Wednesday, June 19, 2013

What is Google+ good for? WHATEVER. #AuthorsRT #WritersRT #ASMSG



 
If you were ever looking for a reason to post on Google+, as much or more than you post on any other social media, read on....

Google+ has been compared to other social media in all kinds of ways. I don't need to bore you with statistics and all that drivel. But if that's your thing, here's some data for you  http://www.businessinsider.com/google-plus-is-outpacing-twitter-2013-5  
 
So, according to all the number crunchers and bean counters from businessinsider.com, Google+ has lots of active users, more than Twitter. Cool. Groovy.
 
Then you say, "But Travis, I rarely talk to anyone on Google+ like I do Facebook and Twitter, and my Google+ shares and +1 activity doesn't even hold a candle to the hundreds of RT's and Facebook shares I get every week."
 
Yep, you're right. 
 
So why use Google+? 

Here's a little something the number crunchers didn't seem to understand:
 
Take a look at this Google search for the novel HERS TO COMMAND by Patricia A. Knight, published June 4th, 2013 (2 weeks ago).
 

There are several results from a book published in 2006, from a different author.  BUT, its plain to see, within the first 6 results, there are 2 Google+ postings from 10 days ago. How do a couple postings on social media, with no significant number of shares or retweets, get into the top 6 results of Google's search engine in only 10 days?  These Google+ postings have a higher ranking than the Goodreads giveaway for signed copies of HERS TO COMMAND!!!

 
Well, it is Google's search engine isn't it?  And its their social media....

Google, being the megamonster search engine, has given Google+ an unnatural,  instant and viral rankingGoogle+ posts for a given subject matter always show up in the first page of search engine results. This is not organic SEO, like what websites are forced to go through over months and months of backlinks and other time-resource consuming junk. Its an instant, mouse-click SEO, with a very unusually high ranking.

Google gives preferential treatment to posts in Google+. Why? Well, most likely, to compete with Facebook & Twitter. And its their search engine, so they can do what they damn well please.
 
Another example, a Google search on my novel THE NIGHTLIFE PARIS, published May 1st, 2013, by Travis Luedke (me). 
 
 
You have some actual stuff on the nightlife in Paris, tourist stuff, and my own website twluedke.com (needs updating badly). That comment in my website, about THE NIGHTLIFE PARIS being scheduled for release, has been there for the past 8 months.  Took 8 months to get that kind of SEO on the words THE NIGHTLIFE PARIS for my website. And yet we see there in the  #6 placement on the search, my good 'ole Google+ post about my book release, on May 4th 2013.

Amazon and Goodreads listings of my novel have not yet seen the same level of SEO rankings that my Google+ post received instantly.


Conclusion:

If you never speak to anyone on Google+, if you never add people to circles and friends and post those hilarious GIF images like the one I posted a few days ago,

 
If you never have a single ounce of fun with Google+, at least make damn sure you POST EVERYTHING RELATED TO YOUR BUSINESS, WITH LINKS. Instant SEO rankings, like that which Google+ receives, cannot be purchased for any amount of money. But it can be had for FREE, with a couple mouse clicks on Google+.
 

 
Until next time,

Travis Luedke
Author of The Nightlife Series novels
 

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

ASK AN AGENT/GIVEAWAY | BLACK COUNTRY--ALEX GRECIAN | Signed Copies






Come join Seth Fishman, Literary Agent representing Alex Grecian, our Book of the Month author of THE YARD, and the sequel, BLACK COUNTRY.


GIVEAWAYS:

THE YARD, now--June 14th

BLACK COUNTRY June 12th--14th



ASK THE AGENT:  Seth and Alex have graciously agreed to answer questions from Modern Good Reads members related to traditional publishing, an agent’s role in publishing, and all those myriad things we all want to know about working with agents and New York publishers.





Seth Fishman’s bio:



Seth Fishman (me) was born and raised in Midland, Texas (think Friday Night Lights) and received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England (think cold and rainy and millions of castles). His YA thriller, The Well's End, is the first in a series and the protagonist, Mia Kish, is roughly inspired by a hometown drama that (when I was young) really blew him away: (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/...).  When not writing, Seth is a literary agent at The Gernert Company (www.thegernertco.com), and thinks writing and agenting are the two very best jobs in the world.
 



Agent/Publications & Experience:



I've been a literary agent for over eight years, beginning at Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. (www.sll.com) and now, for the past three years, at The Gernert Company (www.thegernertco.com).  My list is deliberately wide-reaching, as I'm fervently of the mind that good writing and strong stories can be found in any genre.  For sake of ease, however, a few published examples in varying categories I rep:


Literary Fiction: NYTimes Bestseller and Orange Prize winner Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife, Liz Moore's Heft, Alex Gilvarry's From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant
Hugo winner Will McIntosh's Love Minus Eighty, Ted Kosmatka's Locus finalist The Games.
 
Thriller: Alex Grecian's Bestselling The Yard and The Black Country, Ted Kosmatka's Prophet of Bones.



NonFiction: NY Times Bestseller Maria Konnikova's Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, BoingBoing Science Editor Maggie Koerth-Baker's Before The Lights Go Out.

Graphic/comic/illustrated: #1 NYTimes Bestseller Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant, Matt Kish's Moby Dick In Pictures





Young Adult: Nora Price's Zoe Letting Go, Shawn Goodman's Something Like Hope

Picture Book: Matthew Olshan's The Mighty Lalouche (This is just out, his future books I rep).

Forthcoming publications (in the next 3/4 months): The Thousand Names by Django Wexler, What The F Should I Drink by Zach Golden, and The Age of Ice by J.M. Sidorova.



Seth Fishman’s debut novel:

The Well's End, a YA thriller, due out from Putnam YA February 2014.  COVER REVEAL June 11th 2013:  http://io9.com/





A childhood accident, a bizarre outbreak, and an impossible discovery…



Mia Kish is afraid of the dark. And for good reason. When she was a toddler she fell deep into her backyard well only to be rescued to great fanfare and celebrity.  In fact, she is small-town Fenton, Colorado’s walking claim to fame. Not like that helps her status at Westbrook Academy, the nearby uber-ritzy boarding school she attends. A townie is a townie. Being nationally ranked as a swimmer doesn’t matter a lick. But even the rarefied world of Westbrook is threated when emergency sirens start blaring and the school is put on lockdown, quarantined and surrounded by soldiers who seem to shoot first and ask questions later.  Only when confronted by a frightening virus that ages its victims to death in a manner of hours does Mia realize she may only just be beginning to discover what makes Fenton special.



The answer is behind the walls of the Cave, aka Fenton Electronics. Mia’s dad, the director of Fenton Electronics, has always been secretive about his work. But unless Mia is willing to let her classmates succumb to the strange illness, she and her friends have got to break quarantine, escape the school grounds, and outsmart armed soldiers to uncover the truth about where the virus comes from and what happened down that well.  The answers they find just might be more impossible than the virus they are fleeing.









Alex Grecian:





JOIN SETH FISHMAN & ALEX GRECIAN June 12th through June 14th


▼Giveaway Rafflecopters below (Win Signed Copies)▼ 

Exclusively for MODERN GOOD READS members.

If you are not a member, you must join MODERN GOOD READS to qualify.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

GIVEAWAY | THE YARD by ALEX GRECIAN | 2 Signed Copies




MODERN GOOD READS PRESENTS:

BOOK OF THE MONTH & GIVEAWAY:


The Yard by Alex Grecian

June 5th--JUNE 14th


Historical Mystery Thriller:

Victorian London is a cesspool of crime, and Scotland Yard has only twelve detectives—known as “The Murder Squad”—to investigate countless murders every month. Created after the Metropolitan Police’s spectacular failure to capture Jack the Ripper, The Murder Squad suffers rampant public contempt. They have failed their citizens. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own . . . one of the twelve . . .When Walter Day, the squad’s newest hire, is assigned the case of the murdered detective, he finds a strange ally in the Yard’s first forensic pathologist, Dr. Bernard Kingsley. Together they track the killer, who clearly is not finished with The Murder Squad . . . but why?

Filled with fascinating period detail, and real historical figures, this spectacular debut in a new series showcases the depravity of late Victorian London, the advent of criminology, and introduces a stunning new cast of characters sure to appeal to fans of The Sherlockian and The Alienist.

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 Sunday Book Review:


Nature of the Beast

‘The Yard’ by Alex Grecian, and More


By MARILYN STASIO

Published: May 25, 2012


Admit it, Victorian mystery fans. We’ve been spoiled by the rigorous scholarship of writers like Peter Ackroyd, lulled by the formal elegance of stylists like Anne Perry. In short, we’ve lost touch with the lurid traditions of the 19th-century potboiler.


Consider THE YARD (Putnam, $26.95) a crude corrective to those literary leanings. This deliciously trashy first novel by Alex Grecian walks the genre back to the era of Jack the Ripper with its bloody tale of a serial killer who is systematically butchering detectives from Scotland Yard’s recently formed Murder Squad. “Jack was the first of a new breed,” Sir Edward Bradford, the police commissioner who created this elite division, remarks. “He opened a door to certain deranged possibilities and there will be more like him.” 



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Alex Grecian:

Giveaway Rafflecopter below (Win 1 of 2 Signed Copies)▼ 
Exclusively for MODERN GOOD READS members.
If you are not a member, you must join MODERN GOOD READS to qualify.