Features

Articles, how-to’s, opinion and tips and tricks in the self-publishing arena

Sharing Without Reading – How Authors Can Find Readers For Their Online Content

interwebWe’re faced with a huge social pressure of being ‘engaged online’ to sell our books as self-publishers, but is our carefully-crafted content being absorbed?

As authors are encouraged to guest blog, interview, and post on all possible outlets online, is this just throwing it all at the wall when the evidence shows people share to look cool, erudite, and popular, rather that sharing what they have read?

In a world where “RIP *insert really ancient and intriguingly cool famous person’s name I never heard of before today here*” is a way to make your Facebook page pop, and picture quotes […]

2020-02-21T06:49:19+02:00May 13th, 2015|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: , |

Seven Reasons Why you Shouldn’t Ask Your Book Editor To Sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement

NDA booksChoosing a book editor should be based on whether the editor is a sound and clean worker with knowledge and experience in the language you have written in, using curated or affiliated professionals (I’m with the EFA and listed on Blurb, Reedsy, and ALLi – I think these are good places to start). Despite this transparency in my trade, there seems to be a new wave of paranoia. I keep being asked to sign NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) to edit your books. An an editor, I’m not happy about this. Why? Well, here are seven reasons.

1.  Amateurs are starting fires […]

2015-05-07T03:32:37+02:00May 5th, 2015|Categories: Features|

Amazon’s Age Restrictions, Look Inside, And All These Pesky X-Rated Titles

I made a pretty shocking discovery on Amazon the other day.

Anyone, including your kid, can use the Look Inside feature, without logging in, to access books containing violent rape, incest, animal torture, pornographic scenes, erotica, terrorism, and murder.

Your kid doesn’t even need an account to read the first 10% of any book on Amazon. Here’s my (fictional) 9-year-old kid, looking at Amazon (not logged into an account), curiously typing in the word “porn”:

Screen Shot 2015-04-18 at 12.17.32

Now let’s see what happens if he or she clicks “Look Inside” – Oh, great! They can read the book! Not logged in, not trying […]

2015-04-20T07:40:35+02:00April 20th, 2015|Categories: Features|Tags: |

How to Write a Book Blurb

FSOG Back CoverBy far, the weakest part of many self-published books is the synopsis found on Amazon and elsewhere. Worse than the cover, worse than the writing in the book itself, there are a lot of blurbs on Amazon that are pretty near atrocious. I include my own books in this category. Writing a decent blurb is an artform totally separate from writing a book.

Authors are also on record saying this is their least favorite part of the process. It can make you feel icky writing superlatives about your own book. At the same time, too many superlatives can literally be […]

2015-04-13T13:05:43+02:00April 13th, 2015|Categories: Features, Resources|

Why Clean Reader Doesn’t Matter

Unpopular, minority opinion: Clean Reader doesn’t matter. In brief: an app called Clean Reader aimed to remove swear words from books, replacing then with freaking and crap, etc. Cue the outrage of authors who claimed this as censorship. Smashwords and others then removed titles from the app.

To begin, I write books with profanity. I’ve had a number of reviews calling out the profanity, some saying I use it “every other word” (I don’t). My writing never struck me as all that profane, but the profanity had a purpose. Bad words are just words, an arrangement of letters. There’s […]

2015-03-30T08:44:05+02:00March 30th, 2015|Categories: Features|

Being an Indie Author [AUDIO]

I’m an indie author and shortly after I self-published my first novel, Inside the Outside, I wrote my first article for Self-Publishing Review, which was called “A Self-Publisher’s Manifesto” (I published an extended version of that article on my website, which I re-titled “An Indie Author’s Manifesto”). As I prepared to self-publish my second novel, The Vampire, the Hunter, and the GirlI found myself thinking a lot about what it means to be an indie author and how I feel about it. So, I decided to talk about it on my podcast in “Episode 60: […]

2015-03-30T03:43:19+02:00March 30th, 2015|Categories: Features|

What Should You Charge for an Indie eBook?

The short answer to the question in the title is there’s no set answer. Indie book pricing is a tough matter because each book and each genre will sell differently at different price points. A 10,000-word erotica short can actually get away with charging $3.99. A first (non-erotica) novel by a new author generally can’t.

On Reddit, this was a comment on a post by a new author who was struggling how to set price. I argued that he should lower his book to $.99 from $1.99, as he wasn’t selling any books. This was a response:

99c essentially

[…]
2019-02-03T09:35:00+02:00March 25th, 2015|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: |

Amazon Adds New Review Options Via Drop Down Menus

If you’ve tried to review a book on Amazon recently, Amazon has added a few options for users when reviewing a book via drop-down menus.

Amazon Reviews - Overall

Here are the choices:

Amazon Reviews - Writing Amazon Reviews - Violence Amazon Reviews - Sexual Content Amazon Reviews - Narration Amazon Reviews - Plot Amazon Reviews - Mood

 

At the bottom of the page it says: “Write your reviews using the traditional review authoring page” so this is a beta system. Time will tell if this will be helpful and/or abused. It could potentially lead to a more reviews, as it caters to people who might have trouble articulating themselves. Perhaps it will lessen the number of reviews saying “Loved it” or “Hated it” as the total review. […]

2015-03-22T10:46:51+02:00March 22nd, 2015|Categories: Features, News|Tags: |
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