A Beginners Guide to Instagram for YA authors.

My Instagram reflects my love of travel,
music, books, and photography. It's
 about the challenge of finding the
magical in the ordinary; about
seeing the world through a different
set of expectations and eyes. 

Firstly, a massive shout out to the fabulous website resource, HASHTAGIFY which I have discovered through some research into how to get the most engagement with the Instagram community.

I'm writing this blogpost mostly as a way of capturing some very interesting findings to help my own engagement but hopefully it will give you some little pointers, too. Although I strongly recommend taking a full look Hachtagify so you can match it precisely to your own book world.

I write Fantasy YA fiction (mostly) and I seriously LOVE Instagram. I have made the decision to make my Instagram board a reflection of my Creative Life not just my authoring; so it's predominantly travel, inspiration, creative living, music, books and reading. I have a passion for art and image, and instagram is a great platform for me to play with my passion for photography.

The recurring advice I have collected for beginners on instagram is:

• create a coherent visual theme with a strong message of your values. So mine is very aesthetically focused with strong, rich colours. I have a love of structure and form, and there is a sense of magic and whimsy, with strong alternative overtones. 


•  #HASHTAGS are really important. So as a YA author are you using #YALit #YABooks #YAReader #YAseries #Booknerd #Booknerdigan #kidlit #ASMSG #Author #AmWriting #Books #Kindle #Bookworm #Booklover #bookstagram #booklove (the most successful posts have around 12-20 hashtags!) 


• #yabooks is the most used 55%  #YAbooks is the next with 29% so yes, caps lock matters. (Stats thanks to Hashtagify) 


• Did you know that the peak time for the hashtag engagements linked to the ones above is Sunday afternoon starting at 1pm and peaking at 5pm (GMT) Although strangely, Wednesday is also a strong day. (Thanks Hashtagify)


• SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT - the best way to strengthen your engagement is to, well, engage, and not just broadcast. It's really important to find influencers in your community and like their posts and take the time to comment; this is the best way to get noticed and for people to check out your page. 


• Run engagement posts - ask people to tag and share. Run contests in which they have to tag you, share and tag in order to cross-promote to your followers. 


• TIME investment - as with all human interactions, it takes time to build meaningful, powerful relationships; followers need to get to know you through your board. Organic, genuine growth is always the best way to go, but that doesn't mean you sit back and wait for the garden to grow - get out there and make friends, be bold, be you. 


• My own tip is to make special expeditions and adventures to build up your B roll of film on your phone so that you have a week's worth or a couple of week's worth of images that you can post across the days. This will take some of the pressure off and get you into the habit of posting daily. 


• USE EMOCATIONS - they are the language of Instagram. Think about how you can use them in your bio to really convey who you are, what you stand for and what your belief systems are. In this way, you can tell folks a thousand words worth of things in the 100+ bio allowance. 

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/katemjohn/ 

After posting this onto AYAA on Facebook, I gathered some more excellent advice, so I'm expanding this post to include the things that are coming of it. 

JESIKAH UNDIN - author and Bookstagrammer. 

find her at: https://www.instagram.com/jesikahsundin/ 

"The best advice I have? Don't self-promote too much. That's a turn-off to this community. It's meant to be social, to discuss your favorite books as fellow readers. So... join the community of readers. Become one of them and ask a QOTD (question of the day) to kickstart conversations. "

And for hashtags, check out a variety of #Bookstagram accounts and see what hashtags they use and borrow them. Use oversaturated ones like #Bookstagram coupled with lesser used ones like #BookDragon and #Booktography. Or themed ones like #BooksandCandles or #BooksandOutdoors.

RESOURCES:

http://hashtagify.me/hashtag/yabooks

https://blog.bufferapp.com/instagram-growth
http://www.melyssagriffin.com/grow-your-instagram-followers/
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-ways-to-grow-an-organic-instagram-presence/

Introducing the founder of Little Bird Publishing....

That will be me.

Many of you don't realise that as well as being a 'full time' (that's a bit of an inside joke) writer, I am also the founder of Little Bird Publishing House.

Originally, I set Little Bird Publishing House up as my own unique press. It was designed to be the business front of my indie publishing career, and it worked really well. This was way back in 2010 when the idea of owning your own publishing house was still quite a novelty in the whole indie book world.

However, with the boom in indie books and authors, I began to see a LOT of dream paddlers; people offering to take your book, charge you a couple of thousand pounds and turn it into a bestseller - yeah, right!

It wasn't right - and it wasn't fair, and by late 2013, I had learned SOOO much on my steep learning curve, it felt time to help some other folks out. I began branching the idea of a publishing house with the establishment of two anthology projects. Dark Heart & Night Shade. It was an amazing way of testing the ground to see if I was ready to actually become not only an indie author, but a publisher, too. The Dark Heart & Night Shade projects led to some fabulous author friendships, and two of the authors are now fully-fledged Little Bird authors.

Fast forward to 2016 and we are a publishing family of ten; Hazel Robinson, Toya Richardson, Helen Whapshott, Alison Clarke, Martin Ferguson, Jo Richardson, Jill Turner, Katie M. John (me) and in 2017 Brandon Robb and L. Keane will be joining us. And when I use the term family, I don't use it lightly. As a collective of authors, we support each other, encourage, build, lend a hand, and generally hang out on social media.

My mission with Little Bird is and always has been that we are stronger together. That when we begin to work as a community of artists, amazing things happen - and they do.

I treat every single one of the books that run through Little Bird as dearly as my own, from the first initial edits, to the art work, to the marketing, to the love of the story - all Little Bird books are my beautiful nieces and nephews. Every author I work with is respected for their own unique and beautiful voice - that's what Little Bird is about; not crushing authors and creatives into a marketing book, but giving unique voices a chance to shine.

Every single Little Bird Book is worked until it is of a quality ready for readership - and the reviews, awards and fan-bases prove that.

I don't worry about markets and sales trends when it comes to selecting the stories we are going to publish, I focus on the story, on the author behind the story - and it doesn't matter if it sells 10,000 copies, or 10, every single story is important. Every single author's voice is important.

The thing about writing and defining oneself as an author is that it's freaking scary as hell. You're terrified that someone is going to 'out' you as a fraud, that someone is going to knock you down so hard that your'e never going to quite get up - and although it isn't always the nicest of worlds, by creating a community of authors who have genuine friendships grown through shared experiences and belonging to something a little bigger than being all by themselves, it makes the whole thing a lot less scary, and a hell of a lot more exciting.

In 2017 we see the next big step for us as a publishing house. We are the primary sponsors of Chapter.Con London and many of the Little Bird Family will be attending and manning our Little Bird super table, and we are also going to have a full publishing table at Leeds in 2018 with Hourglass Events. We are always growing and despite sometimes feeling like I have a million hats to wear, editor, designer, publisher, marketer, author, business woman, it's an amazingly fulfilling way to live.

If you want to find out more about Little Bird Publishing, or if you are an indie author who thinks that they might like to try a different kind of indie publishing, then you can see our public website www.thelittlebirdbookstore.com, which also has a link for authors to our publisher's website www.littlebirdpublishinghouse.com 



You can also come over and give us a LIKE at our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter at @LittlebirdPub - which amusingly is not a place you can procure beer from, but keep up to date with what we are all doing.

Introducing Kate John. (My horror writer alter-ego)

Taking my cue from all the great super-heroes, I am taking on an alter-ego and a dual persona come October 2016.

For those that have followed my blog over the years, you know that I have always been attracted to the dark side, and that horror is one of my most favourite genres. Every October for the last 4 years, I have taken part in Halloween celebration blog-fests, being an honorary member of my Horror Homie Crew. 

Finally, I have almost finished my first Adult Horror book, 'The Crow Man' - a project I have been working on for the last 3 years. It's a really exciting development in my author journey and I am so pleased to finally say that, 'The Crow Man' will be released later this year on October 1st 2016.

It's a dark exploration of the psychiatric practices of the 1950s and the idea of Monarch Programming, an almost mythical conspiracy theory that perpetuates the idea that the American government undertook a series of psychological experimentations in the 1950s designed to reprogram the human mind. The process worked on the idea that once a human mind had been broken apart, it could be remade in a specific way to another's advantage. This notion permeated into wider psychological practices, ensuring unending horror to the poor individuals who were aimed to be cured by its application.

Due to The Crow Man containing scenes of sexual, violent and graphic nature, it is not suitable for mainstream YA readership, and so I wanted to make it clear that this is a very different kind of writing with very different boundaries. As such, I am publishing The Crow Man (and hopefully future Horror titles) under the name KATE JOHN, rather than my main author name KATIE M. JOHN. 

I haven't gone wildly different on the pen name for several reasons. 1) A lot of my readers are actually adult readers who enjoy YA 2) My YA books are mostly for an Upper YA audience, and my readership demographic sways massively to the over 15 year olds. 3) The application of a wildly different pen-name throws up so many more issues on social media than it cures, and TBH, these days, there is no such thing as anonymity. 

I TOYED WITH WRITING MY HORROR UNDER A MAN'S NAME. 

For quite a long time, I toyed with the idea of publishing my horror under the name JOHN KAY. Which was a play on my name. It was a seductive idea because, (wrong as it is) male authors of horror have a much greater rate of sales success, and appear to have traditionally been favoured by readers. It was also somehow freeing, which is a strange notion and really highlighted, that despite my feminist protestations, I was myself conditioned by a society that had taught me to believe that women were subjected to more taboo subjects in their creative expression then men. 

It was a conflicting issue, I wanted the freedom to write, I wanted to be taken 'seriously' in the horror genre, but I am passionately committed to ideas of equality, diversity, authenticity and the celebration of women in the publishing world. 

So the answer was obvious. I would write it under my own name, and I would be proud to be a woman writing horror. I would be part of the positive change towards making horror less male-centric. I would also write horror that truly explored the role of women in horror. In many ways, The Crow Man is a feminist text, exploring the way society constructs notions of the perfect woman, and what happens to her when she fails to reach those levels of perfection. 

THE CROW MAN

The Crow Man, set in the 1950's, tells the story of Grace, the wife of a cold and egotistical GP. One misty afternoon, Grace sees the haunting figure of a living scarecrow standing at the bottom of their garden, watching the house that is home to their twin boys. 

As Grace's mind begins to unravel, and the grief of her stillborn daughter starts to overwhelm her, the enigmatic, handsome and revolutionary psychiatric doctor, Dr. Daniel Rose, offers Grace an escape with the new wonder drug, LSD. It is then that Grace's real nightmare begins to unfold. 

In this modern day Frankenstein, the dark and terrifying psychiatric practices of the 1950's are conducted by a madman, and Grace is left the only sane individual in the asylum. 

Warning: Some readers may find subjects and themes to be trigger topics. 

Available October 1st 2016

You can stay in touch with me as Kate John over on my new Facebook Page. It would be lovely to see you there. 

https://www.facebook.com/HorrorAuthorKateJohn/ 

AMAZING NEWS: I'm up for 2 UTOPiA Nominations.

I had the most amazing news a week ago; I discovered that I have been nominated for not just one, but TWO UTOPiA awards. I really can't tell you what this means to me.

UTOPiA is my creative home; it's the place, where once a year, I get to hug my friends, laugh with them, hug them some more, and hang out. To think that the UTOPiA academy has nominated both, 'When Sorrows Come' and 'Beautiful Freaks' for UTOPiA awards, blows me away.

It doesn't matter if they come last in the voting, the very fact they have been recognised by fellow UTOPiANs as worthy of standing beside the works of fellow UTOPiANs I not only love but admire.

So, 'When Sorrows Come' is up for Best Contemporary Book of the Year! and 'Beautiful Freaks' is up for the best Serial Series of the Year!

IF you have read either, and feel that you'd like to support the voting of the awards, you can find my works on this voting list -- and whilst you're there, don't forget to have your vote for all the other amazing categories (You don't have to vote in each category if the books and authors are unfamiliar to you, but I would recommend using it as an awesome TBR list!)

Here is the voting link: http://www.utopiacon.com/vote-in-utopia-awards-2016/ There are just a couple more days to cast your vote.

And here is a little bit more about the books that are up for nomination.


WHEN SORROWS COME: Nominated for BEST CONTEMPORARY BOOK OF THE YEAR.

Malachi: Mathematical Genius, Poet, Swimmer, and Narcissist. 

Ophelia: Artist, Poet, and subversive 

A poignant tale of first, enduring love. An Upper YA novel that explores the bitter-sweet emotions of first love against a backdrop of personal tragedy and metamorphosis into the adult world. 

At seventeen years old, both Ophelia and Malachi are already facing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Ophelia has to survive frequent trips to the psychiatric unit to visit her bi-polar mother, and Malachi is battling the rage of his father's death, and his uncle's hasty marriage to his mother. 

It is amongst these turbulent parental legacies and accompanying self-destructive impulses that Ophelia and Malachi begin a twisted exploration of first love. They discover that nothing in life is certain except all choices have consequences. 

LINK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Sorrows-Come-Katie-John-ebook/dp/B016P1X4I2

BEAUTIFUL FREAKS: Nominated for BEST SERIAL SERIES OF THE YEAR

A Serialised Story in 12 parts. 
SEASON ONE. Episodes 1-12 
A dark and twisted saga that winds its way through the Victorian streets of London like a luxurious and lethal ribbon. 
When a series of terrifying and seemingly paranormal murders occur at a rapid rate, panic and fear grip the city. Still haunted by the ghost of the Whitechapel Ripper case, Inspector Steptree is forced to admit the murderer he now pursues maybe even more wicked and brutal. As the case closes down on the mysterious No.7 club, owned by the enigmatic Evangeline Valentine, Steptree discovers that evil is far from a fantasy. 
It is against this backdrop that Kaspian Blackthorne turns eighteen and begins his apprenticeship under the scientific maverick, Doctor Greyson, a pioneer in brain surgery, and human transplantation. Whilst Kaspian is introduced to the horrors and wonders of man’s scientific progress, he also begins an epic adventure of self-discovery and infatuation. Guided into the decadent and luxuriant world of the London West End night scene by his new friend Hugh Denvers, Kaspian tastes the sweet temptation of a life less ordinary, but such a privilege comes at a terrible price. 
A cast of timeless characters and dark, grown-up fairy tales interweave to create a rich and haunting tale of fear and desire. 

Based on the original novel, ‘Beautiful Freaks’ written and published in 2013 by Katie M John, this series is a development of that world. This is the first season of a planned three seasons. You can find out more about this season and forthcoming seasons on the official site. www.katiemjohn.com 

LINK to EPISODE 1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beautiful-Freaks-Season-1-Episode-ebook/dp/B0164JRJYU 

One of The World's Tiniest Book Launches in One of The World's Tiniest Cocktail Bars.

#StartSmallDreamBig

I'm heading off to UTOPiA in a month and having been nominated for a couple of awards for my book 'When Sorrows Come' and my series, 'Beautiful Freaks', I was feeling under increased pressure to find a drop-dead gorgeous evening gown (not that I need any encouragement, I love evening dresses) 

However, several weeks later and having tried on over 40 different dresses, every single one somehow wasn't right - either that or it looked pretty much the same as one of the 5 I have already hanging in my wardrobe. 

I was sat having a coffee, feeling a little deflated when I got to thinking that £200 / $300 was a hell of a lot of money for a dress I was going to wear just a handful of times. I began to think of ways that I could perhaps spend that money more wisely on attaining my life-plan. 

Coincidentally, the very next day, we stopped off at a new shop that had opened in my home town. It is the HQ office of a cocktail hamper company, founded by an interesting female entrepreneur. She wanted to create an office that was a joy to work in rather than the industrial unit office she had currently been renting. She chose one of the cute little Victorian fronted shops that had once been a florists, and now, as well as having a pretty office, she opens up the front of it as a tiny miniature cocktail bar. 

EUREKA, I would take that £200 and hold a perfectly miniature book launch party / signing. The cocktail bar will take just about 10 people - the perfect number of people as one of my very first solo signings. 

Then, life is strange; there are several other creative projects happening in my life at the minute, and for some reason, they all seem to be connecting with one another. One of these projects is working with women in the local community who have turned their back on traditional, patriarchal corporate jobs and professions to pursue their own path, create their own companies, and to sell their own services. TAP (The Academy of Possible) has recently been established, and it's a social evolution project that aims to connect women with skills with one another, so we can become cheerleaders and supporters for each other, both on a very practical sales level, and on an emotional, motivational level. 

As part of these two strands of my life, I had the idea that I would use the miniature signing in the miniature cocktail bar to make a miniature documentary on the theme of #StartSmallDreamBig, with the aim of inspiring other people to take that first step into doing something bold, social and extraordinary.

I'm not going to lie, the thought of a signing, where I will be reading, petrifies me. I'm still coming to terms with my identity as an author - which by 8 books down, I should have nailed already. And yet, there are reasons why I am 8 books down and never done a social launch party for one of my books... reasons that are complex and reasons that I know many others share. 

That's the aim of this project, to inspire folks to step outside of their comfort zones, but in a safe way - a bit like a controlled explosion, only just not with quite so much wreckage - although who knows what will happen with the added ingredient of cocktails. 

I'm being ultra brave, and fighting the fear by inviting a local journalist, the manager of a local national book store, and a high profile blogger to attend and be of the 10 guests that will be invited. I don't know if they will come, but I do know that if you don't ask, they definitely won't come. 

And if the filming is rubbish, if the reading is wobbly, if the whole thing is a little less than perfect, it doesn't matter, it will be perfectly imperfect and I will have learned a whole lot of lessons. 

Watch this space for more updates on this project, and I really look forward to hearing where you arrange your miniature signings having been inspired by this idea. 

Drop a reach out in the box <3 nbsp="" p="">

Internal Reatreat. The retreat for when you can't escape.

I'm undertaking a time of retreat; this doesn't mean that I've flown a thousand miles to sit on a mountain, or headed off into the depths of the countryside, leaving my family behind. I have gone on retreat right in the present here and now - inside my internal space. I am in the same house with the same demands, but I have made the conscious application to give myself February.

I still do the business e-mails, my work to-do list, the school runs, the packed lunches, the laundry, the shopping, the food provision .... the million other small things that it takes to keep our family running - but they are not the focus of now. The focus of now is me. All these other things are just a series of movements to pass through. (Aside from quality one to one conversations and cuddles with the family)

These are my primary goals.

1. To eat better.
2. To drink better.
3. To claim back my head.
4. To claim back my body.
5. To embrace my authentic creativity.
6. To feel confident when I walk into public spaces - which involves dropping a few pounds.

When my kids go to swim class 2x a week, I head downstairs to the gym for a quick 20 minute blast. I've converted the dining room into a yoga and meditation space when the family aren't around. (The cat is intrigued) I've practically cut out all caffeine, alcohol and minimised sugar (not that I ever really had a sweet tooth.) I've minimised my social networking. I run (in a fashion) to pick the kids up from school rather than dawdle along. The high I got from the gym those first couple of short times, means I've even gone down on a morning for longer sessions. I discovered my body can actually sweat, and it quite likes it.

It means there isn't much novel writing getting done - but that's okay; it's okay, because I know that this investment in my well-being means that the writing will be easier, better, clearer when I start again. However, an upside of this focus is that the poetry has returned.

After just two weeks. I already feel so much fitter; I can feel muscles tightening, my body evolving. The effects have been almost instant. My energy levels are higher. I'm walking with a spring in my step, making burning those calories so much easier.

You can find yourself making a thousand different quite excuses, space, time, stress, external forces, other people, society -- but in the end, it really is as simple as making the choice to do it, which is a revelation after fifteen years of not acknowledging this choice. It's about making small adjustments, and radical promises.  Most of all, it's saying that you are worth the investment, which is sometimes the hardest idea to readjust.