Monday, August 01, 2011

POPCORN BOOKS: EASY GUIDES TO THE TECHNICAL STUFF WRITERS NEED

Stephanie Suesan Smith, PhD
Please welcome my eldest daughter. Althought I refer to her as Darling Daughter One, her name is Stephanie Suesan Smith. Her degree is in clinical psychology, but she is also a Master Gardener, non-fiction writer, photographer, and wood worker. In addition, she has helped me with our family research and located legal documents no one else in the family could find. Stephanie lives in East Texas with her two dogs, Star and Sandy. Along with Hero, Stephanie is my tech support. Nice to have a 24/7 helpline since I'm definitely cyber-challenged. Here's Stephanie:

POPCORN BOOKS: BITE-SIZED
GUIDES TO THE UNIVERSETM

Just read the manual. For many people, that phrase ranks right up there with “You need a root canal.” At least a dentist gives you anesthesia.

Technical people like to play with the more arcane parts of a program as much as, or more than, the straight forward parts. We forget that writers and other people have actual lives and just want to set up their social media stuff so they can get back to writing. Fortunately, some of us have non-technical people in our lives that remind us of that fact.

To that end, I am starting a series of guides I call POPCORN BOOKS: BITE-SIZED GUIDES TO THE UNIVERSETM. They contain just enough information to get you going without all the technical gobbledygook. Better yet, they are only 99 cents each at Amazon Kindle.

The first guide is called HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO MAKE YOUR BLOG WORK HARDER. Getting your blog on Kindle, an Amazon author page, a Goodreads author page, Facebook, and Twitter are covered. In one swoop, you have five bases covered. I include screen shots showing exactly what to do, so you can set things up with as little difficulty as possible.

No Twitter account? No problem. The next pamphlet is HOW TO SET UP A TWITTER ACCOUNT. This guide covers establishing an account and making a nice looking profile page. You not only want a Twitter account, you want to appear as if you know what you are doing and drive traffic to your webpage and mailing list. Screenshots help you with this task, as well.

Other planned guides are:
  • Setting up a Facebook personal page
  • Setting up a Facebook fan page
  • Setting up your Google profile
  • Getting started on Google +
  • Setting up a self-hosted Wordpress blog
Are there other topics you would like to see? If so, please let me know. My email is stephaniesuesansmith@gmail.com. My website is http://stephaniesuesansmith.com, if you want to see examples of my work.

Stephanie's dogs, Sandy left and Star in the
corner, on a recent visit to Caroline and Hero.
Sandy and Stare are waiting for Stephanie to catch up
from their walk and open the door for them to come inside
from our curent oppressive heat in North Central Texas.



Thanks, Stephanie, for letting us know about your guides and those you've planned in the future. The pamphlets definitely fill a need! And thanks for all the help you've given my friends in the past.

If you love either historical or contemporary western romance, please check http://texasdruids.blogspot.com/ for Lyn Horner's series on western romance. She's invited a number of western romance authors to guest post and share different aspects of the genre. The series appears twice a week through September 1st.

6 comments:

Stephanie Suesan Smith, Ph.D. said...

Thank you for having me on your blog. I hope some of your readers can find the answers they need to their technical questions. If not, I take requests for additional guides.

SEO Los Angeles said...

Love Stephanie's blog, so I had to come over here and check this one out too! These popcorn books are a great idea, I really hope they take off. :)

~Natasha

Caroline Clemmons said...

Stephanie, thanks for sharing info on my blog. Hope you have a zillion sales.

Shirley Wells said...

Popcorn Books sound wonderful. There are so many writers and artists who need to be 'out there' but don't have a clue what we're doing.

Wishing Stephanie every success!

Kellie Kamryn said...

This was awesome. There is so much to navigate with social media. I shall definitely look up these guides.

Stephanie Suesan Smith, Ph.D. said...

Thank you, everyone. If there are particular things you want to know how to do, please let me know and I will try to write down how to do it.

Thank you for letting me guest on your blog, Mom.