Jade Varden Official Blog

If you want to sell more books and get more visitors on your blog, don't underestimate the power of video. There are a lot of reasons why you should be using YouTube's powers to enhance your own reach. The biggest? Google gives YouTube a little extra search engine bump. Video Killed the Book Star It's because Google owns YouTube (and I believe they will one day own everything on the Internet). So naturally Google gives websites that have a lot of YouTube higher rankings, and you'll see links to YouTube videos all the time during normal web searches. So it behooves you to create your own YouTube channel, and add those links to your blog.  If you're going to create content to promote yourself and your books, create good content. And if you're going to use that content to drive more traffic to your blog, create it regularly . There are lots of reasons why an indie author might make a YouTube video. Start with my ideas, and let me know if you come up w...

Tweets too long? Are you forced to squeeze those glowing review quotes down to fewer and fewer words? Are you struggling to add your own little comments every time you tweet about your newest blog post? You need shorter URLs. The right URL shortener can help you keep track of your stats, so you can tailor your tweets to get more mileage out of every single one.  This is the Tweet That Doesn't End Amazon may be a convenient place to buy books, but it's not at all made for easy linking. Amazon's URLs are huge, and they'll take up a whole bunch of space in a tweet if you let them.  Lots of URLs are very long, in fact, too long to allow for inventive, interesting tweets.  So start using a URL shortener. If you use the right one, you can keep track of how many clicks your tweets are getting. This way, you'll know what's working and what isn't when you're sending out those little bits of promotion. According to my research, currently there are tw...

As a freelance writer, I have to deal with SEO all the time. But even when I'm moonlighting as an indie author, it's an issue. I found out why SEO matters to self-published authors. Have you? Why SEO? SEO is search engine optimization. This basically refers to keyword usage in any given piece of text that's put on the Internet. When an optimal number of keywords are used in any article or blog post, that piece of content will be much easier for search engines to find.  When search engines can find you, readers can find you. This is why SEO matters to indies.  As an indie author, you should already have a blog . You want people to buy your writing, right? Well don't rely on your clever promotions and the reviews you can scrape together. Start blogging to get readers. If they like your blog, they will be tempted to buy your book. But once you start blogging, you've got to start thinking about SEO-ing (no...that's not a real word). So here...

The Internet makes everyone anonymous. It reduces personalities into a one-sentence bio, a single small photo, maybe a link or two. The indie author has to turn that anonymity into brand recognition. The best way to do it? Have a great author headshot. Who Are You? Notice the adjective. I said great. I didn't say sexy, or even spectacular. So what makes your author photo really great...and what makes it awful?   Color vs. Black and White Don't agonize over this decision, because it really doesn't matter much. One thing to keep in mind is your paperback editions. Full-color printing is more costly, so you may end up with a black and white photo anyway. As a rule of thumb, get yourself a photo that looks good both ways. Your Body Okay, this gets tricky. Readers don't want to see your body, they want to see your face. So your author photo should be of your face. You don't need a lot of shoulder, and no chest. The more of your face readers can s...

In real life, fireworks are reserved for special occasions. But authors add them to books all the time. In this particular instance, fireworks is a euphemism for the writing that makes a lot of authors uncomfortable: sex scenes.  You don't have to focus on romance writing or erotic novels for these to spring up. I once got a lot of feedback that I ought to add some sexual fireworks to one of my books -- a tragic, tear-filled historical. So they are definitely going to creep in no matter what the heck you're writing. You're a Firework It's a common saying that sex sells . If Fifty Shades taught us anything, it's that people like to read about sex. So if you've got some hot-and-heavy love interest in one of your books -- be it a screech-inducing horror novel or a sweet tale of love -- your characters might begin to drift toward this seemingly inevitable conclusion.  That puts you in a pickle. It's embarrassing to write about sex . It...

When you can't figure out what to write next and can't seem to put words on the page, you might have writer's block . When you know where you're going but can't seem to write it, you're just plain stuck.  Forward Motion When it comes to the little details, all those steps between "it was a dark and stormy night" and "they lived happily ever after" are rife with opportunity...for getting stuck.    Sometimes, you might not know how to advance the story. The journey from Point A to Point B isn't so straightforward after all. Sometimes you get stuck, and you've got to get unstuck to get to the end of the book. Try some tricks that might help: Check the outline. With an outline, at least you know what's supposed to happen. Keep it in mind so you can figure out how to make it happen.  Go backwards. Read back a little to see where you've been, and see if that help you start moving forward. Stop and think. ...

Every author should have some structure when they're writing. I'm a big fan of  plotting and planning and pre-researching, and I'll advocate writing an outline any time you give me a chance. But sometimes, writing the story takes us off the outline and outside the original plan. When that happens, there's only one thing to do: go with it.  On a Tangent Things don't always go the way we plan, and that's especially true for writers. When you sit down and outline a novel at the very beginning, it's still just a concept. But things might change as you begin to write.  Stories have a way of taking on a life of their own. As you write that book, you start to really get to know a character. You begin to think like them, see things the way they see them, and sometimes plot points that you planned no longer fit the person you've come to know on the page.  It's good to plan, but writers also have to know how to adjust to those changes. It'...

The vast majority of fiction books are written in the past tense. Almost every anecdote ever shared is told in the past tense. It's a tiny change from right now to just a moment ago, but writing in the past tense confuses many authors who might otherwise be wonderful. It's common, so writing in the past tense should be easy. It should be second nature. But there is a big problem with the past: the word had . All the Words We Had Inserting the word had into a sentence does not automatically mean you're writing in the past tense . In fact, in many cases that I've observed, it only makes those sentences grammatically incorrect. It's tricky, because often had looks and sounds right. See if you can spot the incorrect grammar in the examples: I had walked over there yesterday. You had saw that when? It had sound like thunder in my ears. She had said that last week, though. Which one is right? If you said none of them , you might ...