Find Great Indie Fiction at Fauph Talk Fiction

Have you noticed a mysterious symbol on my blog?  It's a strange looking thing isn't it?  Is that logo a person with a goatee?  Is it a man shrugging his shoulders?  It's definitely an intriguing graphic.  What is it?

Don't worry I haven't joined a secret society.  There is no master plan to control the planet.  However, there is a new place to go if you are looking for interesting reads from new Indie Authors.  It's called Fauph Talk Fiction.  It's a website that was created to "help promote new writers, and help readers discover new voices in the world of writing."  They asked if I'd like to feature my work on their site and I jumped at the chance.  They created a really nice author profile and featured my first novel Zombie Complex.  It was a great to receive some support out of the blue for my marketing efforts as an indie author.

If you are a reader who enjoys discovering new authors, check Faugh Talk Fiction out.  They've already added talented writers like Ellie Douglas, Sarah Katz, J.W. Crawford, Jackie Dahlhaus, and Jeff Demarco.  It should be a fun space and a great place to learn about interesting indie authors and discovering their works.  If you are an independent author, it looks like a great platform for getting the word out about your work and it also has an interesting and helpful blog called writingstrong.

I'm excited to be featured on Fauph Talk Fiction and I hope the platform proves useful to authors and readers.

How to Make Publicity Posters for Your Book (Part 2)

If you need to make publicity posters for your book or any other project, the solution is as close as your smartphone.  When I wanted to up my poster game for my book Zombie Complex, I found several poster creation apps in the Google Play store.

I used the app, Poster Maker, to create these posters.  While the user interfaces aren't always the easiest, the available fonts and backgrounds really give these publicity posters a professional feel.

I was able to use PosterMaker in conjunction with photographs that I already had on my phone.  Fortunately, I had plenty of suitable photos available.  I think this one captures the creepiness of urban Atlanta at night and has a bit of a zombie feel.

How To Make Publicity Posters For Your Book (Part 1)

As a self-publisher, I find myself completely responsible for publicizing my books.  That means establishing a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and anywhere else I can think of that will get the word out about my work.  It is truly a daunting task.  However, one thing that has been fun is creating publicity posters for my novel Zombie Complex and posting them wherever I can find eyeballs to read them.

Since I have a little artistic talent and a low budget, I made my first posters using the LibreOffice Impress.  It's the presentation software that comes with the free open source office suite LibreOffice.  I simply added the first book cover I had made with the online cover creator, Canva, and incorporated other photographs that I had taken.  Then, I printed out my posters, cut them into various sizes, and posted the them in local apartment complexes and other places where they might be seen by potential readers.

Publicity Posters Created with LibreOffice Impress

In some cases, I just made the posters in plain text.  All I wanted to do was catch a reader's eye and pique their curiosity.  I also exported the posters to JPEG files so that I could cut them up and use them on Twitter.

 While these initial posters were fun, at least one Twitter user objected to my use of Comic Sans as a font.  This led me to seek out alternative mechanisms for creating posters.

This led me to revise my graphics and make them a tad more sophisticated.  I found several Apps for my phone that were perfect for creating quick publicity posters!  I'll cover those in my next post.