Have managed to "bag" my first German blog readers and followers on Wordpress, so things are finally going into the right direction for Inspektor Beagle. For those of you who are not yet on Wordpress: get a move on, it's a MUST for any writer, no matter what your native language happens to be!

And to get you started on the most important Follow Button you'll ever press:
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/18-top-websites-to-promote-your-book-for-free/

The originator of this site, Doris Heilmann, is an expert and a wonderful person, credited on lots of professional promoters' and publishers' sites. Like me, she is bilingual, but unlike me, Doris is a fount of wisdom and knowledge for everything book promotion and marketing related. If you never follow another blog on WP, this is the one writers should choose.

For those who are still striving to improve their writing with FREE online tuition, I can recommend my great writing buddy and fellow fantasy author William Stadler, a fantastic writing teacher, who blogs once a month on WP.

Here's the link: http://wstadler.com

And that's all for today. By tomorrow I'll hopefully have ferreted out the link to the British organisation for literary translation, since one Bookrix writer asked me about this subject the other day and I shamefully neglected to send him the link.

Finally managed to create my first German language Wordpress blog today for Inspektor Beagle. It was such a frustrating process, for no matter what template I chose, there was always something that didn't work well or looked weird. Am still not very happy with it and it will need a lot more tweaking, but the first German language blog post was duly made today, so that's something, I guess. For all those of a German language persuasion/Fuer alle, die daran interessiert sind, hier ist der Link: http://inspektorbeagle.wordpress.com

My first sale via Bookrix, yay! This is so exciting...

I hope the reader who purchased one of my books via the Apple store will enjoy what they got and leave a wee review - no matter what it says, it will be a step in the right (writerly) direction.

My CoPromote marketing has completed its 2 week run and managed a respectable 30,000+ exposure, despite World Cup fever keeping everyone on the planet glued to their TV screens. Although it fell far short of my previous best (57,000+ views), the fact that a German language ebook could move enough people to retweet etc is encouraging.

And if I haven't mentioned this before: writers, illustrators, editors...if you want to make a real impression and make excellent business connections, do sign up for this site...am giving you my page as an example
http://about.me.com/maria_thermann

It's been amazing and I am rapidly gathering a list of fine illustrators for future book and animated book promo projects as well as editors and publishers I might like to work with in the future. The daily exposure has also helped me to gain more readers and "friends" for Goodreads.com, which is after all what a writer wants. In fact, the site has been better than FB, Wordpress and Twitter put together so far.

No, they are not paying me to write this, am just telling you how it is. This is a site for professionals though, and the way you present yourself on this site determines who will see you and who will want to follow up with you. So make it great, give it your best and look at lots of different profiles first, before writing your text. Be sure to upload a picture or artwork that really expresses who and what you are and stand for:)

Keep on writing, everyone. X M.

After ploughing through 200+ Wordpress templates I've finally narrowed it down to a choice of four potential candidates for my new German language blog, which I plan to convert into a proper website at a later stage. When one isn't technically minded, it takes so much reading of techie-blurb before making a decision...wanted to avoid the mistakes I made with the choices for templates I used for my other blogs. Now for choosing a site name...

Am finally getting my http://mariathermann.worpdress.com blog noticed and reblogged by people, so this has been quite a good week on the promotional front. Doing another two weeks of CoPromote marketing for my Insepktor Beagle book has also been surprisingly well received, bearing in mind the combined distractions of Worldcup and hot weather here in the UK. I can certainly recommend it to any writer who wants to grow their following and brand recognition. Although I'm still tweaking the pages for my http://willowthevampire.com blog before eventually turning it into a proper ecommerce website, it's beginning to look very nice indeed. Not bad for an over-50s techno-phobe, even if I do say so myself!

I discovered several excellent sites for authors to promote their work; although not free, they are amazingly cheap and provide authors with exceptional services for the money they pay: selfpublishersshowcase(dot).com is for all genres and writers, including the brand new NEW ADULT category publishers are now including in their lists. Their site gets massive exposure on Twitter and Facebook and their fees are incredibly cheap for the service they provide. A definite for me. They also promote crowdfunding of authors' projects, always a good sign.

A new website devoted to children's literature, kidliteratureauthors(dot)com is yet to make a real splash in the world of kid's literature, but their initial 15,000 views in just 3 weeks are impressive and they provide authors with reviews for as little as £7 per 40,000 word book. The site is run by parents and teachers, so may have a leaning towards the moralistic and "educational" type of book that most children find a bore...but you never know, could be good place to promote in the future.

A reader/writer running a Wordpress blog under the link katnisdean(dot)wordpress(dot)com also offers to do reviews, possibly free, but she won't do certain genres, so authors need to contact her to find out more. That's all I've got time for, folks.

Sunny day here, but I shall have to waste it with work. Sigh.

Finally discovered a few German language review sites on Wordpress, where my Inspektor Beagle might be able to investigate the reviewers' literary skills.

Also managed to upload two of my books onto koobug(dot)com, which promotes authors' books for free and encourages reviews. Will be writing a few reviews myself soon - here at Bookrix, on Goodreads and at koobug, so watch out for those.

I really shouldn't have blogged about the hot weather yesterday, it was asking for trouble. Today it's pouring down with rain, although it's still very hot. Ah well, the plants need watering, I guess. Is anyone else sad the fabulous Red Room has closed its doors and has become part of the horrid Wattpad empire? Another blow for literature and good writing.

It's boiling hot in SE, my ankles are swelling up, my eyes are tired and I've spent far too much time cruising through the various groups here, German and English. Some nice groups out there in the bilingual Bookrix-verse. Some not so nice ones, too. Back to client work now, there's a good girl. Sigh.

Am so pleased that all my books are already on sale in such a wide range of online outlets now - how quick was that? Thank you Bookrix, excellent service. Phew, now the prromotional circus starts...