Hello, World!
Hello, World!
Welcome to my blog for nonfiction and memoir authors.
I’ll be sharing tips, resources, and information useful to published authors, those dreaming of writing their first nonfiction book, and writers at every stage in between. The emphasis will be educational, with a focus on solid, useful, actionable learning. Please take a moment to subscribe so you don’t miss any posts.
Who am I?
If you want the “official” synopsis of who I am, here’s the bio on my media page:
Jenny Lisk is an award-winning author, podcast host, and consultant who specializes in working with authors of memoirs, business books, and other nonfiction books. She believes in the power of nonfiction books - and their authors - to change the world. Jenny spent the first two decades of her career leading transformation projects on five continents for IBM. She is a certified PMI Project Management Professional and a certified Professional Scrum Master, and she holds an MBA in marketing from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business in addition to multiple certifications in digital marketing.
What else?
In addition to working with nonfiction and memoir authors on professional self-publishing, marketing, and websites, I’m a nonfiction and memoir author myself. My books are in the grief space; I host a podcast for widowed parents, too.
As an author, I’m out there writing, publishing, and marketing, just like you are. I pitch myself to podcasts, send emails, develop relationships with fellow authors, and so much more. It’s important to me to be actively engaged as an author, just like my clients are, building an audience, trying things out, and practicing literary citizenship.
Today’s learning
Here’s today’s educational content: the new “Crash Course for Nonfiction Authors” that I’ve just added to my site. It’s free, and it’s not behind an email signup.
Jump directly to any of the 6 parts here:
Why I titled this post “Hello, World!”
I chose “Hello, World!” as the title for this post because I’ve been thinking back to the mid-90s lately. (A “hello world” program is a simple computer program that outputs the text, “hello world;” its use harkens back to the early days of computer programming.)
I’ve been working on some exciting client websites lately, plus updating my own three sites, and it’s taking me back to that period around 1994-96 when I had a little (and I do mean tiny) consulting business creating websites for local organizations here in the Seattle area.
These were the early days of the internet when you had to code all your HTML by hand. I remember spending hours in Barnes & Noble, pouring over several-inch-thick books about website creation. Some of them were in the Dummies series. Many were more technical. All seemed to come with CD-ROMS in the back containing useful tools that weren’t easy to find elsewhere. I recall these books being quite expensive, so I’d pull a bunch off the shelf and sit there for hours trying to figure out which looked the most promising.
Website creation has come a long way since then. Every time I integrate forms for email list signups on a client’s website, add a YouTube video, or add social sharing links — all things that didn’t exist in the mid-90s — I marvel at what’s possible today.
One more thing
If you’re wondering what that odd-looking text in the image on this post means: It’s HTML, and it puts a great big heading that says “Hello, World!” on a webpage.
So: Hello! I’m glad you’re here. Stick around for useful content, and let me know if I can help you with your nonfiction book or your memoir.
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