Short and sweet today. I have a couple nephews staying with us this weekend, so my internet time is rather limited. Because of that I’m only sharing one link with you guys. I’ll make up for it next weekend with extras, I promise! Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Washington Post

An article about how important it is for authors in this day and age to focus on marketing their own books. With so many books published every year, only the most popular authors get big tours and advertising dollars. So it’s good thing to know. This is a pretty good read.

David Carroll reads the very first Tuesday Night Storytime in its entirety. The story is told through the eyes of a Zeegrack named Pekosh Mildron. A powerful creature with a deep hatred of humans. The reason for the hatred is unknown, at times it seems barely present at all. What past grips this man, what drives his anger and distrust of humans?

I loved getting to hear the story, it was a fun way to remember it. For some of you older readers from before the podcast, I hope it brings you similar memories. It has been a blast getting to tell these stories these last months. David and I were just talking about it the other day, wondering if either was getting tired of it already. Happily, we’re both more into it if anything. I think you can really tell that in his voices in this story. It just becomes more and more fun!

As always, I hope you enjoy the story.

The continuation of Mr. Snaggle’s Oddities. In this part, Peter is pretty sure his friends have been turned into animals. He needs to find the book and hope it has some answers before it is too late.

Audio version by David Carroll:

As always, I hope you enjoy the story.

The next morning Peter woke up very early. He paced across his room waiting for even a peep from the hallway. After what felt like a lifetime, he finally heard it.

He waited for a few minutes while the steps moved past his door and down the stairs. Then he left his room and followed to the kitchen. His mom looked surprised at seeing him awake.

“What are you doing up so early?” She asked.

“Oh I don’t know, I couldn’t sleep I guess.”

“Can I get you some breakfast? What would you like?”

“I’m not hungry. Mom, I saw something at Mr. Snaggle’s last night. I think he’s done something with my friends.”

“That’s quite a story, maybe all this work you do at the circus has you a bit on edge?” She laughed the words.

“I’m not kidding, I followed Jackson and a couple others to his tent last night. I saw their bikes in the grass nearby. I really think he did something to him.” She just laughed even harder.

“That’s ridiculous, Peter, stop telling stories. I happen to know for a fact that Jackson is away at camp right now. I spoke to his mother yesterday.”

Peter froze. His mother was just looking down at him as if expecting him to say something. The words just wouldn’t come. It was more than just coincidence.

“Oh that’s right, I must have forgotten.” He managed.

Peter’s mother smiled. “It happens to the best of us. Now go get dressed, Mr. Snaggle wanted you to come in today. I told him I would send you along whenever you got up. I didn’t think it would be so early, but I don’t think he’ll mind.”

Peter’s shoulders dropped and he slid off the stool. What would he want to tell him? Should he ask him about what he saw? He stopped before he left the kitchen and turned back to his mom. He’d almost forgotten all about it.

“Mom, there was a really old book in my room. I can’t seem to find it anywhere, have you seen it?”

“Yes, dear, it’s on the shelf in your closet. Can’t imagine why you wouldn’t think to check there.” Despite everything, the look she gave him brought a smile. It was more like his mom than he’d seen in days. Peter never did check his closet. “Where did you get that old thing anyway?”

“From Jackson,” he lied. “His uncle found it at a garage sale and got it for him.”

“Well, don’t spend all day reading it up there. You can look it over when you get back from the circus.”

Peter frowned and agreed. In his room, he pulled the book out of his closet and hid it in one of his drawers. He wasn’t really sure why, but it seemed like a good idea. Away at camp, that was the same excuse Billy’s mom had given. Despite that, it was impossible, Peter knew very well that Jackson didn’t leave for camp. He had the feeling if he went to check, John and Tyler would be gone too.

No, whatever was going on seemed to be affecting parents. That made him even more nervous, considering Peter suspected their children were being turned into circus exhibits. What might be in the book that would help him figure it out? Whatever it was, it would have to wait until he got home.

He got dressed and rode his bike to the end of the street. There were cars lining the street now, and luckily Mr. Snaggle seemed busy. Peter walked out to the field of grass next to the tent and frowned when he found the three abandoned bicycles. That was proof enough that they never left. Even if they didn’t go home, they wouldn’t have left their bikes.

Trying not to look nervous, Peter headed into the circus tent. The place had been completely re-arranged to allow for a large stage in the center of the tent. His jaw dropped when he saw the two large rats that were on display there. All around the stage people were shouting and laughing. The rats were dressed in pink clothing.

“Quite large, aren’t they? Just got them in this morning. Some of my best exhibits so far, if I do say so myself.” He hadn’t realized Mr. Snaggle was standing next to him and jumped. “Sorry, my boy, didn’t mean to startle you.”

A few days ago that comment wouldn’t have seemed strange to him. Now he saw it for what the man really meant. He was getting better at turning kids into animals. It made sense the more he thought about it. Despite their size, the rats looked almost real. No extra tails, or eyes, or heads even.

“Where did you get them?”

“From a very small island in the Pacific. It’s not even on most maps. Come, Peter, I have something I wish to discuss with you.” He held out his arm pointing to the laboratory.

“What about the crowd, who’s going to watch them?”

“There’s no need to worry, I have everything under control.”

Peter sighed, he wanted to stay out in the open. In the lab, Mr. Snaggle gestured to a stool for Peter to sit on. “Peter, the time is coming that I will be leaving this place. My show travels all over the world of course. I never stay in one place for very long.” Peter grew more nervous with every word. “You are special, do you know that? I have met thousands of kids looking for even one like you.”

“Like me?” He asked, suddenly curious. Mr. Snaggle smiled down at him.

“Yes, you have a wonderful ability inside you, it’s just waiting to burst. I could tell from the very first time we met. It’s why I asked you to be my apprentice here.”

“What kind of ability?”

“Everything on this earth has something most people cannot see. These special properties can be changed, sometimes they can be made more powerful. Few people have the ability to discover these properties, even fewer can actually use them. This,” he spread his hand to gesture to the whole laboratory, “is where I experiment with these different properties. You have this ability as well, Peter.”

“So… you, like, make potions?” The old man laughed.

“Yes, my boy, something like that.”

Peter gasped. “And, you’re saying that I can make them too?” This was not what he had expected to talk about at all. How exciting! Then he thought of the rats outside and his excitement was gone in an instant. How did Mr. Snaggle always do that? It’s like he took away all his worries.

“What is it, Peter?”

“Um, nothing. You said you were leaving soon. So obviously I’m not going to get to learn any of it.” The answer surprised Peter, it was actually a very good lie.

“That is what I wanted to talk to you about, Peter.” Mr. Snaggle said slowly, picking up speed as he went on. “I have already spoken to your parents, and they’ve agreed that it would be great if you got to travel with me for the rest of your Summer break! Isn’t that wonderful?”

Peter blinked in surprise and suddenly felt very trapped.

Now we’re getting to the fun stuff. Tracking your statistics can become a serious obsession. I try to fight it, but I love knowing where my traffic comes from. On a side note, September already has my highest unique monthly visitors, and there is still a lot of time left! Yes, I haven’t beat that obsession yet… Anyway, let’s get into it.

I want to start off with something to consider, I once asked literary agent Jenny Rappaport of LitSoup if you should mention your website statistics in a query. Her response was no, unless you have more than 40,000 unique visitors. I admit, my jaw dropped a little. If you look at most first-time authors, very few of their novels sell even close to that number. But I got over my grumbling (I cannot brag that number) and started thinking of the basics of it.

First, when you are tracking unique monthly visitors you have to understand that most of those visitors are bots. If you don’t know what bots are you can search around, it’s a bit beyond the scope of this article. To put it simply though, think of search engines. They use bots to scour your website for keywords and Meta tags. They return the info and that helps (or hurts) your search engine ranking. So if you have 40,000 visitors, more than likely you had less than 10,000 real visitors.

Second, how many of your visitors are actually going to buy your book? If you have 250 regular visitors, can you bet on half of them buying it? We would hope for more than that, but this is a tough market.  So I think it’s another thing to consider.

On the same page, I’ve heard other agents and assistants say they’d like to see at least 2500 real visitors. that seems like a much more fair number. But again, that would be well over 10,000 unique monthly visitors in most cases. This is why most blogs and websites (and businesses) disappear in the first 3 years. It’s tough to build a following.

Alright, so there is some back story on why you should watch your traffic. Let’s get into how you can watch your traffic. I will keep this relatively simple. There are a few free tools that you can use. If you want to go all out, you can pay money for it, but most people don’t have to. If you are a published author, literary agent, etc. then you can consider it, but even then I might try the free options first to get a taste. I’ll go over each pretty briefly, if anyone wants a more detailed article about a particular service, just request it in the comments below. I’d be happy to do that.

Google Analytics

I’m going to be an unpaid advertisement for Google in this post. When it comes to free online software, you just can’t beat them. This gem is something every website or blog owner should have. Yes, bloggers, there are plenty of Google Analytic plugins. Go check them out!

This one may take you a week or so to figure it out in full. The amount of information it can give you is worth exploring though. The most basic feature will track your daily visitors, and it will compare those visitors to the number you got in the last 30 days. So at any time you can go see if viewers are going up or down. What does that tell you? Well, think about what you’ve done in the last 30 days. If you had a spike in visitors, I’d say you did something right. Of course if it went down, figure out why and stop doing that. If you don’t learn from your mistakes…

It does other cool things as well. You can look at your viewers on a world map and even click on countries to look at specific states and even what cities people came from. That’s perhaps my favorite feature. I like that I have visitors in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, and the like. And hello if you’re reading this! A couple other things to watch are where your traffic comes from and what pages people are visiting the most. For instance, I know Twitter brings me a lot of traffic, so I’m probably not going to stop using it soon.

Google Feedburner

This is for you bloggers out there, or podcasters, or anyone else that set up an RSS feed. Feedburner is actually very cool. What you do is forward your RSS feed through their servers. Of course, this is just another way Google stays at the top of the search engine game. But unless you have a problem with the power of Google, I’d still use it!

Feedburner will take your feed and break it into sections. It can show you how many people are subscribing to your blog, which is fun. I’ve certainly enjoyed the steady rise in subscribers I’ve had in the last couple months.

Web Host Statistics

These get more into your actual statistics. If your hosting company doesn’t offer it, you should think about moving to another. They are a dime a doze. The one I linked to above I use with all my clients, and this website too. This is also where you get more into the numbers that are bots. Most good hosting companies will show you which of your visitors were bots. While it says my website gets more than 100 visitors every day, a lot of those are bots.

Hosting companies will give you other information too. Such as bandwidth usage, unique daily/monthly/yearly visitors, traffic sources (where traffic comes from), and things like that. I mentioned this in the last article, but it’s important so I’ll mention it again. Your hosting company should also offer you free SEO submissions to help bring more traffic.

Social Networking

I’m only going to mention two things here. Because they are the only two that I have any experience with for tracking on social sites. Surely there are more if you check whatever you use the most.

• Facebook Fan Page – This has a built in system that will keep track of how many people are checking out your page.
• Twitter – I found a website called HootSuite that is a Twitter management site. One cool thing about it is that they use their own “short urls.” If you use them, it will keep track of how many people click on your links. For instance, I’ve found when I post links about writing, I get a whole lot of views for them (as should be expected considering my followers). I’m sure other Twitter sites do the same, but I’m not sure which.

© 2009 Robert W. Leonard

Next Monday will be the last article in this series. If anyone wants me to continue after that I’d be more than happy. Just jot down what subjects you are interested in via the comments below. And make sure to check back tomorrow for the latest Tuesday Night Storytime, part 5 of Mr. Snaggle’s Oddities. Things are really building up!

I stumbled on some good ones this week. I think the hardest part is narrowing down all the things I’ve read to just 3 links. Maybe I should start adding more? I suppose we shall see!

Nathan Bransford

He wrote this week about the future of publishing. With the rise of e-books and audio books, what will happen in the printing world? He also wonders if people will still need agents and publishers. I think some will still want them for their marketing expertise. If anything, I think this is one of those times agent’s need to evolve, not writers. We write books, and most of us want professionals to sell them. That hasn’t changed.

Brandon Sanderson

This man is about to become the next big thing, if he’s not already. With the Wheel of Time a little over a month away, it seems very likely Sanderson will soon become a #1 bestseller. But what would it be like to be asked to finish your mentor’s greatest work? It sounds great, but I can’t even begin to imagine how much pressure he feels. He wrote about some of his struggles with it this week. You can scour old blog posts to see more of his struggles.

I Want My America Back

This is a touching post about racism. Since I live in Texas, racism is, unfortunately, nothing new to me. But the author of this post was just about the opposite. At a Town Hall meeting she had her first personal encounter with it. I think it’s worth reading. Thanks go to CrissWrites for pointing this one out to me.

Anybody else find some interesting posts they want to share?

I’ve been hinting at this project for a few days now. It’s is exciting because I don’t often get to build websites with a fantasy theme. The owner of Paladin Signs chose me for my interest though. He saw my website and thought I would do a good job with the one he was thinking about. We’ve only begun the actual building of the website, but I have these fun images to share with you guys.

The first is a copy of the logo and header that they designed. I like it, it’s easily identifiable and it stands out in my mind. Which hopefully means that it will stand out in their customers’ minds. The second is a crop of the background they designed. I love it. I think the image of the knight approaching the castle is simply fantastic.

I can already tell this is going to be a fun project to work on.

The continuation of Mr. Snaggle’s Oddities. In this part, things take a turn for the worst when Peter’s friends seem very suspicious of Mr. Snaggle. Help contribute to the direction of the story by commenting below.

Audio version narrated by David Carroll:

As always, thanks for reading.

Peter thought of the last few days as apprentice at the circus while he got ready. So far, it had been everything he’d hoped it would be. Mr. Snaggle had even gotten a couple new animals since he started. All of them came from places Peter had never heard of.

With a weary step, Peter got out the door before his parents could ask him to do some other task that he’d already taken care of. It was very strange the way they were treating him lately. In every other way they seemed completely themselves, but anything to do with him and they seemed distant.

He hopped onto his bike and left for Jackson’s house. His family had gotten home from vacation the night before. Peter was excited to tell him all about all his work at the circus. When he got there, he noticed John and Tyler were over as well. He left his bike laying next to theirs and headed for the back yard.

He was surprised to find the three of them actually sitting in the back yard. He hadn’t expected that, it was just the way he went in to his friend’s house. They were usually in the living room anyway, and always waved him inside through the large windows. It looked like Jackson and the other boys were throwing rocks into a beat up coffee can and having a very serious discussion.

“How was your trip?” Peter asked.

The three looked up and waved him to come over. When he did, they continued on with their conversation. Jackson didn’t seem to have heard his question. Of all things, they were talking about Mr. Snaggle. What were the odds?

“He’s who I came to talk to you about actually.” He said with a smile.

They all looked at him suspiciously for some reason. It took away his smile. “Oh yea? So have you been noticing all the weird things going on lately too?” Jackson asked.

The question caught him off guard. “Um… no, what do you mean?”

“Well, Tyler noticed that a few kids have been missing. The bully from down the street, and a couple of his friends.”

“Billy?” They all nodded in agreement. “Maybe they just went out of town, you just got back after all.” He said.

“His parents are still at home. That wouldn’t make any sense. Besides, I asked my parents and they told me he was sent away to camp. She said they all were.” Tyler said.

“Sent to camp?” Peter asked. “At the very end of Summer vacation?” All four of them had gone to camp, but they’d gotten back almost a month ago now.

“I’m telling you,” John said, “it is old man Snaggle. It has to be.”

“What about him?” Peter asked.

“Oh right, that’s what we were talking about when you got here.” Jackson said. “All these weird things that keep happening seemed to start when he moved here.”

“Kids going away to camp isn’t all that weird, you know?”

Jackson looked at him very seriously. “It’s not just that. It’s my mom, she’s been acting so strange lately. She can’t seem to remember anything. I thought it was nothing until they both said the same thing.” He gestured to Tyler and John. “We talked about it and we decided it all started when that crazy old man moved here. We’re going to sneak out tonight and go have a look inside those tents. Want to come?”

Peter gulped. He no longer wanted to tell them about him being the man’s apprentice. He certainly didn’t want to go sneaking into his tents either though. He tried to think of something, but nothing came.

“What’s wrong, if you don’t want to do it you don’t have to.” Jackson said. “Anyway, what did you come to tell me? You never did say.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I just wanted to see how your trip was. I can’t go tonight, my parents have been acting strange too. They keep adding all these new rules. Do you really think he could have something to do with it?”

“Of course, what else could it be?” Jackson’s tone showed that he’d made up his mind. It made him feel guilty about not being honest with them.

“Are you sure you should go though? He has signs up warning about trespassing. What if you get caught?”

“He can’t possibly watch the place all the time. We’ll just wait till he should be asleep. What’s the worst that could happen?” His friend smiled with confidence. He’d always admired that about Jackson, but now it was making him very nervous.

He sat with them while they planned out their adventure. Peter wondered what he should do while they took turns throwing rocks. He couldn’t very well warn Mr. Snaggle and go against his own friends. All he could do was sit back and do nothing, hoping that everything turned out alright.

After awhile Jackson’s mom came out to say she was going out for awhile and to call her if anything was wrong. They took the opportunity to go inside and play some video games. Apparently, the three were just avoiding her.

Peter noticed it was getting darker outside and looked at the clock. “Well, I guess I better get home. Be careful tonight, okay guys?” He said.

They all nodded and said their goodbyes. Peter rode home and closed the door quietly. With any luck he wouldn’t have to come out of his room until it was time to eat. Not that his time was being spent any better pacing back and forth across his room.

Eventually, he decided there was nothing else to do but go tonight as well. So he sat through another quiet dinner and waited for his parents to go to bed. Then he climbed out of his bedroom window and rode his bike to the circus tents. He just couldn’t decide who it was exactly that he was going for. His friends or Mr. Snaggle?

Peter found the three boys’ bikes hidden in some tall grass near the tents. The circus looked much creepier at night. The three tents looked more like different shades of gray in the moonlight.

He crept up the entrance to the circus and peeked his head inside the tent flap. It really was strange that the man did not get robbed more often considering anybody could walk right in. The tent was much darker than he was expecting it to be, but he had the place pretty much memorized.

As he looked around he got more and more nervous about his friends. He couldn’t find them anywhere. At the end of the aisles he came to the exit. Or there was the side path that led into the laboratory of course, but he’d been forbidden to enter it without permission.

With a frown, he made his decision and walked to the other entrance. He had to know if his friends were alright. Surely he could explain himself to Mr. Snaggle if he had to.

Peter took a deep breath and opened the flap a little bit. He was surprised to find light coming from the other side. The source of it seemed to be moving around. After a few seconds he realized it was coming from a candle. He was about to poke his head into the tent when he heard a voice from the other side. He couldn’t make out what it said, but it sounded like Mr. Snaggle. Then the light trailed off the other direction and disappeared.

Without making a noise, Peter crept into the tent to where the talking seemed to have come from. He hoped to find his friends, but only noticed two very large caged rats. Something about the voice he heard clicked in his mind. Sneak in like rats… Peter blinked.

The two rats noticed him and rushed to the edge of the cage whining. The noise was very loud. He whispered for them to be quiet, and remarkably they did. What was going on here? He looked at the cages, but they were locked tight with a numbered padlock. He’d never guess the right combination.

Maybe he was imagining it, but the two actually looked like Tyler and John. Thinking about all the animals behind him, Peter shuddered. No, that didn’t make any sense. He heard a noise and whispered to the rats, “I’ll figure something out.” Then he moved quickly to the main circus tent.

Peter quietly closed the tent flap and moved toward the exit. Whatever he was going to do, it didn’t involve confronting the man. He needed time to think about it. He even laughed a little at talking to rats. What could it hurt? If they were his friends they would hopefully understand, and if not who cares? He thought about his words. If they were his friends? That was crazy, and if it were true, then where was Jackson?

Something caught his attention from the side. It was the two-tailed monkey ushering him to come over. Peter had never seen a monkey do that before. The little guy had something in his hand and gave it to Peter when he came near. He took the paper, but couldn’t read what was on it in the dark. The monkey then made a noise and pointed toward the exit. Very strange indeed.

When he got outside and a street away he stopped under a street light and pulled the note out of his pocket. It just had one word on it, scribbled to the point of hardly being legible at all.

All it said, in bold letters, was BOOK.

This is part 2 of my article series on web marketing. For those that don’t know SEO stands for search engine optimization. That’s what you’ll be reading about today.

If you missed last week’s post, click here.

There are lengthy books about this subject, so to pretend I could explain it all in this post would be foolish. I can, however, get you looking in the right direction. And by the way, if you would like a good book on this then take a look at this top-10 list of them.

So then let’s begin shall we?

Meta Tags

These tags are designed to tell search engines what to display when people find you. The description is usually a couple of sentences about the site. This is something that should be obvious so people know what to expect. Just think of the last time you were annoyed because a site was nothing like you were searching for. You don’t want to do that to your visitors.

Keywords is exactly what it sounds like, the things you want people to find you for when they search online. This website has ones related to fantasy and web design: fantasy, high fantasy, web designer, etc.

Meta information should go between the <HEAD> tags on your website. It should look something like this:

<head>
<meta name=”description” CONTENT=”What your site offers.”>
<meta name=”keywords” CONTENT=”Relevant keywords”>
<meta name=”revisit-after” CONTENT=”15 days”>
</head>

Weblog Plugins

A lot of people these days don’t actually run a full website. If you just run a blog, that doesn’t mean you have to learn advanced PHP to take advantage of SEO. There are many plugins out there that will handle all your needs for you. It’s kinda like magic, but much less cool.

I use this one for WordPress. But you can find plenty by searching for “SEO plugin <type of blog>.”

Hosting Submissions

A lot of hosting companies, like the one I use, offers SEO submissions free of charge. They’ll let you submit your site as much as once a day. I try to do it at least once a month.  As they say, consistency is key.

Actual Content

This is the real kicker. Everyone wants the coolest graphics and the latest Flash on their website. The problem is that nothing written in either of those is found by search engines. I hope this changes in the next couple years, but I’ve been hoping for the last couple too… You do have the option of using the alt tag with images of course. It is good practice, since things inside this tag can be found.

Your actual content should be considered as well. Remember that what you write can also be found on search engines. This can work both for and against you. You may re-consider saying something when you think of the audience. On the other hand, it’s not always a bad thing to talk about trends and popular subjects. People search for those, why not let them find you?

Be Friendly – Comment on Blogs

You hear complaints about this all the time. I’ve done that, I comment on tons of blogs, but nobody ever clicks back to my own. This happens for a number of a reasons, but the most important to me is the quality of comments. Most people go to a blog and post “great post, thanks for sharing.” I’ve even been guilty of it. What about that comment would even make the blog owner respond, much less their viewers?

If you aren’t interested in what they have to say, go comment on another blog. It’s as simple as that. People will have to find your comment interesting before they will want to read more that you’ve written.

The other big thing I see is people that are pushing themselves way too hard on someone else’s blog. If I am going through comments and see someone not only link back with their name (which you SHOULD do), but also add another link to their blog at the bottom of their comment, then I get annoyed. I promise you that I’m not the only one. Even if it only links to your blogger profile, accept that and move on. If you don’t list your website on your profile (all of them!), that’s your own fault.

© 2009 Robert W. Leonard

Because the last article was so long, I tried to narrow this one down. Do you guys prefer it to be shorter or longer? I tend to like more info, but I’d love to hear what readers prefer. Also, make sure to check back tomorrow for the latest Tuesday Night Storytime episode, part 4 of Mr. Snaggle’s Oddities.