In 2008 I used to have a lot of time to randomly search the internet; to click on links, read blog posts, and generally fill my head to bursting with all sorts of interesting tidbits. One gem I stumbled across was that a castle was going to be built roughly an hour away from us, using medieval building methods. Tourists would be able to visit the site, do various activities, and, though transported to a different time, snap hundreds of photos. I marked it down as something I wanted to do when they finally got around to making it a reality, and clicked on.
Fast forward to 2015. I have since moved, but a conversation with a friend reminded me of that castle project that never came to fruition. On a whim, I hit google, and was horrified to discover that it had indeed opened in 2010 – and closed in 2012 due to lack of interest. They’d expected 150,000 visitors and got only 12,000. What did they do when the people didn’t come? They slashed staff, and raised the admission price from 12$ to 18$. But, what was the one thing they didn’t do?
Advertise.
Living only an hour from the site (until 2014), I had no idea that it had ever opened. There were no billboards, no TV commercials, nothing. Apparently they garnered a mention on a TV show I’ve never heard of, and made “national headlines” (that I missed). While this “national attention” was going on, the tourists who were sitting in their backyard, literally wanting to go to something like this, had no idea the attraction existed.
This reminded me of many indy authors. They write a book, they edit, they might even pay for a good cover image and professional polishing. They publish, they announce to their friends and family and then… they sit back and wait for the sales to roll in. When they don’t, they take drastic measures; they slash prices or raise them, they rewrite, they buy new covers, sometimes they even quit, but the one thing they need to do they don’t.
They need to advertise.
Just as I couldn’t go to the castle because I didn’t know it had opened, so readers who would like to read our books can’t buy them if they don’t know they exist.
I’m not talking about spam advertising, or shoving your book down someone’s throat, or even the aggressive marketing I’ve heard some authors do (Hello stranger in the grocery store, I know you’re shopping for spaghetti, but did you know I wrote a book where a character eats spaghetti? Here’s my pitch and my business card) but we do need to do some advertising.
I’s even better if you can target your advertising. What does that mean? In a nutshell its advertising to the people who want to buy what you’re selling. That above mentioned shopper might like spaghetti, but she might not like your genre, she might not even be a reader, and while buying groceries she’s probably not looking for a new book.
How do we target our advertising? One way is to list your books on email lists (this works best with free days or bargains). The people who get those emails are not only looking for books (not spaghetti) but are looking for books in your genre!
Of course this isn’t the only advertising method, but it’s a start, and for shy authors it doesn’t involve a lot of uncomfortable interaction. The downside is that it often costs to advertise, but you can’t make money unless you spend money, and you can’t sell a product unless your customers know you’re there.
Just ask the Ozark Medieval Fortress.
What are some ways you’ve advertised your books or author brand? Did they work the way you’d hoped?
In a digital world, where content is turned into 1s and 0s, piracy has become an issue. As a consumer, one often reads about Warner Brothers or other studios “cracking down” on movie pirates, or music thieves. But how often does the average reader see anything about book piracy?
Before I was an author, I didn’t know book piracy existed. Sure, I knew there were places to “steal” movies, and TV, but it never occurred to me that there were people – or websites – stealing books. yet Piracy accounts for at least 12% of ebooks in the United States alone. I’d bet that there are plenty of other readers (and maybe even authors) as naive as I was, people who have no idea that downloading that “free” PDF of a novel is stealing. To raise awareness of the book piracy epidemic, Maegan Provan is organizing an Authors Against Piracy Blog Tour. Just like with any awareness drive, she needs bloggers, and authors, who want to participate and draw attention to the issue by posting blogs. And what better way for authors to get people’s attention than by offering free ebooks?
“Say what? How is giving away my book for free going to stop pirates?”
It’s not. You can’t *make* people stop, anymore than you can singlehandedly cure cancer, but you can show them that a legally obtained version is better – the formatting isn’t messed up, all of the chapters are there and, even better, there are no viruses and no surprises. Besides, the point of the “giveaway” isn’t to fill pirates’ kindles, it’s to get people to share the links to the blog posts, because the more people clicking on those posts, the more people are reading about the problem, and the more people reading, the more people that are made aware of the issue, and just maybe those people who are made aware of what an issue it really is will be less likely to pirate in the future, or more likely to tell a friend or loved one who’s pirating to stop. Just as with Breast Cancer Awareness pins – wearing a pin doesn’t cure the problem, it just makes people aware that it IS a serious issue; it gets the conversation started, and that’s what Maegan is trying to do.
Most authors at one time or another have dreamed of taking the writing world by storm with a breakout bestselling novel. I’m sure most of us still harbor hope this will happen. Regardless of sales or monetary success, we can still make a difference in the writing community. Whether you’re published or still writing your first novel, you can make a huge impact. Here’s how:
Make connections. I recently read an excellent blog post by Susan Toy that discusses online connections and engagement. When it comes to Twitter and blog followers, some people mistake quantity for quality. Would you rather have 100 followers who regularly visit and comment on your blog, or 1000 followers you never hear from again? A huge number of Twitter followers or Facebook Page likes might look good on paper, but what does it really mean if you aren’t making connections with people? Visit blogs and leave…
Wanted to take a minute and share this here in case there were any interested speculative fiction authors.
The Ink Slinger’s League is sponsoring a speculative fiction anthology in time for the holidays and we need your stories! If you write:
Horror
Paranormal
Sci-Fi
Fantasy
Or any mix of the genres, then we’d love to have a story from you.
To submit:
Mail your story(s) that are between 1,000 – 10,000 wordsto Joleene (at) JoleeneNaylor (dot) comby November 30th with a bio, author photo, website/twitter/facebook links, synopsis of at least one novel and buy links for that novel. It doesn’t matter if the story has been published before, so long as you have the rights to it. Stories do NOT need to have a holiday theme, though if you feel so inclined let the spirit move you. Authors may submit up to TWO stories for inclusion.
Stories can be adult subject matter, but shouldn’t be explicit erotica. If you’re not sure how explicit is too explicit, send your story and I’ll let you know.
You’ve edited your book and reuploaded it. Maybe there were a lot of typos, maybe you had some bad reviews, maybe it just needed a touch up. No matter the reason, the new version is sitting on Amazon’s servers, all shiny and new, and you wish you could let the people who’ve bought it know. After all, if they bought the old version and haven’t read it yet, when they finally get to it and leave their review, their criticisms may not even apply. Or it could be a nice “hey remember you downloaded me? You might want to read me now,” reminder to people who got your book in a flurry of free day promotions.
If Amazon judges the changes to be significant enough they may actually notify all your customers for you. But first you have to send them an email and let them know you want it done.
I used the “Contact Us” link at the bottom of my KDP dashboard page, and choose the “topic” of “Making Corrections”. Is this necessary? I have no idea. Then I wrote something like this:
Please fill in the following information:
ASIN or name of book: Shades of Gray / B002RHP5D6
I recently uploaded a second edition of Shades of Gray. Changes include rewriting multiple scenes, correcting information, changing conversations, for instance to better explain character’s motives, to explain how Katelina was able to recover after the fight at Claudius’ etc., and removing roughly 2,000 words (after all the additions). I would appreciate if you could make the new version available to past customers if possible.
Thanks
As I mentioned, the changes must be considered “significant” for them to notify customers, so you want to list them out. Obviously you don’t want to lie just to make it seem like a huge change so that people will get the notice, but you do want it to seem like they should be notified.
In a day or so you’ll get a reply like this:
Hello,
We received your request to provide updated content to customers who purchased your book. Thanks for providing specific details about the changes made. We’ll perform a review of the changes to determine the most appropriate way to describe the updates to your customers. This review will complete within four weeks, and the possible results of our review are listed below.
1. If the changes made to your content are considered critical, we’ll send an email to all customers who own the book to notify them of the update and improvements made. These customers will be able to choose to opt in to receive the update through the Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon.com. www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/manage
2. If the changes made to your content are considered minor, we won’t be able to notify all customers by email, but we will activate their ability to update the content through the Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon.com.
3. If the changes made to your content have caused unexpected critical issues with the book content, we’ll temporarily remove your book from sale. We’ll notify you of any issues found so you can fix them. Once the improvements are made, just let us know and we’ll then email customers as in case 1.
I hope this helps. Thanks for using Amazon KDP.
And then you wait. I honestly don’t know how significant your changes need to be for an email notice; I’ve never received one for any of the books on my kindle, however, I do know what it looks like to customers when there is simply an update available (aka the minor changes)
Have you ever requested that Amazon notify your customers of a new edition? What were the results? Do you know of a way to do this on Barnes and Noble or other retailers? Please share your experiences in the comments below.
UPDATE:
Thanks to a one-click buy mishap a year or two ago, I actually own a copy of my own book, and so since posting this I got the “Updated content” letter from Amazon.
Hello Joleene Naylor,
An updated version of your past Kindle purchase of Shades of Gray (Amaranthine) by Joleene Naylor is now available.
The updated version contains the following changes:
Significant editorial changes have been made.
You can receive the improved versions of all your books by opting in to receive book updates automatically. You can do this by going to Manage Your Kindle and clicking on the Manage Your Devices section. You will find the option labeled Automatic Book Update.
Alternatively, you can get the updated version of this book by going to Manage Your Kindle. Find the book in your Kindle Library, click on the “Update Available” link next to the book’s title, and then follow the update prompts. All your devices that have the eBook currently downloaded will be updated automatically the next time they connect to wireless.
We thank you for your business with Amazon.
Sincerely,
Customer Service Department Amazon.com
I visit a lot of blogs, and I subscribe to a lot of blogs, but one things stops me from subscribing; blogs with no email sign up. Sure, RSS feed is the future, but with several of the feed readers disappearing, maybe not so much. I know I’m not alone when I say I prefer blog notices to show up in my email, and for those of us who do Blogger has FINALLY made it easy for bloggers to add the option:
The video is a bit rushed because the program wouldn’t let me save one that was very long, but I think it shows the process.
Of course, if you have wordpress the subscribe by email has been in the widgets section for a long time.
Does your blog have a subscribe by email option? Why or why not?
I got an email from Amazon’s KDP today, and I’m sure I’m not alone. What are they “selling” this time? Called “Kindle Match Book“, the idea is that if you have a paperback version of your book (sold through Amazon – and yes, this includes Create Space books) you can choose to discount the kindle version of that book to readers who have already bought the hard copy. According to the FAQ you can even set the price to free. After KDP Select and it’s exclusivity clause I have been poking around to make sure that a similar thing wasn’t hiding in the Match Book program. So far there doesn’t seem to be any special clauses involved.
So what the heck, I gave it a try on some of my books. To enroll in it go to your kdp dashboard, pick your book, then skip to the second section, Rights and Pricing”, and it is now #9 in the setup option. According to the email it is not going “live” just yet. From the email:
By enrolling your book, you will be among the first to be able to take advantage of this new program. The Kindle MatchBook discount you select will not appear on Amazon.com until the program is fully launched in the coming weeks. We will notify you by e-mail as soon as your Kindle MatchBook discount is live. Your readers will soon have an easy and affordable way to read your book in both print and digital formats.
Is this a good thing? is it a bad thing? Can it do anything for your profits one way or the other? I don’t sell a lot of paperback copies, so I doubt it will make an ounce of difference to me. But what could it mean to you? Do you see a potential for lost profits (after all, some readers do buy both and are doing so at full price right now) or, as Amazon suggests, so you think you will sell more?
This may bring you a pop up. Depending on what you’ve been doing to your book, you may want a different option, but we want to save our changes so we don’t have to enter all the info again.
A little box with an orange swirly will pop up. depending on your connection speed it may sit there swirling for a long time, or a very short time. My net was running good tonight so it went fast.
When cover creator first opens it will have a “how to” splash screen that doesn’t really tell you much of anything. Feel free to click “don’t show me this again” and then click continue.
Now we have some more options. First we’re going to try browsing their gallery. I don’t really recommend doing this because if you’re using that image, who else is? But, we can take a look because those pictures are free and can always be a good cover placeholder until we get some cash or find a free image elsewhere.
You’ll get a pop up with photo categories. Browse through them and see if there’s something you like. I am going to choose Black and White.
This opens a selection of black and white photos. Let’s scroll through and find something creepy and/or mystical, shall we?
Once you’ve selected a picture, click on it. This will bring up an image overview and a bigger version. If you don’t want it after all, then click on the category name in the upper left to go back to the thumbnails. If you do like it, then click “use this image”.
The page beneath the pop up now loads with a bunch of design options. If you see one you like, feel free to “choose this design”
Personally, I am going to try uploading my own image now, so I am heading to the “choose new cover image” option.
This pops up the image screen we started with. This time I am going to select “upload my own image”. Note: Images should be .jpg or .tiff and should be between 1000 and 2500 on the longest side.
Click the cheery computer icon to get a browse dialog box. Navigate to the image you’d like to use and click open
You’ll get another orange circle that may take a long time to disappear, or may go away fast, depending on your connection speed.
Once it loads you’ll see we have those same design options again
This time we’re going to actually commit to this image and choose a design. Of course, you don’t have to. You can continue to upload and/or browse until you find something you like. Then, choose a design when you’re ready.
You’ll notice there are options that require no picture. If you choose one of these, you still get to edit the colors, text, and layout. Since those tools are EXACTLY the same as the cover with photos, I’m not going to do a separate section for that. You can use the following steps for either the image layouts or the non-image layouts.
Hover over the design of choice so that it says “Choose this design”, then click on it.
A new screen loads.
You’ll want to close the tool tip box by hitting the x. Remember that you can change designs at any time by choosing “Start Over” or change your image by choosing a new one.
KDP has automatically put the title in for us, including the “short” that I added, which in this case looks silly. So I am going to close it out (by hitting the x in the upper right corner of the cover creator), change the title and go back in. Half a tick.
Back.
I changed the title, but it made no difference, as the cover creator refused to update. Since I am not going to use this cover it doesn’t matter for me, but if you plan to use it, make SURE your title is the way you want it before you hit that cover creator button.
There are lots of things to edit here. Let’s start with the fonts.
You can either use the Font Tool, which lets you choose from pre-made “themes”:
OR you can hover directly over the text you want to edit:
And then click to get a box of options
Here we can change the font by clicking the arrow and choosing a new one
The size (including an auto fit option)
Change the color:
Make the words Bold, Italic and drop a shadow behind them (useful on lighter backgrounds)
And change the position (Justify, left align, center, right align)
As you may notice, I centered mine and changed the font and the size, but left it white.
Now you can do the same for the author (you can see an example of drop shadow on it) and if you have a subtitle (alas, I don’t).
What about those other buttons? Let’s play with the layout next.
When you click on it in the tools, you’ll get a string of layout options:
Click through them to see the differences. When you find one you like, click on the layout tool again to make the strip go away. Sadly, I like the original best, so I am sticking with it.
Now it’s time to play with colors, because that neon pink is terrible!
Click on the color tool and it gives us the option to choose colors individually, or to pick a premade color theme. To try different themes just scroll through and click on them:
Terrible, I know, so we’re going to choose the colors ourselves.
Click the color you want to change:
And get a pop up. Click on the teeny tiny squares to choose your color:
Repeat for the other colors.
After I got the colors changed, I decided to change the layout, too. Now, we can preview the cover by clicking the preview button:
The preview lets you see it in color, black and white, and in thumbnail. Switch between them by clicking the icons on the left.
If you’re happy with it, click the Save & Submit button. You’ll get a white screen that says you’re submitting your cover, and then be taken back to the edit project page. From there you can finish your publishing (see previous post) and submit your book.
Have you tried the KDP cover creator? If so, what did you think of it?
Go to http://kdp.amazon.com and sign in with the big yellow sign in button. You will want to use your amazon account for this, even if you have never used KDP before. I accidentally made a new account and now have two amazon accounts that use the same email address (originally they had the same password, too!) and it created quite a mess. Don’t make my mistake.
Once you’ve logged in you’ll be taken to your dashboard. Depending on whether you have books published or not, your may look slightly different. Click the yellow “Add New Title” button.
click for full size
This will open a new page. The first option you’re confronted with is whether or not to enroll your book in KDP select. There are a lot of divided opinions on this, and you should do some research before deciding, but the run down is that if you join KDP select your ebook must be available ONLY on Amazon for three months and in return you get some marketing “tools” including five days that you can set your book to “Free”. There’s a lot more to it, and a lot to consider such as whether you will lose sales from other channel (again, your ebook can only be on Amazon and no where else), and I’m not going to cover all of that here, or tell you which is better. It’s a personal decision and you should do what is best for you. If you want it, check mark the box. If you don’t then do NOT check mark the box.
click for full size
Scroll down and enter your book title. If your book is part of a series then check mark the series option, otherwise skip it. If you have an edition number (such as second edition) then fill it in, and if you have a publishing imprint put that under “Publisher”. I don’t, so I leave it blank.
The next option is your description, which you should have prepared. You can see the < p > in mine; this is HTML code that will make it skip a line. you can do some light html code in your description, such as bold or italics.
Scroll down and click the “Add Contributors” button
This will give you a pop up. Type in your author name and then use the drop down button to select “author”.
If you have other contributors to list then choose “Add Another”, otherwise click “Save”.
The contributors will now be listed on the page. make sure you’ve spelled them correctly, and then select the language your book is in by using the drop down box. English is default, so if it’s in English you can skip to publication date. I always leave this blank, as the publication date is whenever I publish it, but you can set it if you want to by clicking the calendar.
You’ll notice that the available days to click are today and BEFORE, not after, so this does NOT work to pre-publish or make your book available for pre-order. You can’t choose a day in the future.
Once you pick your day, be sure to drop a check mark in the “This is not a public domain work” (unless it is) and then click the “Add categories” button.
This will give you a pop up. Some categories have sub categories, for instance, under FICTION you can see that African-American has a plus sign. If we click that it will drop down with more choices such as general, christian, etc.
If you’re not sure what to classify it as then look around; go ahead and add as many as you want because you can remove them before you hit save. My particular book is Fiction>Fantasy>Paranormal. You can actually choose TWO final categories, but there isn’t another one that fits this book (I usually also file under Romance> Paranormal, but there’s not really any romance in this as it is a freebie of shorts), so I am only going to choose one. I recommend that if you can find two categories that fit to choose two. The more you have, the more lists your book will be in.
Choose them by check marking the box next to the final sub category. When you’ve got your list, use remove to whittle it down to two, if necessary, and then click save.
Your categories now appear above the button. Fill in up to seven key words that describe your book. For instance this is a collection of flash fiction “prologues” that take place the day before Heart of the Raven, my novel, takes place, so I used the series name (Amaranthine), Heart of the Raven (the novel title), short, flash-fiction (because that’s what it is), vampires and paranormal (because it’s about vampires) and add free because it is free on the other channels, so Amazon should make it free too (I will cover this later).
Now it’s time to add our cover. You have two options: Browse for your cover or use a cover creator (currently in beta). I will “cover” the cover creator in another post (ha ha!) so fir the point of this we’re going to upload our cover.
Clicking browse will open a dialog box where you can navigate to the image saved on your computer. It MUST be a .jpg or a .tiff (these are file extensions) and should be between 1000 and 2500 pixels on the longest side.
In this box click browse again to get a pop up and navigate through your files. Select the cover file and click open
Once it has the file path in the text box, hit the upload button
When it finishes you will see a thumbnail view of the cover. It will look pretty rough – this is NOT what your “official” cover thumbnail will look like, but rather a rough version so that you can make sure you’ve uploaded the right picture. The final thumbnail will be smoother.
If it looks good, hit the x in the upper right corner.
Now it’s time to upload your book and choose whether you want DRM enabled. DRM means Digital Rights Management, and is something that amazon will put in the “code” of your book to keep people from pirating, think of the old VCR tapes that used to turn the movie a rainbow color if you tried to tape them to a second tape, or DVDs that won;t copy if you try to rip them. DRM is a hot button issue, some people feel it is a waste and only makes it harder for consumers and others think it is a great idea. You will have to choose what is right for you.
Once you do, use the browse button to find your book file, the same way that you found your cover. It should be a .doc file.
After it uploads, you’ll get a little box that says:
This may take a few moments. If you have completed all required fields above, click “Save and Continue” to move forward while conversion continues.
However, I just stay there until it’s done.
When it is finished converting you will get a screen saying that it was successful, and you may get “suggested” spelling errors.
Click “view them” and a pop up will show them to you, then you can decide if they are really typos or not:
After a double check, I have determined that Hikaru is the correct spelling of his name, and free online dictionary states that “woosh” is a valid form of “whoosh”, so, for good or bad, I am going to leave them by clicking “Ignore All” (please no comments on whether you agree or disagree about woosh/whoosh). However, if you have errors you want or need to change, then you shouldn’t do that. If there’s a lot you might want to mail them to yourself, and if there are only a few then just leave the screen up, open your document and use the “find” feature of your word processing program to find and then fix them. Once you’re done, close the pop up out with the x in the upper right corner of it and reupload.
Now we’re ready to preview the book. You can either use the online previewer, or you can download and install a previewer application. I am just going to use the online feature.
The preview will pop up. Because I have been doing this for so long (taking screen caps and hopping back and forth) I had to sign in again. If you’ve taken a long time setting up, you may, too.
The previewer “looks” like a Kindle:
You can scroll through the pages and make sure they look the way you want. This is where some authors (Ruth Ann Nordin, for example) read through the whole book. I am going to admit that I don’t because by the publishing stage I have usually read it thirty times or more, and have it memorized anyway. But at the very least you should check your chapter headings and endings and your opening pages to make sure there are no strange page breaks or weird formatting.
You can use the drop down box to select different devices, such as the paper white, etc.
It’s up to you how thorough you want to be. But, when you’re finished, choose Back to Book details in the upper left of the screen. you can then upload a new version if you need to and preview again, etc. I am happy with mine, so we’re moving on.
At the bottom of the book setup page select Save and Continue to go to the next page of steps.
Now it’s time to tell Amazon where you have the rights to publish this book. If it’s yours and has never been published by another publisher, then you have worldwide rights. Mark that dot and move on. But, if your book has been published previously by a publisher, you may not have all the rights, as your publisher may still own some of them. For instance a book published through a small press in the United States may have had rights for the UK and US in the contract but not for India or other countries, in which case you would select the second option and then choose only those countries that that publisher does not have rights for. If you’re unsure, you may need to speak to your previous publisher and/or a lawyer.
My book has never been published by anyone else, so I am picking the easy option.
Now we’re going to choose our royalty – 35% or 70%. As with the other big choices, the decision depends on what is right for you. If your book will be priced below 2.99 (mine will) you have to choose the 35% option, but if it will be priced $2.99 or higher you can go for the 70% option. I will say that I have chosen 70% for those books I have published that cost more than $2.99, but the choice is yours.
In this case I have to go 35%. So I will check mark it and I will put in the price.
I just check mark the “set price automatically” feature for all the other channels, but you can set them individually if you want.
Now it’s time to decide if you want Kindle lending or not (this allows someone who has bought your book to loan it to anther person’s kindle once). If you opted for 70% royalties this will be grayed out.
Make sure to check mark that you are confirming all rights, then hit Save and Publish.
A pop up let’s you know that it’s being published and that’s it – time to go back to your dashboard and wait until you get your “congratulations” email.
But wait. Didn’t I say that I wanted this book to be free? Why did I then set the price to $.99?
Because Amazon won’t let you choose free as an option. What you have to do is use a price match. In other words, that book has to be on another retailer’s site for free. At the moment, that book is on Smashwords, B&N, and others for the low, low price of nothing. Now, I can wait until Amazon notices it and sends me that nasty little “Tut, tut,” email (which might take days) or I can speed things along by “reporting it” myself.
But, I need to wait until it’s published. I doubt you want to stare at this spot for twelve hours, so I am going to use my magic wand to fast forward time.
BLING!
And look at that! The book is published! For some reason they have done something odd and linked it to Heart of the Raven the novel, but I’ll suss that out with an email later. In the meantime, let’s report that price.
Go to your book’s page and scroll down to the Product Details and click on “tell us about a lower price”.
Now you’ll get a little pop up. Click the mark next to “website”.
the box will expand with an area to paste a link into. At this point you need the link from the lower listing page – i am going to use Smashwords. Enter the url, the price (in this case 0) and the date, I dropped it back to August 1st but you don’t need to. Then click Submit Feedback.
It will then say “Thank you for your feedback” and give you a “close window” button – and that’s it. Now we just wait for Amazon to get it and say “tut-tut”.
If you set a book free via price match and later want to charge for it, can you get it switched back? I assume so, but I have never tried it, so if someone with more experience wants to chime in in the comments, that would be great!
I’ve gone back and forth about doing this post because, while so many authors use twitter, it isn’t integral to the publishing business. But, after having to explain how to set wallpaper to yet another person via email, I decided there was a need for it.
(Click on any of the images to make them bigger)
How to use Themeleon
Near the upper right corner of your profile is a little gear icon. Click it and a drop down box will appear that allows you to access several things. The only thing we’re worried about is the settings option.
A new screen will load and you’ll want to click on “design” in the left hand pane. This will change the options on the right side, and you’ll be greeted by several default thumbnails. If you want, you can use any one of these, or you can try the interesting plugin called Themeleon.
A new page will load that will look something like this. There’s a dialog box that you have to scroll down in order to see
Scroll down and click the sign In button
You’ll have a new pop up asking you to authorize Colourlovers to “use” your account, meaning the app can change things like your wallpaper etc. If you don’t like apps cancel out now and scroll down to the next option (How to upload your Own Wallpaper). If you do like apps then go ahead and click authorize app. (I have used Themeleon for about a year now and never had any issues such as it hijacking my twitter.)
You may or may not have to sign in again (I did, but this may be because I took so long taking screen caps etc.) But you will eventually come to your profile editing screen.
At the top are some pre-made themes (more on those in a moment) and in the second half of the toolbox are the “make your own theme” tools. As you can see it starts with a background pattern, which you can scroll through.
What’s the difference between the pre-made and the DIY? Unlike the do it yourself set, the theme’s wallpaper tends to be a single large image, like more traditional wallpaper, instead of a tiled pattern. You can also upload your own image, if you prefer, but it’s easier to do that through twitter itself.
As you’ll notice when you click on the themes you get a preview, not only in the toolbox, but if you scroll down your profile also “tries it on” so you can see how it’s going to look.
If you’d rather start from a pattern, go down to the background option. There’s a drop down box with choices but I’ve never bothered with it and usually just scroll through the available backgrounds by using that little arrow button we mentioned earlier.
Don’t let the colors fool you – you can completely change them. For instance you can see that the pattern above looks very tropical, but with a few color swaps it now looks… well, the colors are different, anyway. How did I do that? Underneath the pattern preview are colored boxes, each representing a color in the pattern. Click the color you’d like to change and you’ll get a snazzy pop up. Move the circle around on the color chart, as well as the sliders, to change the color to something you like better.
As you can see, sometimes changing the colors can make a big difference in what the pattern looks like:
Once you have a pattern you like, it’s time to tweak your layout. There are several pre-created palettes you can choose from by using the arrow key. The colors you are choosing now change the color of your links, such as where it says “Following, Followers” etc. as well as links in your twitter stream.
if you don’t like the pre-made palettes you can make your own. Click on the colored squares to get a pop up color picker. Move the circle and the sliders until you find the colors you want.
When you have it the way you want, click the “Save Profile” button
You’ll get a pop up trying to encourage you to add more things, but just click the “I’m all Creatived out” button to skip it.
And now bask in the glory of your new profile!
How to Upload your Own Wallpaper
if you have your own wallpaper – maybe it’s your book cover, or your characters, or just a snazzy photo – then it is really easy to upload it to twitter.
You’ll need to go back to Settings > Design like we did previously, then click the “Change Background” dropdown and select “Choose existing Image”
You’ll get a pop up. Navigate to the folder that your wallpaper is saved in, click on it and choose open. Jpegs work better than pngs.
If the wallpaper file is “acceptable” the words under the “Change background” button will reflect the file name. Then it’s time to set where the wallpaper goes. you can have it left aligned – meaning it is “sticky” on the left side, so that the left side of the image will always be on the left side of the screen – centered, and right aligned (which does the same as the left but on the right). You can also choose whether to tile your image or not – play around with the options until you become familiar with the differences. Though unlike themeleon, your profile will NOT reflect changes until you save it.
As with Themeleon, you can change your link colors and your background color. Click on the colors to get the pop up color picker. When you’re done, hit “Save Changes”.
and check out your new profile!
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How to Change Your Twitter Banner
On your profile page click the Edit Profile button that is just below your “banner area” – if you have no image here it will be a black-ish box.
Hover over it and a little pencil will appear in the top right corner. Click on it.
A little box will pop up that lets you upload a photo, remove your photo or cancel. We want to upload.
You’ll get another pop up. Navigate to your banner image and choose “open”.
You’ll get a “preview” with a slider underneath it. You can use the slider to zoom in and out of the image. Once you have it the way you want, click “Apply”
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How to Edit Your Profile Information
While we’re there, let’s edit our profile information. If you’re starting here, then click on the “Edit Profile” button underneath your banner image.
Your profile information is highlighted in black. To edit it, just highlight what you’d like to change. I’m going to change the About.me link:
And then I am going to just type in my wordpress address, like you would in a document. If you’re finished click “save changes”
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How to Change Your Profile Photo
While we’re there, let’s edit our profile photo. If you’re starting here, then click on the “Edit Profile” button underneath your banner image.
If you hover over your photo you’ll get a little pencil in the top right corner. Click it.
A little menu will pop down with the choices to upload a photo, take a photo, remove photo or cancel. For this tutorial we want to upload, though if you have a webcam and a good hair day you might try the “take photo” option and let me know how it goes.
Clicking upload gets you a pop up box. Use it to navigate to your photo and click open.
A new box pops up that has your photo of choice with a slider bar underneath. You can drag it to zoom in closer to the image, essentially cropping it down. When you have what you want, hit apply.
If you’re all finished make sure to hit the Save Changes button.
And that’s it!
Bask in the beauty of your new twitter profile! and, if you’re feeling especially inspired, add me (@Joleene_Naylor) and say “hey, come look at my cool profile!”
In 2008 I used to have a lot of time to randomly search the internet; to click on links, read blog posts, and generally fill my head to bursting with all sorts of interesting tidbits. One gem I stumbled across was that a castle was going to be built roughly an hour away from us, using medieval building methods. Tourists would be able to visit the site, do various activities, and, though transported to a different time, snap hundreds of photos. I marked it down as something I wanted to do when they finally got around to making it a reality, and clicked on.
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