Welcome to the April 15, 2013 edition of tips and tricks for writers and authors. We’ve got a great mix of book marketing and writing tips this week. We hope they’ll help you on your writing and publishing journey. Thank you to all of the contributors!

Book Marketing:

Sarah Bolme presents Are You Phone Smart? posted at Marketing Christian Books.

Kimberley Grabas presents 11 Author Website Must Have Elements posted at Your Writer Platform, saying, “An author website has a lofty goal: it needs to not just be, but also needs to perform and respond. No longer just a fancy, static, online business card, it is an author’s ‘homebase,’ a marketing and networking hub and a portal that allows communication to flow between an author and his or her readers. And website visits can translate directly into books sold…”

Rich Page presents The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization posted at Rich Page: Website Optimizer, saying, “Any author who has a website that sells their own books will find this useful to sell more! :)”

Phyllis Zimbler Miller presents Subtitles on Fiction Books posted at Phyllis Zimbler Miller, saying, “What’s important about a subtitle on a fiction book?”

Writing:

Angela Greenfield presents Choosing Fictional Character Names – BecomingAWriterBlog.com posted at BecomingAWriterBlog.com, saying, “Handling the complex task of choosing fictional character names.”

Jessica Clark presents The Big List of Different Types of Poems posted at Kenney Myers, saying, “There’s definitely more to poetry than the rhyming sentiments in greeting cards, though many of those verses do adhere to one of these style forms.”

Chrys Fey presents Five Tips To Spice Up Your Writing posted at Write With Fey, saying, “You can spice up your writing the normal way with clever similes and metaphors, interesting words, and neat adjectives, or you can do it the extraordinary way.”

David Leonhardt presents Wreck-It Ralph and Character Jobs, Part I posted at A Ghost Writers Blog, saying, “It is hard to separate people from their jobs, because one of the first questions we ask is, “What do you do?” Why would your characters, including in nonfiction, be any different?”

Kendra L. Saunders presents Got Inspiration? Five Inspirational Writing Tips That No One’s Told You | Nerd Caliber posted at Nerd Caliber, saying, “I got a lot of great comments from people who read this article and said it helped them. It’s also drawn from my popular writing panel “The 5-Headed Muse.””

Phil Byrne presents How To Blog When Busy posted at Phil Byrne.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of tips and tricks for writers and authors using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.