Are There Dirty Little Secrets on Pinterest?

  By Maryan Pelland | April 19, 2012 - 10:10 am | writing advice
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I think not. I saw a post at a blog called Bullguard. The writer promises dirty little secrets about your Pinterest account. This post is a great example of jumping on board a trending topic and riding it to a traffic spike for your blog. It’s also an example of not really delivering what your title promises readers. For me, the secrets listed are neither …(there’s more) Continue reading →

Getting One-Up on MS Word 2010: Taming the MSWORD Ribbon

  By Maryan Pelland | April 18, 2012 - 8:54 am | Self-publishing, write your book
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Get a grip on the MSWord ribbon Some writers and authors using Office 2010, or more specifically, MS Word 2010 or 2007, wrangle with the ribbon that replaced file tabs. Mastering Microsoft’s bloated programs is never easy and figuring out functions hidden within the ribbon is puzzling. Here are four easy and essential tips for writers and authors who rely MS Word for wordprocessing their …(there’s more) Continue reading →

Authors — Don’t Make the Mistake of Overlooking Bilbary

  By Maryan Pelland | April 17, 2012 - 6:31 pm | Business of books, Self-publishing
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Bilbary is reportedly an online book rental store or pay-to-borrow e-book library with 320,000 e-titles available to members. This rent-a-book plan could be a boon to authors or writers who don’t wish to maintain a library of ebooks they might use once or twice for reference. It could be a budget saver. Bilbary is doing business in the U.S. right now but is working on …(there’s more) Continue reading →

Make Pinterest Work for Your Writing

  By Maryan Pelland | April 7, 2012 - 9:34 am | writing advice
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Pinterest popped up in March 2010 and has become the third most popular social media site. Check that! Pinterest is ahead of Google+, StumbleUpon, and all other social media save Twitter and Facebook — and Pinterest is gaining on them. A 30 year-old ex-Google employee from West Des Moines, Iowa spawned this wonder. Ben Silbermann is his name and now he’s a guru. I went over to …(there’s more) Continue reading →

Any Author Writer Can Publish Online with Pressbooks Tool

  By Maryan Pelland | April 3, 2012 - 11:41 am | Business of books, Self-publishing, write your book
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I’ve been hand-to-hand wrestling with the online e-publishing industry searching for a way to help my fellow writers and authors. I’m hot on the trail with a new tool called Pressbooks, brought to us by Hugh McGuire, a serial web entrepreneur. He writes for O’Reilly Radar (O’Reilly Media is one of my favorite companies on earth). He founded LibriVox and Book Oven, among other book-centric web …(there’s more) Continue reading →