Why You Should Commit 30 Minutes To Daily Learning (Without Fail)
Guest post by Sean D'Souza
I own a sieve.
It's called my brain.
I distinctly remember listening, then reading a book and then months later I listened to it once again. And I couldn't remember almost 90% of what I'd read and, mind you, listened to, earlier.
With such a terrible memory, it does cross my mind that I should
Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller
Thanks to the ease of publishing books and eBooks today, there are now even larger numbers of books from which you want your own book to stand out.
And thanks to the opportunities on the Internet you can achieve this goal. However, you need to think creatively “outside the box” to utilize elements that relate to your book in order to engage the attention of readers.
Let’s start with children’s books and move along the age continuum:
If you have a children’s picture book, you already have pictures that can be used on t-shirts, caps, cups, banners for book signings, etc.
Then think about what else you can do with your book’s character, stories, location, historical period, etc. to attract attention.
Susan Chodakiewitz, author of the children’s picture book “Too Many Visitors for One Little House,” is also a music composer. She created a mini-musical of the book’s story and assembled an acting troupe to perform the mini-musical. Performances of “Too Many Visitors” have been given at libraries, schools, and stores such as The Gap.
In addition, she created a dance video to teach children the dance performed in the show. Scroll down the home page of http://www.booksicals.com/ to sample some of the exciting activities for this book.
Now it may not seem as obvious for books for older audiences as to how to come up with engaging activities. But all it takes is a little thinking outside the box.
Let’s take the website of my business partner Yael K. Miller for her Middle Grade novel “Jack Strom and New Orleans Hoodoo.” On her website www.HurricaneHoodoo.com she could create a crossword puzzle based on New Orleans historical facts. Or she could create a matching word game, again using historical facts.
And for adult novels? The novel “The Wicked Wives” by criminal attorney Gus Pelagatti is based on a true sensational string of murders in Philadelphia in 1938 during the Depression. The author might develop a quiz about that time period or about the criminal prosecution laws at that time. Or even ask readers what their verdict would have been if they had been on the jury.
Of course for nonfiction books there are all kinds of activities that can be connected with a book. These could include a fun survey to find out whether a reader fits the parameters of a special diet or awarding free eBook copies to everyone who leaves a comment on the book’s review page.
Now it’s your turn to think outside the box to give your potential book fans engaging reasons for visiting your book’s site. Once potential fans have interacted with your site, they should more likely buy/read the book(s) that spurred the activities.
And if you want to share any of your own “thinking outside the box” fun promotional activities along with your book’s website URL, do so in the comments for this guest post.
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How to commission artwork so you can create a memorable brand.
Timing is everything
If you’ve looked at advertising through banner ads, the thought of using an animated ad has probably crossed your mind. Or maybe you’ve seen some cool animated icons on forums and you want one of your own. You can pack more info into an animated image than you can into a static image. If it’s good, people may willing watch it again.
A good animated ad (or avatar) is a lot like a joke. Timing is key. “Take my wife please” isn’t funny. “Take my wife… please” is funny, and it’s all because of the pause. A mistimed ad will fall as flat as a mistimed joke. Too fast and you may drive people nuts, or even actively drive them off the page to escape your ad!
I apologize in advance for this example. I did a simple two frame animation and purposely set the speed waaaaaaay too high.
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Now that we’ve banished that seizure-inducing monstrosity from the screen with some rapid scrolling, let’s get back to timing. Most blinking items aren’t that awful, but some are pretty darn close!
For large items, you want the ad to change slowly enough that all the text in the frame can be easily read in that time without people getting bored, waiting for it to change.
For small items that are next to a block of text (such as avatar or blog ads), you want them to be slow, then fast. Give the eye long enough to get used to the item then being still, then let it have a sudden quick movement. The movement in peripheral vision will often get people to actively look at your ad.
People are very sensitive to movements in their peripheral vision and will usually turn their head to see what caught their attention. We’re also naturally curious and will watch something to verify that yes, we really DID just see that thing wink at us!
For longer animations, you can often tell a little story. Leave the front piece with the majority of the message still. You can pack a more detailed message in the still portion because if you did a good job, people caught the ‘show’ halfway through and want to see the beginning. They’ll stare at the ad for a few seconds, waiting for the show to restart.
Here’s an example:
If you caught him shooting laser beams out his eyes while you were reading the surrounding paragraphs, you probably stared at him for a few seconds waiting for him to repeat his trick. He’s on a 6 second delay. People usually look at ads for less than half a second. 6 seconds is an eternity on the internet. If you can get someone to stare at your ad intently for that long, you’ll get a much higher click through rate.
So how long did it take to get the timing right? For the winking pika, it took about 2 minutes. For the one that shoots laser beams, he took about 10 minutes to design the whole thing, including the timing. I forget how long the large example took, but probably around 20 minutes. If you’ve never worked with animations before, it’ll take a lot longer to do your first one. It is worth it to spend the extra time fine tuning the speed rather than just using the preset speeds.
Rainy Day Paperback Exchange
Bethel, CT
gently used books for kids and adults
http://www.rainydaypaperback.com
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