Getting Around Flickr

This is the seventh in a series on Social Media.

Flickr is the the largest of the online photo sharing communities. It boasts 11 million regular members, 30 million monthly visitors, and over 1 billion photos. There are also Flickr groups for almost anything you can imagine.

When you set up your account, uploading images requires only three steps.

1. Choose the images you want to upload.
2. Click the upload button.
3. Give each image a title, a description, and popular tags.

Even easier than that is the "Flickr Uploader," which you can download to your desktop. To upload a photo, just drag and drop it into the icon. In addition to ease of uploading, Flickr gives you great exposure with search engines when you use keywords in your tags, file names, and image descriptions. If you click on an image you will see more information about it, such as tags and descriptions; when you click on a tag, you will see all of the other images on your site with the same tag. That's why it's a good idea to fill in this information as you upload each image. Just as you would develop a marketing strategy for LinkedIn or your Facebook page, you should establish one for Flickr.

Clients and viewers can find you through your images. You can share your photos with the public (who can post comments) or limit them to your friends; you can also keep them private. Fickr allows you to organize and link to your photos, separate them into galleries or sets (collections of related images), and export them into your blog and Website.

Flickr is a powerful tool and well worth the time it takes to explore its many tools.

The Fifth Edition: Five Times Tougher Than the First

The good news is that my little book, How to Write a Nonfiction Book: From Concept to Completion in 6 Months, is selling on Amazon and my website. The other day I counted my remaining copies and realized it is time to start thinking about the next edition. That’s about all it took; I haven’t thought about anything else since then. The seed was planted.

So, I packed up my new MacBook and went off to my latest dog-sitting gig, full of ideas for what I might add to the content. It seems the longer I teach, the more I realize how much I have to learn. The article sites I contribute to are goldmines of information, new perspectives, and advice on how to get from your first book-thought to your first book-signing. I read other people’s wisdom and find myself newly inspired. There is so much to share with aspiring authors who buy my book or sit in my classes.

Every time I revise what was once a pretty thin eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch workbook that focused primarily on how to write a book proposal, I add more to the other key aspects of writing, publishing, and promoting a nonfiction book. There are so many good books and so many experts, it’s a bit intimidating to publish what I want to say. Yes, it’s true; even veteran writers feel that way!

The first questions I ask myself are what do authors want to know? What are my students, clients, and book buyers asking me, and have I answered their questions in this book? I look for gaps in the text, and I find them. Why do I have to write a proposal? Do I need an agent? How do I find one? What should I send to a publisher? What is involved in writing a memoir? What’s the difference between POD publishing and self-publishing? And on and on.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a member of my writers’ group with her query letter to a publisher attached. “What do you think?” she wanted to know. “Let me get my thoughts together,” I wrote back and immediately set off on a research and writing journey that culminated in an article, as well as a new section for my book. This was undoubtedly much more than she ever wanted to know; but, when I tried to answer her question, I realized I didn’t really know enough about book query letters to do so.

The first edition of my little book was easy as pie to write; the second a little more difficult; and so on. It has taken me five editions to realize that the best way to learn about your subject is to write about it. I am dedicating this book — if I ever finish it — to my writers group, students, clients, and book buyers. Thank you all for continuing to ask questions I can’t answer without some serious thought.