Tag Archives: wordpress

Another Social Media Platform. Does it Stack Up?

Posted on by

Another Social Media Platform. Does it Stack Up?
Terry Odell

I’m hoping this post will initiate some feedback/discussion, because this writer wants to know.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot about Substack. I know a few of the TKZ authors have accounts, and I’ve followed several other authors I know and admire on the platform. A writing buddy of mine set up her account as a potential substitute for her Blogspot site.

I did a little (very little) digging into the platform. This is what I found from the first link that showed up via the Google Machine.

Substack is much more than a newsletter platform. A Substack is an all-encompassing publication that accommodates text, video, audio, and (sic) video. No tech knowledge is required. Anyone can start a Substack and publish posts directly to subscribers’ inboxes—in email and in the Substack app. Without ads or gatekeepers in the way, you can sustain a direct relationship with your audience and retain full control over your creative work.

Interesting, but is it any different from what I’ve been doing since 2006? I have a blog, Terry’s Place. It’s a WordPress site, and I can include text, video, and audio. I don’t have any ads. I’m my own gatekeeper. Posts go to my site and to subscribers’ email inboxes, and I can also direct anyone and everyone to the site. They can read it without jumping through any hoops.

Is there a cost? Yes, I pay for my domain name and a hosting service. But it’s my domain. My website. And it’s the first thing that comes up when people Google my name. That’s my sandbox, and that’s where I want people to find me.

I also have a newsletter, and yes, I pay for that service. Would it be worth it to switch my newsletter, which goes out about once a month, to Substack’s platform? I’m not sure. I’m an old dog here, and not only do I not like learning new tricks, I firmly believe in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

I do have a Facebook page, but most of what I do there is play my “make up your own definitions for the word of the day” game. Posts with more content are my blog posts, which I share from WordPress to Facebook.

One big difference between my WordPress site and Substack is you can monetize Substack. People can pay to read your content. As I understand it, those using that model will offer extras to people who pay. Sort of like Patreon is my guess, but I haven’t investigated either because, frankly, I don’t have the balls to ask people to shell out money for my ramblings. Nor have I paid for any of the subscriptions from the half a dozen authors I follow.

What I’m seeing/thinking is that most of the comparisons are between Substack and Facebook. Yes, I agree that Substack probably has a more reliable reach than Facebook. But I don’t rely on Facebook for serious communication with my followers. That’s what my blog and newsletter are for. I own the emails of my subscribers there.

When poking around the general Substack site, it looks a lot like Facebook or a blog. Users can write articles and readers can leave comments, but they have to subscribe. On my WordPress site, email addresses are required to comment, but they’re private and there’s no subscription/following to comment.

I also looked at the cons of Substack.

Here are a few:

  • Substack is separate from your website. While they have a friendly terms of service, they’re still a San Francisco-based company backed by venture capitalists. Nothing would prevent them from changing their terms of service.
  • Substack is a company, not a technology. WordPress, on the other hand, is open internet. If your WordPress host kicks you off or goes out of business, you can move to another WordPress host and everything is the same because WordPress is a technology, not a company.
  • Substack has no canonical URLs and very limited SEO optimization. It’s not going to guide you into creating search-friendly content.

For more—lots more—you can go to this site, which is where I did much of my research for this post.

I discovered, to my surprise, that I also had a Substack account, but I haven’t done anything with it other than create a draft post just to check the process. It wasn’t complicated, but I’ve had years of experience with my website and blog via WordPress. Will I switch to Substack? Highly unlikely. Will I use it in addition to my blog? Also highly unlikely. As the article points out:

Additionally, if you’re posting to your own blog and Substack simultaneously, you’ll have a duplicate content issue that could hurt the search engine rankings of your primary blog. From an SEO perspective, Substack isn’t great.

And, there’s the added task of finding followers/subscribers. You can’t assume people who follow you in one place are going to jump through the requisite hoops to follow you on Substack. When I was playing around, I got a LOT of emails from Substack, not something I appreciated. If I have an active account and someone follows/subscribes, will they get emails from Substack, too? I wouldn’t want to be the one who triggered that.

From my limited perspective, Substack is just another social media platform that plays by different “rules.” When I log into my Substack account, I see the posts from people I follow at the top, and then below those are posts that look just like the ones on Facebook or Twitter/X. Do I need another social media platform? I think not.

However, I wrote this post today hoping that people who are familiar with Substack will chime in and broaden my understanding. Is it working for you? Are you adding it to what you already do, or using it to replace something that wasn’t working so well? I want to know.

How can he solve crimes if he’s not allowed to investigate?

Gordon Hepler, Mapleton’s Chief of Police, has his hands full. A murder, followed by several assaults. Are they related to the expansion of the community center? Or could it be the upcoming election? Gordon and mayor wannabe Nelson Manning have never seen eye to eye. Gordon’s frustrations build as the crimes cover numerous jurisdictions, effectively tying his hands.
Available now.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

WordPress, Script Writing, Memoirs – What does this have to do with fiction writing?

Posted on by

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

It’s been a strange week. Whenever I get toward the end of a project, I sabotage my progress by finding distractions (or I let them take over “There, I said it.”). I honestly don’t want my story to be over. I’m madly in love with my latest protagonist, Braxton Valentine. Valentine: Steel Heart will be launched Oct 31 as part of a new Amazon Kindle World – Desiree Holt’s The Phoenix Agency. This will be book 1 of 2, with the second installment coming in Feb 2018. I don’t have to say good-bye to my brooding hero, but that doesn’t make it easy to finish book 1.

I wanted to have a free schedule for the holidays, not like last year where I wrote like a mad woman for a January release. Never, never, never again. That’s the goal, but in the midst of my mounting common sense comes my new website design.

Distraction #1 – I asked my designer, Maddee at Xuni, to create a WordPress site I can maintain by myself to keep the cost down on monthly tweaking and all the new releases. I’ll be launching it soon, but I had to teach myself much more than I ever thought I would know about WordPress (WP). Like a petulant child, I kicked and wailed against doing it NOW, but I eventually broke down WHILE I WAS FINISHING Valentine’s story. After I sunk my teeth into my learning curve, I found I really enjoyed getting to know more about WP & I’m thrilled that I will finally have control over my site. I still plan on using Xuni for some administrative functions. I can’t totally quit Maddee and need my fix, but it was satisfying to learn something new and gain control at the same time.

Distraction #2 – Since I saw the end of my project in sight (we’re talking final chapter, big finish, folks), I decided to make contact with a local writers group and attend one of their critique sessions. I enjoy giving back to the writing community, as other authors have done for me, and I also get a lot out of reviewing and giving feedback to others. The meeting was held at a good restaurant I like, double score, and I met new people, trifecta. But after lunch we began the critique process (which hasn’t changed in YEARS), which is to read 10 pages aloud (cold) and provide feedback. Instead of hearing submissions of fiction, I heard only one memoir and one screenplay/script before I had to cut out. In the past, this group has also had quite a number of poets. Not one fiction read. I have to say I was a little disappointed, except that I wanted to make the most of it and focus on how screenplays can still evoke emotion with good dialogue and setting.

The next day I researched script writing and read examples of famous scenes from well-known movies that were packed with very emotional content. It inspired me to double my efforts to put the right dialogue into every scene and fill it with emotion. The setting can still be sparse (especially when I am writing shorter Amazon Kindle Worlds these last few months), but the dialogue needs meat and heft. The film-goer or the reader MUST be gripped by your stripped down version of a story and their minds fill in the gaps to paint a picture in their minds that can be rich and satisfying.

Have any of you thought about script writing?

A rule of thumb – one page of a script is equivalent to one-minute of film/TV. So if you can write an approx. 50-70 pgs for episodic TV or 80-120 pgs for feature film—with good and effective story structure, packed with emotion and good dialogue—you have the bare bones to a solid novel. I’ve heard of some authors who start out by writing in a script fashion before they fill out their story into fiction. Could this be the new outline?

Here’s a page from CASA BLANCA – We’ve all seen this scene.

I’m not proposing that I divert all my attention to learning script-writing, but this method isn’t that far off from where I taught myself to write a tight scene with a focus on dialogue. To get a jump on my writing after work, I would take a notepad to lunch and write only dialogue lines that I heard in my head (yes, I had a lot of folks staring at me). With those lines as a framework, I would fill out the other elements later (setting, body language, action, introspection). The brain is an amazing team player. While you are doing other things, it is still working on your story or your research. If you’ve ever read a full script, you know how the brain fills in the gaps and makes you see a movie rolling in front of your mind’s eye.

So my “fiction group” diversion lit a fire under me. I suppose inspiration can come at you fast.

Even the Memoir writer in the critique group got me to shred through the words that readers will skim (as Elmore Leonard said) to realize that even your own memoir needs emotion and a point. Unless you are famous, who is your target market? If you’re a survivor of an ordeal, you can share your journey and be inspirational, but your average person who only wants to chronicle their life will have a “story” with no end (yet) and a ramble of back story and mental musings without a point. My dad’s memoir is a case in point. It shall never see light of day because he can’t stop editing it—which is a good thing because he’s still here to wordsmith it.

For Discussion:

1.) What diversions have paid off for you as a writer?

2.) Have you ever considered writing a script for your book – or started with a script and fleshed it out into a novel?

3.) How many of you maintain your own website? Do you enjoy WordPress?

VIGILANTE JUSTICE (Mercer’s War – Book 3) – $1.99 Ebook

In Montana, when a disturbing pattern of missing teens and college students falls under the FBI’s radar, former CIA operative Mercer Broderick fears the violent abductions are at the heart of a dark web of conspiracy that must be stopped and Brotherhood Protectors won’t be denied from the fight.