What Are You Geeky About?

Gilbert Garfinkle, the hero of my latest novel, Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one), is the ultimate geek. He has vintage Star Wars sheets on his bed, and posters of dragons, sci-fi movies, and Albert Einstein on the walls of his tiny room in the basement. He takes apart video game systems because he so desperately wants to see what he can do to improve them.

Character sketch of super geek Gilbert Garfinkle, the hero of Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one) by Shevi Arnold

Some people see being a geek as a bad thing, but I don’t, and neither does Gilbert.

In one scene he explains to Amber--the gorgeous, mixed-up vampire who wants to turn him into her platonic BFF literally forever--what it means to be a geek: ““Geeks are awesome. If other people can’t see that, it’s their problem. The very definition of being a geek is that you love something just because you love it, not because someone is telling you you should, but in spite of them telling you you shouldn’t. There’s no greater love than geek love. If you’re lucky, maybe someday you’ll find it too.”

I’ve always been super geeky about comedy, fantasy, and science fiction.

When I was little, I'd take them apart and analyze them, kind of like what Gilbert Garfinkle does with video game systems. If I didn’t like what I found, I would try to fix it. And sometimes I would take parts of a story and use them to create something new. This continued into my college years, when I majored in English Literature and Theater Studies. Actually, it continued through my time as an editorial cartoonist, illustrator, editor, consumer columnist, and arts-and-entertainment writer specializing in children's entertainment and, of course, comedy--and it continues to this day.

Nothing makes me as happy as tinkering with a funny, fantastic, incredible story.

So I ask you, “What are you geeky about?”

What is it that makes you so happy you don’t care what anyone else thinks?

Maybe you’ve found it, and maybe you’re not as ready to tell the world as I am and Gilbert is. Maybe you’re still afraid of what others might think. Well, don’t be. Others only judge because they don’t feel the joy that being truly geeky about something brings. Don’t let them steal that joy from you.

I’m geeky about writing stories that make people laugh, cry, and think, and that transport them to worlds only reachable through the imagination. I’m geeky about books. I’m geeky about Gilbert, and Why My Love Life Sucks. And I’m geeky about my fellow geeks who love books just as much as I do.

What are you geeky about? What do you love so much that you don’t care what anyone else thinks?

5 Reasons Why a Writer Needs a Blog

There are so many reasons why writers don't blog on a daily or even weekly basis. 

I often feel that if I have time to write and edit something, I should spend it writing and editing my next novel. Even as I'm writing this, I can hear Why My Love Life Sucks: The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer (book one) laying a heavy guilt trip on me, and it's not because I kill the main character off in the first few pages. It's because I really, really need to finish editing it, so people can finally read it. "So why," the story asks, "are you working on this blog post instead?"

But guilt trips aren't the only things keeping me from blogging. Sometimes I wonder if I have anything to say in a blog post, if anyone wants to hear it, and if blogging is really worth the time and effort. I know some bloggers have huge egos and think people will be fascinated by everything they do and think. I'm not one of those bloggers.

Perhaps you have similar issues.

Then I met Roxanne Porter, who told me every writer should have a blog. I asked her my favorite question: "Why?" 

Below you'll find her response. Thanks, Roxanne, for giving me a little food for thought. 

* * *

I started reading blogs long before I ever started writing my own. Despite being a writer, I was a little shy of putting my own personal thoughts and feelings out on the internet for anyone and everyone to read, and I had strong doubts that anyone would actually have any interest in what I had to say. When I finally caved and started my own blog I had no idea the impact that it would have on my life, and as my blogging has progressed I've been pleasantly surprised with the benefits that have come with blogging.

5 Reasons Why Every Writer Needs a Blog

1.       It allows you to network within the writing/blogging community. Blogging exposes you to a plethora of people, both with the same interests as your own and with differing ones, and it allows you to form friendships with people you would have never met otherwise. Some of my closest friends are people ’ve met through blogging, and being avid readers of other blogs and active with my own blog has allowed me to not only meet new people but also to find freelance jobs and to use my blog as a platform to publish freelance work. 

2.       It gives you a chance to write what YOU want to write daily. So often, as writers, we are confined to write a certain way of writing due to assignments or to the niche that we have found a career in. Writing your own blog gives you a chance to deviate from your normal writing routine and write solely for you. It allows you to stay in touch with the reason you began writing in the first place, and offers you a place where you can continually experiment with your writing. 

3.       It can serve as a portfolio for interested employers. Whenever I’ve applied for writing jobs I've included a link to my blog at the end of my signature, allowing prospective employers to read my work and get a feel for my writing skills and expertise. Your blog can function perfectly as a pseudo-portfolio when you’re trying to secure writing positions, and mine has helped me land several different writing jobs throughout the years. 

4.       It lets you fine tune your writing skills. The best way to sharpen your writing skills is through practice, and when you blog on a daily or weekly basis you are doing just that. You are constantly brainstorming ideas, writing posts, proof-reading and editing them, and publishing your work, which is a small scale version of any writing assignment you may have, whether it’s writing a freelance article or completing a book.

5.       It gives you the opportunity for constructive criticism. You can learn a lot about the way you write and where you can improve through the comments’ section of your blog, and being open to comments from readers around the blogosphere can give you some constructive criticism in how you can improve your writing. We all need critiquing from time to time and this is a great way to get some unbiased assessments of your writing.

Blogging has opened up a whole new world for me and helped me to become a much stronger writer. Whether I’m writing a daily quip for myself or polishing up a submission for an employer, I’m much more confident in my own skills because of all of the time I've spent blogging. It doesn't matter if you write technical pieces, fictional literature, or freelance articles for a living; no matter what type of writing you do blogging can help you enhance your writing style and further your career.

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So what do you think? Is blogging worth the time, and if so, why? I hope you'll post your thoughts in the comments below.

Author Bio:

Roxanne Porter is a nanny, freelance blogger, and regular contributor to http://www.nannyjobs.org/. She writes about nanny services and the experience of being a nanny. You can email her at r.poter08 at gmail.com.

7 STEPS TO BECOMING AN AMAZON BESTSELLER (AND 3 REASONS WHY I WON’T TAKE THEM)

Anyone can be an Amazon Kindle bestseller by playing the numbers, and I'll tell you how in a moment.  

First I want to explain why I would never do it.

I want people to buy my book because they want to read it. And I want people to be happy that they bought my book after they've read it because something in it moved, inspired, or entertained them. I want readers to love my books. If I didn't, I wouldn't spend a year or more carefully writing and polishing each one. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have spent over a decade honing my craft.

In Toren the Teller'sTale, there's a wizard who says he will not accept payment until he knows the customer is fully satisfied. That's how I feel about my books. I don't want to trick readers into buying something they don't want or need. I want them to feel that their money was well spent, that my book was worth every penny and more.

So far the reviews I’m getting are telling me that I am succeeding by my own definition of success, even if I’m not selling millions of copies or making bestseller lists. I am doing what I set out to do: I’m getting my books into the hands of people who enjoy reading them.

A lot of people would say that I'm naïve, and they may be right.

They would say that even the major publishers play the numbers to get on bestseller lists, and have been doing so for years. They would say that major publishers have huge advertising budgets, and little indie publishers have to play the numbers in order to compete. I don't know if that's true. I hope it's not. In any case, I'm not going to stoop to that level. Of course I want to win the game, but only because I’ve earned it.

Okay, now let me tell you how someone can turn almost any book into an Amazon bestseller. It has something to do with Amazon’s new program: Kindle Direct Publishing Select (KDP Select).

To understand KDP Select, you must first know what KDP is.

KDP is the Amazon program authors can use to get their e-books into Amazon's Kindle store. The regular KDP program lets publishers keep 70% of the retail price of their e-books (provided they’re priced between $2.99 and $9.99).

KDP Select, on the other hand, lets publishers make money based on the number of times Amazon Prime customers “borrow” a book for free.

Amazon Prime customers can borrow any book in the KDP Select program. To help authors encourage customers to choose their books, each author is allowed to give away his or her books for free for up to five days while that author is in the 90-day KDP Select program. The amount of money authors can make in the KDP Select program fluctuates and is based on the size of the pot every KDP Select author earns a portion of, and on the relative number of free borrows each author’s books have seen in relation to the number of free borrows other KDP Select books have seen. In other words, if 500 copies of your books are borrowed for free and everyone else in the program averages 1,000 free borrows, you’ll earn much less than everyone else. Contrary-wise, if you book is borrowed 1,000 times for free and everyone else's books are borrowed 500 times for frees, you’ll make a lot more.


The main way to draw attention to your book so people will consider borrowing it is by giving your book away for free for five days. Amazon will promote your free book at that time, and you can promote it too. You can't sell your book through BN.com, the Apple iBookstore, or any other online retailer when you're in the KDP Select program. It becomes your only way to make money. There is, therefore, a huge incentive to sell a lot of free books while you’re in the KDP Select program.

Every day, Amazon customers have the option of choosing from over 100 free books. So why would a Kindle owner choose your free book above another? What’s in it for them?

Now it’s entirely possible that what’s in it for them is a great book, but that’s not why Amazon customers trawl the freebie bestseller lists. People are willing to pay for great books--but they’re also willing to take a chance on something that may or may not be good if they don’t have to pay for it.

So what incentive are you going to give Amazon’s customers to get them to choose your book over someone else’s?  

7 EASY STEPS TO BECOMING AN AMAZON BESTSELLER

STEP ONE: write a book.

You don’t need to know how to write, and it doesn’t have to be a great book. Don’t even think of it as a book. Think of it as a product. Based on their reviews, many of the writers on the Amazon Kindle freebie bestseller list don’t really know how to write, and many of those who do are giving away a single short story or essay, not an entire novel or nonfiction book. You don’t have to write a masterpiece, just something you can slap a title and cover on and call an e-book.

STEP TWO: give it an enticing title and a nice cover.

You don’t really have to know anything about book design. There are places you can buy premade covers for $50 or less. Here’s one that has a clearance section with lovely book covers for just $18: http://mycoverart.wordpress.com/clearance/

STEP THREE: ask friends and relatives to post 5-star reviews for you.

I recently got into an argument with a writer on Amazon because I said her suggestion to write reviews for your own book is unethical.  She argued that it is common practice. As a former consumer columnist, I consider any attempt to mislead consumers unethical, and I think putting your words into someone else’s review is misleading consumers. However, there are apparently people who have no problem with it, and that’s the competition those who join the KDP Select program are up against. Remember, you're all getting a portion of the same pot, so if someone has better sales, it's at your expense. 

STEP FOUR: get a Twitter account.

The longer you’ve been on Twitter and the bigger following you have there the better.

STEP FIVE: sign up for KDP Select.

Mark the five days you’ll be giving your book away for free on your calendar.

STEP SIX: buy some Amazon gift cards.

You can start with just one $10 card and then build up from there. If things pan out, you might give away up to six $25 gift cards, which is one for every two weeks you’ll be in the KDP Select program.

STEP SEVEN: go on Twitter to announce you’ll be giving away a free Amazon gift card, and repeat this step over and over.

 Make the giveaway conditional. For example, you’ll give away a gift card to someone who re-tweets about the contest when you reach 1,000 borrows or 5,000 free downloads. You can even give away some of the cards when you get a certain number of Twitter or blog followers, 5-star Amazon reviews, or Facebook fans. Use the correct hashtags so that people looking for Kindle freebies or contests can find your tweet easily. Your tweet would look something like “#Win a $25 #Amazon gift card when my #Kindle #ebook reaches 2,000 #free downloads! Buy here (link) and RT to enter #giveaway”.

Notice how that tweet says nothing about the book itself? That’s because with this method, you’re not selling a book—you’re selling an opportunity to win a free Amazon gift card. You’re essentially selling free raffle tickets to get people to do what you want!

If you don’t think people are doing this, go to Twitter and see just how fast the #free or #giveaway hashtag flies there. It’s dizzying.

There are thousands of people on Twitter who are looking for free stuff, and they’ll be more than willing to download your free e-book to get it.

So writers are posting tweets like the one I wrote above, and those tweets are getting people to download their books in droves. They might download your book and never read it, but what difference does it make? Your book will be a bestseller. It’ll appear on the Amazon bestseller list along with all the other bestsellers. You can even put “Amazon bestseller” on your book jacket. And that will help you get a bigger share of the KDP Select pot, because all that attention and the bestseller status will help you get your book borrowed more times than the next guy’s book.

I’m not saying there isn’t a time and a place for giveaways. They can be great if you’re trying to get Twitter or blog followers or Facebook fans. They can also be great for rewarding the fans you already have. What I am saying, though, is that if you’re using giveaways to sell books, you aren’t really selling books.

3 REASONS WHY I WON’T BE JOINING AMAZON’S KDP SELECT

NUMBER ONE: I know how to play the numbers game—and I don’t want to play it.

I want people to buy or borrow my books because they want to read my books, not because they want to win some sort of giveaway.

NUMBER TWO: I don’t want to compete with writers who are willing to play the numbers game.

I’m a writer, not a salesperson, and in the KDP Select program, salespeople have a distinct advantage over writers. That would make my book look bad, because it would be lower down in the bestseller list, and other books—many of them poorly written—would be above it. How would that look if my free book didn’t sell as well as someone else’s book an Amazon customer tried and hated?

NUMBER THREE: giving your book away for free once devalues all of your work forever.

They do say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

Someone once did a psychological study to see if people enjoyed a piece of cake more if it was served on a fancy dish. It turns out they do. They also discovered that a $100 bottle of wine actually tastes better if you know it costs $100. In fact, a $9 bottle of wine tastes better if you think it costs $150.

So what happens when you give your book away for free?

Those who are in the KDP Select program find they sell the most copies when their book is free and within the few days after those free days, which is when your book is riding the bestseller list high from all those free downloads. The sales and free borrows for that particular book often stay high for a while and then gradually drop off. 

However, the increased sales rarely carry over to the author’s other books—and a few writers have noted that some readers who picked up that one book for free have expressed that they expect to get the writer’s other books for free too. Instead of enticing readers with a free book, these writers are actually losing potential sales on their other books.

WHAT DOES THIS PROVE?

In the end, the Amazon sales rankings and bestseller lists, which both writers and readers tend to focus on, say virtually nothing--when it comes to free books, or books that were free at one time--about the quality of a book and everything about the writer’s ability and willingness to do anything to sell that book.

This isn’t to say that all the writers that sell a lot of free books play the numbers or manipulate reviews. Many of them don’t. But beware the company you keep, because many other writers on the free bestseller Amazon Kindle list do. 

And as a reader, do your best to read between the lines when it comes to the bestseller rankings and the reviews on those books. Maybe you’ll luck out and find a diamond in the rough, but don’t be surprised if it turns out to be rock salt in disguise.

So as you can see, the numbers can be played. The only question left for writers to ask themselves is if they want to play them. I don’t, so I fold. Now that I know the rules, I am sitting this game out.