As many of you know I was in England for 18 months. You may also know it was not a nice time except in small amounts. I struggled a lot, my mental health hit rock bottom several times and it wasn’t nice. One day I will write the story of my time in England.
One of the things I missed the most during my unwanted downtime, was posting blogs for my business, chatting to my clients and friends and sharing all your posts…especially those I thought would be interesting to others.
I finally came back to New Zealand and it has taken me a month to sort myself out – my mental health – and start anew with sharing posts. I must admit I was a bit disappointed. I’m not sure if it was with WordPress or if individual websites unfollowed my site. The reason I know is that I found myself re-following many sites I was still getting emails from. This caused issues with reblogging various posts, meaning it tool longer.
Ok, I do understand in some ways why my website was unfollowed…lack of content and new blogs, lack of shares. However, I don’t recall anyone trying to find out what happened to me or my website. Perhaps I am overreacting…I blame my mental health issues.
Please note though. I will always follow you, even if you’re quiet. In fact, I way well send you a message to find out how you are and if you’re ok. You are all important to me and my company. Without you…I can’t move forward. I can’t promote and I can’t share.
Please think before you unfollow someone. You could save a life.
Yes I know there are tutorial for WordPress about how to use and improve your websites & blogs (especially for beginners. The tutorials are brilliant and informative. It is a great place to start your journey. Here is a tutorial link to various things you may want to learn
However. I keep getting asked how to do various things on wordpress, or I assist where I can depending on what I know. Like everyone else I am still learning due to technology changing and updating.
This post is about Share Tabs…How I sorted mine out prior to knowing about wpbeginner.
SHARE TABS
Everything you do on your wordpress site starts with your HOME PAGE – Whatever name you call it. Mine is PACKAGES. This is also called your LANDING PAGE so it needs to be impressive.
Up on the top left hand side you can see the words MY SITES. Click on this and it will open a panel on the left side as shown below.
This is what you will find. Here you can check your Stats, look over your Site Pages, Customize and so much more.
Scroll down to the bottom of this bar and you will find WP ADMIN. Click on this and it will take you to another page. Also note on the main page you can see all my share tabs for viewers to use.
This time you will find yourself on your DASHBOARD – Behind the scenes of your website where only you and those you give permission to can visit. Once you get to this page, you can do all the different things you wish to show on your website. Trial and error is part of the learning curve.
Click on SETTINGS and a new small black box will appear.
This time we want SHARING so we can sort out the tab we wish to make available to our visitors.
The next three slides show you what is available to use and how to move the tabs so they show up where you wish them too. Drag and drop, choose the style and choose where you wish them to show
DON’T FORGET THE REBLOG TAB. THIS IS HOW YOU CAN EXTEND YOUR REACH AND GET MORE FOLLOWERS.
IF YOU WISH ANY OTHER QUICK TUTORIALS TELL ME WHICH ONES AND I’LL GIVE IT A GO.
WE all know I don’t like Createspace anymore due to their Customer Service debacle and how they treat their customers. They are so not with it. I’m glad to get out now rather than when they close their business down for good…To me this is what it looks like and I’ll tell you why.
I have worked in several businesses which have closed down and slowly but surely they get rid of things they no longer need. If your observant enough…you notice and it makes you wonder. Are they closing? Is this why customer service is so bad? Do they really want to work with Indie Authors or are they just money hungry and we’re not bring in enough profit for them anymore?
If I follow my instinct the first thing Amazon rolled out was print on KDP! Why did they do this? Createspace was excellent at the time and I loved using their website. From authors around the world I heard scathing comments about KDP Print and how bad they were, rejecting book covers continually. One author had her cover rejected 37 times where as on Createspace it was accepted straight away. I decided to stay away. I hated the thought of even trying to use them at that stage.
Then suddenly I was having issues with Createspace. Their customer service was all over the place, moving from one to another person, not reading emails, getting things wrong…totally incompetent. In my company they would be reprimanded and given training to upgrade their skill set. Then it was the turn of the ordering area of Createspace. Books disappearing, Tracking number telling authors their books were going somewhere else. They couldn’t even tell the difference between the Northern and Southern hemisphere. Astounding mess. Though this one incident had a happy conclusion in the end nearly five months later. I know for a fact this author won’t order though Createspace again.
Next it ws Copyright Permission. Their policies stated you’re only allowed to upload documents you own or have copyright permission of. Yes there have been a hell of a lot of stolen manuscripts out there, however there are many ways this is done and most have nothing to do with Createspace. So here they are demanding proof…Something new they’d never asked before. If you know your business law (mine was New Zealand) then you can’t share private and confidential information with another party without permission from the person it involves. I never have and never will share contracts, emails or anything else without permission. Saying no to Createspace turned them into …well i’m not sure what. On top of this the book was published as an ebook and is for sale on Amazon, but they wouldn’t publish the paperback. Guess who went to LULU. They’ve been excellent by the way.
What else can happen? Oh yes PERMA FREE. Due to all the fuss I stopped uploading to KDP and started to use Pronoun – who we all know closed this month. With Pronoun you could make a book FREE and no problems. I wish they hadn’t closed. Then Draft to Digital had distribution rights to send to Amazon, however, in their deal you couldn’t mark a book as FREE. So I did the usual request and the second time they said no because it wasn’t uploaded to KDP only distributed. (They accepted the first…meaning they can’t even get this right) They told me to contact D2D and get them to send a request. I’m sure this is more work which D2D don’t really want! Much to my joy they did so but, I can still see a price on it on Amazon. Though this could be me having a New Zealand Account.
Now the reason for this blog. Createspace are no longer going to be offering professional services to authors. They don’t wish to work one on one with you. No Book Cover Design, No Marketing and No Editing (I didn’t know they offered Editing.) This info comes from a friend I sometimes work with. The original blog was from Book Baby who like me offer all the service to Indie Authors. They found the information in a newspaper in the USA/
ARE THEY CLOSING DOWN? WHAT DO YOU THINK?
If you do need services for Editing, Cover Design, Formatting and some Marketing (I’m looking at taking a course in Marketing this year) Then please consider using Plaisted Publishing House. We love working one on one.
