Nancy Hendrickson

For self-published authors who wanted to get their work in front of Amazon’s massive traffic, putting their work on the Kindle platform seemed like a no-brainer.

At the beginning of 2009, almost anyone with a U.S. bank account and an article or book in digital format could publish to Kindle—including the bad, the good, and the ugly.   The Kindle was like a lawless frontier boomtown  – - anything goes.

All through the spring months of 2009, I encouraged entrepreneurs and small business owners to write a great article or book and get it on Kindle; after all, having your work on Amazon IS a credibility builder in any business. Sadly, some of those people did publish, but the quality of their work was  . . . . shall I say . . . . crap.

In the end, Amazon brought a sheriff to town and the wide open field of “publish anything” came to an end.

MSNBC had an interesting article on the use of less-than-perfect grammar for Web copywriting.  The trick, the article says is "balancing proper grammar with a conversational tone." Since consumers need to relate to your message, write in the same conversational tone you’d use if you were hanging out at Starbucks with your ideal customer. What grammar rules can you break?

• Contractions.  When’s the last time you said "I had" instead of "I’d"?  1957?
• Dangling prepositions. "You’re going to feel like a pro when you put this on."
• Slang words (if appropriate to your audience). Sheesh, what would my English prof say?
• Sentence fragments. "Got milk?" *Don’t forget, web readers SKIM.  Short sentences are good.
• One-sentence paragraphs.  "See above"

Tina Nocera, founder of the Parental Wisdom blog, and the author of Because Kids Don’t Come With Manuals: Contemporary Advice for Parents, recently shared her experience of using her blog to promote her book.  

NH: Why did you start blogging?

TN: Interestingly, the book is a conversation on parenting; something I mention in the introduction. A blog seemed like a natural progression to continue that conversation and have a more interactive discussion with parents on current issues.