How to be Confident with Abigail Prigge

Welcome to #FriendFriday, an interview-style guest post series every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. Want to be the next interviewee? Send me an email!

Happy Friday, my pretty little friends! This week, I'm happy to host new friend Abigail Prigge, a writer, coach and card-maker. She's a multi-tasking queen, and I'm thrilled we got to catch up and chat about her success.

Let's get acquainted!

Here's your intro question. Tell me about yourself in less than 70 words.

I romanticize everything from moonlight to ice-cream and over-utilize my snooze button. If I were to pick 7 people to camp with, my siblings would win. I’d choose my friends to drink mochas and play volleyball with, and my parents for a good conversation. I enjoy teaching/mentoring—I’m my writing students’ biggest fan. I love dresses and old books. I’m intrigued by life stories and obsessed with my favorite words.

You're a blogger, writer, personal writing coach and card-maker. Tell us how you got started.

I think the roots are in my beloved dollhouse world. My sisters and I made sure that our “characters” had very exciting, conflict-filled lives. When I grew out of dollhouses, I channeled my love of storytelling right into fiction. My dad signed me up with a professional writing coach. Before I was even out of high school, I discovered my love for sharing what I’ve learned by coming alongside and mentoring other young writers. My writing coach encouraged me to pursue that passion and thus A Time2 Write was born. This journey has taught me so much about marketing, entrepreneurship, customer service, blogging and teaching. I co-wrote the recent release Charlotte’s Hope, and am in the process of producing the second edition of my teen-fiction novel One Summer’s Desire.

I discovered card-making in my mom’s well-stocked craft room. It’s just another outlet for creativity . . . and sometimes companionship (when I can convince my sisters or friends to join me).  I’ve found it’s a little addicting (and therapeutic) to tear paper.

Psst.. she made this little number for us! How cool? 

Let's put you to the test. What's the most important advice you have for future clients?

Develop your written communication skills while you are young. No matter where you go or who you’re with, you are communicating to the world around you. Whether you are writing an essay, journal entry, Facebook post, poem, a response in a debate, email, letter to a Senator, skit, or novel—your message should be heard loud and clear. Learn to articulate and construct your written words so that nothing distracts from that message.

If you could be the author of any novel in history, which novel would that be and why?

Yeah, Jenny, you successfully stumped me. I have decided not to over-think it and go with a cliche but classic answer—Pride and Prejudice. Why? Because Jane Austen is a mastermind. Her novel is truly timeless wit. The charm, scandal, modesty, chivalry, agony and passion of this saga are portrayed in the most whimsical way I could ever imagine.

And finally, before we let you go, what's the best advice you've received and how did it get you here today?

I’m the girl that had three secret blogs before the A Time 2 Write blog. It took all my courage to let my mom read my first novel back in 2007. I like to hang onto some mystique . . . so every time I let others read my work (aka see a piece of my heart), I am tempted to shrink away in the background. I know I can’t please everyone, and that’s hard. I heard some random advice and specifically applied it to my writing: OWN IT. Own that rejection. Own those characters. Own that business. Own the young-writer thing (I’m 22!) Come what may—be honest, transparent and real with your readers. If I’m truly called to writing, I can pursue it with confidence.

I would like to say thank you so much, Jenny, for hosting me today--it was a delight. You definitely inspire me.

Thanks to Abigail for spending some time with us! If you’re interested in being interviewed for the next #FriendFriday, send me an email. 

Marketing for Writers: How to Set Yourself Up for Literary Success

I know what you're thinking. Marketing, gross. For whatever reason, marketing has gotten a bad rap. When we think "marketing," we tend to imagine annoying commercials or Twitter messages saying, "thanks for following, buy my book!"

And you know what we really hate about this? It's impersonal. But good news for all of you, my friends! Marketing can be a personal, interactive experience that not only builds your tribe, but allows you to flex your creative muscles. See? Not so bad.

Now, let's break this down to smart, actionable marketing for writers:

 Develop Your Brand

Let me start by saying that I'm no expert. And also? I kind of hate that term with a burning passion. Essentially, it is all about figuring out who you are as a writer and what kind of readers you want to attract. I want my tribe to have fun. I want them to embrace positivity and color and extraordinary acts of awesomeness. If you'd like more concrete advice, read tips from PR expert Kayla Hollatz.

In order to develop your brand, you have to first develop yourself, your product and the world you're creating. Let's look at John Green for example. He writes books for teens; and therefore, appeals to a teenage audience. He's active on Tumblr and YouTube, and treats his readers like the intellectual, important people that they are. But most importantly? He's himself, through and through. 

Practice: What kind of writer do you want to be? How can you utilize your personality as a way to promote your brand?

Develop Your Product

For us writers, we need to be connecting our readers with our books right from the start. I started blogging about my book, These are the Moments, from the beginning, even posting scenes along the way. Once my book was published, I needed multiple avenues of drawing people to my books. I created a prequel for my novel (read about a prequel is important here) and published it for free on Amazon. In that prequel, I mentioned that if you sign up for my email list, you'll receive a free second book, Moments Like These. 

This is called a funnel, friends. Which, coincidentally, is another buzz word I hate.

But while writing is our primary product, it isn't the only one we have. Think of yourself as a small business. You sell books, but you also interact with customers and run the website and the social media. You are a master juggler. You are more than just one product.

Practice: Take some time to develop your social media. Make a list of your "products" and your goals. 

Try New Things. Fail. Try again.

When it comes to your own writing and social media presence, don't be afraid to try new things. However, be aware of your time and efforts. Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule? It states that 80 percent of your outcomes come from 20 percent of your efforts. Translation? Focus on what your readers respond to the most. Maybe it's Instagram. YouTube. Blogging. Then, see how that translates into sales and engagement.

Practice: Analyze your marketing plan. Where do you see the most engagement? How does this translate into sales?

Measure Your Success

There are hundreds of definitions for success. For me, success was writing a novel. Now, it's publishing that novel. In terms of monetary goals, I don't have a number, and I wouldn't want one. When thinking of success, ask yourself what is more important: sales or engagement? 

Engagement often leads to sales. However, the other is not always true. Personally, I would rather have a small, engaged audience than a large, incommunicative one. I've found that the more you give, encourage and speak honestly, the greater your chances of forming a tribe are.

Practice: Evaluate your idea of success. What will it take to get you there? What steps can you take today?

And of course, my posts would never be complete without...

Discussion Time: Where have you seen the most success in your marketing strategy? What annoys you the most about marketing: as a marketer and someone being marketed to?

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Personal Branding for Writers by Kayla Hollatz

Welcome to #FriendFriday, an interview-style guest post series every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. Want to be the next interviewee? Send me an email!

Welcome back to #FriendFriday! This week, I interviewed my friend, Kayla Hollatz, an amazing poet and PR guru who runs not one, but two blogs. She's in the self-publishing club, and I couldn't be happier to have her visit us today to talk about personal branding for writers.

Take it away, Kayla!

Here's your intro question. Tell me about yourself in less than 70 words. (It's tougher than it sounds.)

I’m Kayla Hollatz, a twenty-something blogger with a fierce love for writing. By day, I’m a PR professional and by night, I’m a short-form poet. I’m self-publishing my first poetry collection, Brave Little Bones, this spring. I’m passionate about helping others make a killer impression online and tell their stories. I value creativity, adventure, authenticity, transparency, and most importantly, community. Hot chocolate is my fuel.

I love your Twitter party, #createlounge. Tell us about your blog and how you got started.

Thank you! #createlounge is a community of inspiring creatives that come together every week on Wednesdays at 7 PM CT to chat about topics that affect our creative process. We talk about community building, collaboration, blogging, social media, branding, and more. It’s a really fun group that lights me up all throughout the week. I’d love to have you join us.

Let's put you to the test. You're a PR master and a poet. How do you combine both of your creative interests in your blog?

This is one test I know I’ll ace. I started my poetry blog in my sophomore year of college before my PR blog. My poetry blog is a mix of my original poetry and an online inspiration board with a myriad of beautiful photos, quotes, and writings from other sources. Simply, it’s my happy place.

With being in PR, I knew having an established blog with a personal brand to match would be instrumental in my success in the field, and it has been. I love creating content on blogging, branding, social media, and my personal favorite, community building.

My blogs truly come together on social media. On Instagram, I’ll post excerpts of my poetry as well as what’s happening with the blog and in my professional life. On Twitter, I’ve created hashtags like #thehaikuproject and more recently #kaylawrites in order to segment my poetry on a platform where my audience is predominantly PR and blogger base. The response has been incredible.

It’s important to me to include both poetry and PR in my personal brand online because I wouldn’t be me if I left one out. I also enjoy connecting more with other professionals who have side hustles and practice their passions outside of work. My final words would be to share all of what you do. People will admire (and love) you for it.

If you could be the author of any novel in history, which novel would that be and why?

This question gets the award for being the most clever question I’ve ever been asked in an interview. My answer would be either 1984 or To Kill A Mockingbird. I love the classics for highlighting social change within each time period. 1984 showed the dangers of big government and having virtually no privacy, and To Kill A Mockingbird was (and still is) one of the most influential stories of the civil rights movement.

Also, The Great Gatsby would be on my list just because of the incredible symbolism. All of the imagery is so unbelievably smart. The green light? Breathtaking. Kudos, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

And finally, before we let you go, what's the best advice you've received and how did it get you here today?

My mum has always had great nuggets of wisdom throughout my life and uses many of them frequently. One of her most popular is “You can’t make decisions based on other people.” This has always stayed with me, even though sometimes I need reminding. I think it’s important to go after what you desire regardless of what others think.

I’m a natural people pleaser, which is hard for me to admit, but I try to combat those tendencies every day. You can either be buried in the “shoulds” of your life and let them control what you do or you can rise with the “musts” and follow what you need to do. The only one who lives your life is you, so live it well and to your own satisfaction. Cheers!

Thanks to Kayla for spending some time with us! If you’re interested in being interviewed for the next #FriendFriday, send me an email. 

Book Bloggers: Where to Find Them and How to Win Them Over

Book bloggers are making a splash in the new world of publishing. They're posting photos on Instagram, reviews on their blogs and YouTube channels, and controlling the way we view new titles.

Think about that for a second. Book bloggers, people just like us, are out there making their voices heard. On their own. With no payroll. 

In a way, book bloggers are like the reviewer version of self-publishers. They're out on their own, making their own rules. Free reviews? Free promotion? What's the catch? 

Book bloggers are no longer the industry's best kept secret. They're a high commodity and their time is limited. So how do we get our books read? I've done the research, hands-on. Allow me to help!

Where to Find Book Bloggers

With my book releasing in a couple of months, I'm on the hunt to find great reviewers to read my book. So far, I've had pretty awesome success compiling my list. Here's where to look:

Instagram

This is an amazing resource when it comes to finding book bloggers. Using hashtags, it's incredibly easy to seek out the right kind of readers for your book, and it's a hub for YA fans. Try typing these hashtags into the search bar:

1. "bookstagram"
2. "books"
3. "igreads"
4. "epicreads"
5. "booklover"

Twitter

Ahh, my social media crush. Twitter is the perfect place to engage in interaction with book bloggers. Let them know that you're interested in them, uniquely. Retweet them. Reply to them. 

Give yourself a competitive edge by being genuinely interested in what they have to say. They like books and you like books. Common ground, eh? Here are some hashtags to search for them:

1. "amreading"
2. "fridayreads"
3. "mustread"
4. "bookgiveaway"
5. "litchat"

NetGalley

The drawback of finding book bloggers through social media is that you'll need to send individual, personalized emails to each blogger that you find. This can be time-consuming and also a waste of time. 

If you have to individually contact book bloggers, a few things may happen: 

1. The reviewer won't read your book. Again, they're busy people. Maybe they aren't taking on any more books. Maybe they don't read self-published books. You never know.
2. The reviewer may read your book, but not review. The reviewer isn't bound to your book. There's a chance he/she may not finish your book or may simply forget to review. 
3. The reviewer may only read paperback. This isn't a problem, per se. However, shipping paperbacks can be expensive, so this isn't cost-efficient or time-efficient.

Thankfully, there's a service that can reach hundreds of book bloggers at once. 

NetGalley allows you to post your title for a fee, and reviewers can then request an ARC (advanced reader copy) of your book for review. There are also co-op programs available, such as The Patchwork Press, that allows you to participate for a smaller price. 

This lets you reach a wide range of book bloggers for a minimal effort. Love it! 

How to Win Book Bloggers Over

Now that you've found them, how do you get them to love you back? Something to note: even if a book blogger agrees to read your book, there's no guarantee that he/she will review it. And if you do get a review, it might not be positive. Okay, now that I've scared you, let me help you better your chances at landing a review:

1. Abide by their review policy. (Usually on their blog.)

2. Make sure the book blogger accepts your genres. 

3. Read their blogs. See what they're saying about other books.

4. Tell them your release date and other pertinent information. 

5. Give them plenty of time. 

6. Be prepared to answer any and all questions.

7. Make sure each pitch is personalized for each blogger.

8. Respect their time. Keep your email short and substantial. 

9. Don't oversell. Let them know who you are and what you're about.

10. Don't word your email with expectation. Present your pitch as a question and not a sure thing.

Discussion Time: Have you pitched to book bloggers? Tell us your success and failure stories. What advice can you share? 

P.S. Need more publishing help? Check out this post on finding cover designers. 

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Advice for Writers by Kristen A. Kieffer of She's Novel

Welcome to #FriendFriday, an interview-style guest post series every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. Want to be the next interviewee? Send me an email!

Welcome to the first #FriendFriday post on the Blots & Plots blog. How does it work exactly? I send questions to my new friends and post their answers here. I'm happy to host Kristen A. Kieffer of She's Novel as my first guest. Once you're finished reading, hop over to her blog for some amazing writing advice.

And now, without further adieu…

Here's your intro question. Tell me about yourself in less than 70 words. (It's tougher than it sounds.)

I’m just a girl that loves obliterating expectations. I’m a college-quitter, a do-it-yourself learner, and a pursuer of high-reaching dreams. My greatest passion in life is story-telling, followed swiftly by helping others to do the same. I’m also the biggest Lord of the Rings nerd there ever was (next to Stephen Colbert, of course!). I love Medieval Europe, black coffee, vintage dresses, and Oxford commas.

It's no secret that I've fallen in love with your blog. Tell us a big about how you got it started.

I had my first taste of blogging in high school, when I fell in love with fashion and lifestyle blogs. Over the next four years, I began and quit countless of my own, culminating in the creation of Book Jacket in summer 2014. Book Jacket was first a lifestyle blog with the tagline, ‘Style. Literature. Life.’, until I finally had my grand epiphany: I disliked blogging about myself, but I loved teaching others. 

I quickly rebranded Book Jacket as a creative writing blog, wrote some positively awful articles, and began to realize that I wanted to go bigger. I needed to do one final blog overhaul, and that’s where She’s Novel came in to play. 

After months of rebranding, I launched She’s Novel on January 31st, 2015, and it has been such a massive dream come true ever since.

Let's put you to the test. What's your best advice for writers trying to complete their first novel?

Don’t strive for perfection. Just write. 

I know this sounds like awful advice, but hear me out. Just like my first piano recital was riddled with mistakes and my first blog was more embarrassing than messing up the National Anthem at a baseball game, my first novel was positively cringe-worthy. 

And that was a good thing! As a writer, your first novel, or at least the first draft of it, is your baseline work. It reveals to you your strengths and weaknesses, becoming a springboard for far greater work. So let yourself make mistakes. Just get that novel down on paper, and never forget that your best work is yet to come!

If you could be the author of any novel in history, which novel would that be and why?

I spent days mulling over this question! I was tempted to go with more generic answers like Pride and Prejudice or The Hobbit, but they didn’t seem quite right. Finally, I settled on The Princess Bride by William Goldman. 

The Princess Bride is a fantasy novel that has it all: adventure, romance, political intrigue, and general hilarity. It was also made into a movie that quickly became a cult classic and one of my personal favorites. The book itself sweeps you up in its magic, pulling you along on a journey of friendship, sword fights, kidnapping, and true love. As a reader, I lost myself in that book, and that’s all I could ever hope to achieve with my own writing.

And finally, before we let you go, what's the best advice you've received and how did it get you here today?

I’m not sure if the best advice I’ve ever received was even meant to be advice. Nevertheless, it has given me confidence time and time again over the past several years.

In my senior year of high school, I took an advanced placement English class. I wrote countless essays and research papers on literature throughout that year but never a lick of creative writing. At the end of the year, I asked my teacher to sign my yearbook and was shocked by what she wrote. 

“To one of the best writers to ever come through my classroom-I will miss you dearly, and I look forward to reading your novels some day! I’m only half-kidding, you could do it!”

She had no idea that I was immensely interested in doing just that. To have her see that potential in me at a time when I was extremely private about my passion for novel writing has encouraged me in my lowest times and motivated me at my highest. Because of her, I will always remember that believing in my own potential is the first step towards achieving my dreams.

Before I go, I’d just like to give a HUGE thank you to Jenny for being my blogging soulmate, for encouraging and inspiring me in so many ways over the past month. I have had so much fun getting to know you, and I’m honored that you’d have me here today. Stay amazing! -Kristen

Thanks to Kristen for spending some time with us! To find out more, visit She's Novel. If you're interested in being interviewed for the next #FriendFriday, send me an email.