161997920566579/ and click on “Ask to Join the Group” in the upper right hand corner just below “your name” and “home” navigation links.

To chat with members of the Working Writer’s Club Facebook Friday’s group on the day of the schedule chat:

Sign-in at Facebook, click on the Working Writer’s Club group in the left hand column and click on the upper right side of the page. Then select Chat with Group from the dropdown menu.

Writer’s Submission Guidelines: The Importance of Staying within the Parameters

2012-02-20T09:57:00.000-08:00

"Writer’s Submission Guidelines: The Importance of Staying within the Parameters"

by Donna M. McDine

At a young age many of us are taught to follow directions, especially for school assignments and projects. As freelance writers it’s equally important to do so when querying or submitting a manuscript. Each publication or publishing house has their own submission guidelines that they expect the writer to read and adhere to. Said guidelines are the gateway to getting through the first step of the review process. Don’t make the assumption that most magazines follow the same guidelines, they do not. Treat each as an individual and research and learn about them before submitting.

Editors and publishers are swamped by hundreds even thousands of submissions a day and if a writer cannot follow simple submission guidelines, editors will not have the inclination to continue reading your manuscript. The lack of following guidelines, gives the impression that the writer did not do their homework by studying the magazine or catalog and reading through their submission guidelines. Therefore coming across as a writer who will not be easy to work with throughout the editing process. Another important point to make is for the freelance writer to utilize the proper chain of communication. Even if you come across the personal email for the editor or publisher in your travels through cyberspace, do not use that in your email communication. Use their business email address as indicated in their submission guidelines. Do not come across as an amateur. Keep your email professional and free of a laid back attitude. Breaking into the publishing world is hard work and don’t make it more difficult by rushing through the submission process.

For instance, if the submission guidelines state the word count for fiction is 500 words, stay within the count. To the average person it may not seem important, but for the freelance writer it’s imperative to do so. Even going over by a few words can mean instant rejection. Magazines work off of space requirement formats and even if your manuscript is brilliantly written they will most likely not have room for it. For example, Guardian Angel Kids Ezine http://www.guardian-angel-kids.com/submissions.htm has different word counts for different categories, so just don’t assume that because there is a 500 word count for fiction that it covers all categories.

Many magazines also follow a monthly theme or particular interests, so don’t just send off your manuscript without finding out first. What good would your baseball manuscript be for a magazine that is seeking animal manuscripts? None. It’s a complete waste of time for you and the publication. Again you will come across as not doing your research, an instant turnoff for many editors and publishers. You will also find the term requirements (i.e., “purchase all rights”), deadline for submissions, formatting instructions, email or snail mail submission, contact information, and response time within the submission guidelines. These are all provided to make the submission process and receipt of submissions smoother for both writer and publisher. Submission guidelines do change over time, so before you send off your manuscript double check the publication guidelines and cross reference that you are in compliance.

Writing the manuscript is just one aspect of a freelance writing career, research of publications and publishing houses submission guidelines is imperative to your success. Be thorough in your research and it will help guide you to forming good solid relationships with editors and publishers.

What does your authentic voice and the reality show The Voice have to do with writing?

2012-02-10T07:57:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday!

What does your authentic voice and the reality show The Voice have to do with writing http://donna-mcdine.blogspot.com/2012/02/authentic-voice-unleash-your-writing.html?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Donna

Working Writer's Club: Topic Tuesday

2012-02-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

Connecting with fellow writer's is a terrific way to avoid isolation as a writer and get the networking channels flowing.

Every Tuesday the Working Writer's Club posts a topic of interest to writers. You’re invited to get the chatter going by responding to the topic in a comment. You can provide additional information about the topic or ask a question about the topic.

This week’s topic is: How Do You Do Research for Your Writing?

So let’s get the chatter started…

http://www.workingwritersclub.com/2012/02/07/how-to-research-topic-tuesday/

Working Writer's Club facebook Fridays Live Chat - Feb 3rd at 1 pm CST

2012-01-31T10:08:00.000-08:00

Please join me at the Working Writer's Club Facebook Fridays Freelance Writers Chat on Friday, February 3rd at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST.

Topic: How to Use Media Releases to Sell More Books and Build Your Freelance Writing Business! Facilitated by: Donna McDine

If you aren't already a fan of the Working Writer's Club on Facebook, please click on the Facebook logo here to get to our fanpage. When you get there, just click on the word "like" to become a fan.

Looking forward to chatting with you.

Working Writer's Club Facebook Fridays Live Chat

2012-01-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

Join in on the fun at Facebook for the Working Writer's Club Facebook Fridays live chat... view the schedule at http://www.workingwritersclub.com/facebook-fridays-freelance-writer-chats/.

Interested?

First, if you haven’t joined the Working Writer’s Club Facebook Friday’s live chat page yet, please visit https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/161997920566579/ and click on “Ask to Join the Group” in the upper right hand corner just below “your name” and “home” navigation links.

To chat with members of the Working Writer’s Club Facebook Friday’s group on the day of the schedule chat:

Sign-in at Facebook, click on the Working Writer’s Club group in the left hand column and click on the upper right side of the page. Then select Chat with Group from the dropdown menu

Book Marketing: Working Writer's Club Facebook Fridays

2012-01-12T13:35:00.000-08:00

Join me on Facebook for the Working Writer's Club Facebook Fridays live chat...

Topic: What Actions Do You Take on a Daily Basis to Market Yourself, Your Books, and/or Services?
Facilitator: Donna McDine
Date: Friday, January 13, 2012
Time: 12:00 – 12:30 p.m. CST

First, if you haven’t joined the Working Writer’s Club Facebook Friday’s live chat page yet, please visit https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/161997920566579/ and click on “Ask to Join the Group” in the upper right hand corner just below “your name” and “home” navigation links.
To chat with members of the Working Writer’s Club Facebook Friday’s group on the day of the schedule chat:

Sign-in at Facebook, click on the Working Writer’s Club group in the left hand column and click on the upper right side of the page. Then select Chat with Group from the dropdown menu.

I look forward to chatting with you.

All the best,
Donna

Is Your Email Inbox Overflowing?

2012-01-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

Is your valuable writing and marketing time taken up with an overflowing email inbox, other words a time drain? Are you subscribed to merchant advertisements and foundation newsletters that you never ever read? If so, go through your email inbox as you receive these now unwanted emails and unsubscribe to anything that is not of the utmost importance.

You will be surprised after a few days how irrelevant emails start to drain down. Much like cleaning out your closest of clothes you haven't worn in six months, if you are victim to subscribing to too many newsletters and never have the time to read them you need to unsubscribe today.

If the unsubscribe options provides you with an opportunity to state "why you are unsubscribing" simply input "I'm simplifying my life and it is no reflection to you or your newsletter."

I've taken this action today and plan on unsubscribing daily or weekly whatever it takes to clear it all out. Especially after the onslaught of my Christmas purchases online I have them more than ever.

Wishing you all a simplified email inbox!

Dynamic Tweets - The Ease of Scheduling Your Tweets

2011-12-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

Dynamic Tweets is a FREE service I have been utilizing for well over two years, both personally and for my clients. The features they offer make your day easier with automation. Create your tweets ahead of time and have the luxury of scheduling your tweets throughout the month. How wonderful you don't have to think about writing your tweets every day. Spend time once a week or month and develop your tweeter campaign ahead of time. However, please remember to put a calendar reminder for you to interact with the Twitter community. What you put in is what you get back in return.

With Dynamic Tweets http://www.dyanmictweets.com/ you can ensure your important tweets will be sent on time and on schedule. Here are a few examples of how you might use our service...

Reminders: remind yourself, colleagues, teammates or others of upcoming events before they happen or as they are happening.

Marketing Campaigns: for businesses that want to promote an event, a product, a service or just send out special offers, with Dynamic Tweets an entire marketing campaign can be pre-mapped and scheduled so that tweets are sent out and delivered on an exact schedule. No need to worry that a tweet is missed while you are in business meetings or taking some time off over a weekend or holiday.

Press/Media: do you have an article, a press announcement, or some important news that you want to release on a certain date and time. With Dynamic Tweets you don't need to worry that you'll forget or miss sending your important announcement. Whether you need to leave the office early or you'll be in an important meeting without access to your phone or a computer, with Dynamic Tweets your tweets will be delivered on time and on schedule.

Social: maybe you'd like to make your boss think you're working late or have your significant other believe you are up all night thinking about them. Whatever the reason, with Dynamic Tweets, as you think of things you'd like to say simply enter them now and share them with others later.

Recurring Tweets: If you have the same tweet that needs to sent out at the same time over and over all you need to do is set it up once. Prior to this you would have had to schedule a new tweet multiple times for each day it was supposed to go out but now you can set up one tweet and not worry every again.

Import Tweets: Believe it or not we have a number of PR and media people who use our site to manage tweets for multiple customers that they service. As you can imagine that can add up to a lot of tweets. To make life easier we've added an import tweets feature whereby you can import an unlimited number of tweets into your account directly from a .csv text file. In other words you can use a spreadsheet like Excel to setup your tweets and then import them into our system with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Remember tweet schedule settings: when scheduling multiple individual tweets certain settings such as the last account used, the last date and time as well as a tracking code are remembered so you don't have to keep reentering them over and over for each subsequent tweet entered.

Delete Tweet Options: we've always had the ability to remove individual scheduled tweets but if you've scheduled or imported hundreds of tweets it's not very fun to have to delete each tweet individually if you made a mistake. Now you can quickly select multiple tweets at one time and delete them with one click of the mouse.

Filter and search capabilities: we've added a new search and filter box in the pending tweet area to help you more easily locate and find certain tweets that you might want to modify or remove altogether. Combined with the import tweet feature this can be very handy especially if you're trying to find a couple tweets out of several hundred scheduled.

Smart Quotes: often times when cutting or pasting text from Microsoft Word or depending on the default font set on one's system, single and double quotes entered appear to look like regular quotes but in fact they are "curly" quotes and they do not display properly when posted to Twitter. This issue has been resolved.

Need assistance to get your Twitter campaign rolling, please feel free to contact me at donna@donnamcdine.com.

Happy tweeting,
Donna

Welcome to Author PR Services by Donna McDine

2011-11-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

Hello:

I am pleased you stopped by to visit with me and to learn about my Author PR Services.

Interested in my services please contact me at donna@donnamcdine.com or fill out the Author PR Services questionnaire so we can get your book promotion going.

If after reviewing my services, you do not see what you need please contact me via email donna@donnamcdine.com describing your needs so that we can get a dialogue going as to how I can best serve you in your book promotion efforts.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
Donna McDine