As of today I’ve got a new audio book available: Global Wording – The Fascinating Story of the Evolution of English. I’ve included a sample in the audio portion of tomorrow’s podictionary podcast.

The book hasn’t shown up yet on iTunes & Audible.com for sale as a download but it is there at online bookstores for those who’d prefer a CD.

Here are the links:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Powell’s
• Borders
• Booksamillion
• Chapters/Indigo (Canada)
• Amazon.ca (Canada)

If you want to support your local bookstore you can ask for it by name, author or ISBN # 978-1427203304

A funny thing happened to me on the way to a writers meeting…

I was packing my bags to attend my first Writers Union of Canada annual meeting when the doorbell rang.

What’s this? A UPS envelope from my publisher.

Actually no, they just forwarded it. It’s from the Publishers Marketing Association. They write:

“Congratulations! Your title, Carnal Knowledge has been named as one of the three finalists in the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Awards™ competition, in the following category: Reference/Directories.”

I’ll tell you more over the coming days about the great meeting we had in Toronto.

Further to the Writers Union of Canada AGM panel RAISING YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE

I said last post that today I’d give a practical example of “ink love.”

Link love is the boost you get in Google ranking due to the fact that your blog links to other blogs and websites, and especially when others out there on the web link to you.

How to encourage link love?

I heard about a blogger who went to a conference and was fortunate enough to be good at drawing. He sought out other bloggers at the conference and offered to draw their caricatures.

He then posted his drawings on his blog.

Of course the bloggers who were the subjects linked to his website and gave him link love. He linked to theirs to show who the caricature was of, returning the link love and making Google love everyone more.

And here’s my offer of link love to you.

My podcast is a word-a-day podcast. I’m going to be brining my audio recorder to the Writers Union AGM and I’ll be happy to record any author who wants to say something along the lines of:

“This is Your-Name-Here and one of my favorite words is…”

Then in the months to come I’ll generate podcast episodes around some of those favorite words and include book plugs and links for the author concerned.

Authors unable to attend the AGM can participate too. I have a podcast voice mailbox at (860) 967-3847. Just be sure to leave enough information that I can find your book to include an image and a website to link to you.
I can’t promise to fit in each and every author plug, it’ll depend on numbers. But I have done something like this before with good results (see fantoosh and linoleum). You can check at the podictionary website to be sure your word hasn’t been covered before; use the “Headword Search” tool in the right column.

This blog post is a duplicate of one of a series of emails I’m sending to the Writers Union of Canada listserv in advance of the Writers Union AGM panel session RAISING YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE taking place at 1:15 on Friday May 23. I’ll be joining Cynthia Good and Rick Broadhead for that panel (moderated by Ray Argyle).

Further to the Writers Union of Canada AGM panel RAISING YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE

I told you some downsides to podcasting & blogging and I told you some reasons that make me keep doing it. If you begin to get serious about blogging after a while you should also begin to think about SEO.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

It boils down to doing some things to make Google see your blog more clearly and rank it more highly. It is a mistake to try and design your web presence for Google. Google won’t buy your books. Design it for people. Google is such a successful company because they are so good at getting their search technology to like what real people like. So write your blog for real people.

But once you’ve done that there are a number of other things that, if you’re aware of them, should make Google even happier. I use WordPress for my blog. But I don’t use the free WordPress hosted service. They also provide free software that I can run on my own host’s servers. That other host costs about $7 a month. What that buys me is the ability to plug extra modules (called plugins) into the software to do more than the free service allows. Some of these make it easy to do SEO.

One of the things this allows is addition of more appropriate post titles and keywords for Google to find. Some companies pay money to choose keywords but a simple approach for you to use is to choose words appropriate to your content that lots of people use to search with in Google but for which there are fewer websites out there that contain the keyword. More searches plus fewer competitors means more hits on your site.

Here’s an example:

Imagine an author who writes murder mysteries. I looked up the two key words “murder” and “plot” in separate Google searches. These searches tell me (in the upper right corner) approximately how many web pages there are in the world with those words on them. That’s how big the completion is for each word.

I then used a Google tool called Google Trends (at www.google.com/trends) to look up the same two words. The result at Google Trends shows which word is searched on more frequently.

I can see from these combined results that the word “murder” is a more valuable keyword than “plot” since there are twice as many Google searches on “murder” but there are actually fewer websites that contain the word “murder.”

Another thing that Google likes is links.

If your blog contains links to other blogs and web pages, especially ones that relate to the content of your blog, Google gives you more credit. So as you type, link words in your article to other bloggers and websites.

Similarly if other bloggers and websites link back to you Google is even more impressed. This is called “link love” and I’m going to give you a practical example of it next post.

This blog post is a duplicate of one of a series of emails I’m sending to the Writers Union of Canada listserv in advance of the Writers Union AGM panel session RAISING YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE taking place at 1:15 on Friday May 23. I’ll be joining Cynthia Good and Rick Broadhead for that panel (moderated by Ray Argyle).

Further to the Writers Union of Canada AGM panel RAISING YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE

Last post was all bad news about podcasting and blogging. Today I get to show off.

My podcast has had four million downloads and thousands of people listen to my voice or read my words every day. I’m getting within spitting distance of 200,000 impressions per month (an impression being a download, a pageview, a subscription email sent etc.)

I’ve gotten coverage in dozens of print publications and hundreds of websites and blogs.

My podcast led to an original audio book contract with Macmillan.

I met and developed relationships with many kind people in fields related to the work I’m doing including world leaders in lexicography and etymology.

My podcast is being hosted once a week on the Oxford University Press blog.

In the same way that people feel a greater connection with radio personalities on CBC because they know them by voice, I feel my listeners are more dedicated than blog readers might be. Any day I’m feeling down I can look up the listener comments posted at iTunes and get my ego stroked. Read on, the following are from people who were NOT paid to say this:

” Only two or three short listens and you’ll be completely enamored by this charming man who comes to your iPod like a friend.”

“Brilliant: I never tire of Charles Hodgson’s endearing presentation. This podcast is a real joy.”

“Excellent source of Knowledge: This podcast provides 150% of the RDA of knowledge and is a great way to bypass the work involved in researching the etymology of words. Additionally, when explaining word history to others you appear to be very knowledgeable and well read thereby increasing your virtual IQ. I listen every day.”

I told you today I’d brag.

Because my podcast is now also a blog I am building a blog-reading following as well. Perhaps these print oriented people will be more likely book buyers than the audio oriented people.

People who’ve visited my website have filled in listener surveys giving me the kind of information that advertisers like to know about a potential audience. I’m pleased to say that my audience represents a very desirable demographic.

So that’s the good news. Next post I’ll tell you about something called SEO.

This blog post is a duplicate of one of a series of emails I’m sending to the Writers Union of Canada listserv in advance of the Writers Union AGM panel session RAISING YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE taking place at 1:15 on Friday May 23. I’ll be joining Cynthia Good and Rick Broadhead for that panel (moderated by Ray Argyle).