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100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media — great overview of how to use the various social media sites to promote yourself. Password management is key here, since you could be signing up for a dozen services or more. Make a spreadsheet! (via our colleague, Jeremy Tolbert) ✽

How to Make the Worst Website — featuring lots of the things we tell you not to do. Here’s one thing you can do today: if you have a splash page on your site (the kind that shows a big image and says “Enter here”), take it down. Let visitors get to the real home page immediately. ✽

Book Launch 2.0 — hilarious video! Are you familiar with all the sites mentioned? (via JKS Communications) ✽

Before Hiring a Web Developer or Designer — These are four very good questions to ask. “The differences in website quality out there are almost unbelievable, yet from the surface, the part you see, they are equally imperceptible.” ✽

JacketFlap — social networking for children’s and YA authors and illustrators ✽

17 Tips For Getting Bloggers To Write About You ✽

Agent Rachel Vater has just posted a long, informative discussion on websites for authors, both published and unpublished. She is absolutely correct. Bookmark this post! (UPDATE: She has a follow-up, answering many of the questions that came up in the comments.) ✽

Typetester is a handy tool that lets you compare fonts and see how they’ll look on screen. Its drop-down menus let you know which fonts are standard on PCs and Macs, but you can also compare other fonts from your own collection. CSS Type Set is similar tool that generates CSS for you once you’ve made your selections. ✽

Building a website? Ask yourself these questions first. ✽

How should authors use MySpace? We’ve rounded up several opinions, some contradictory:

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News on author websites, blogging, and book promotion

How to Promote Your Book If You’re Introverted, Socially Inept… (via Smart Bitches ✽

GoDaddy, the domain registrar we often use, has a $1.99 special right now. The trick to registering with GoDaddy is to ignore all the extra junk they try to sell you after you start the checkout process. Look for links or buttons that say “No, thanks” or “Continue with checkout.” Caveat: if you don’t have a PO Box and you don’t want your address and phone number becoming public, you might want to add private registration. ✽

Overwhelmed by online social networks? Unclutter! ✽

Evite Alternatives (via Kat Richardson) ✽

Agent Colleen Lindsay is running a great series on book promotion on her blog. ✽

While we were on vacation last week, agent Nathan Bransford wrote a couple of great posts on author websites and how authors’ blogs influence book sales. There’s some great info in the comments, although there’s also some misinformation about technical issues. (Feel free to ask us about those!) ✽

In the early 21st century, which comes first: the book or the blog? ✽

What makes a good blog? ✽

Text Prefs — a U.K. design firm is conducting a survey on how people like to read onscreen text. Tell them how you like it! They’ve promised to publish the findings so we can all do better at designing things people read. ✽

How to work with a designer and a publicist. ✽

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