1. my agent, Steve, has bought the domain names of www.floppythemonster.com and www.floppythemonster.co.uk.
This was not par hasard... I've been reading 'Plug Your Book' by Steve Weber (on my spanky new sunbed, in the sun, with either a cuppa or glass of chilled rosé to hand depending on the time of day) and it's got a ton of good suggestions. It set me thinking about a Floppy website so I checked the availability of .com and it was free. I contacted Steve and he bought up both .com and .co.uk.
All I have to do now is decide what to put on it! To get an idea, I went and had a look at the tip top Gruffalo website. You can't really get any more comprehensive than that! Quite scary really, and a Lot of Work. Good thing I've got a boy-free July coming up.
Not only do we have domain names, but our illustrator, Sybil Harris is doing a brilliant job with her illustrations. This is terribly important as you can imagine. As soon as I can (am allowed...) I'll post up a piccie of Floppy the Monster. Sybil has really managed to capture the spirit of Floppy and Emily and her images make me smile, they're so charming and funny.
Other Floppy news is that it's being translated into American English. HAHAHA I find that terribly funny for some silly reason.
2. I just checked my Technorati ranking and St Bloggie de Riviere is there at authority 119, number 38,743 out of over a million (1,187,727). The top authority is 961 (not 1 as you might expect), which is The Huffington Post. If you want to have your blog ranked and followed on Technorati, all you have to do is sign up. If you would like to understand what Technorati authority is all about, read this article which reveals all! It's something to do with 'standing' and 'influence'.
I'm excited by this because it's actually pretty high. I mean, there are 1,148,984 blogs behind mine. So like, WOW! I'm sure Steve Weber would approve. It's a step in the right direction at least.
If you have written a book, I would strongly recommend reading Steve Weber's book on plugging it. His advice works for self-published books as well as published ones. It seems now that even if your book is accepted by a publisher, he will not set about plugging it much unless you're a Big Name. It's up to you. Luckily there's a lot you can do thanks to the internet. Steve has a website too where he updates his advice with the latest news.
I'm off to subscribe to the website. (Why do I keep thinking it's Tuesday?)