Found this on Chris the Story Reading Ape and commented,
Pressed this to Just Can’t Help Writing. I read a post where an expert on indie publishing told readers it would cost more than $300 to get an ISBN. Having gotten mine from Smashwords, I couldn’t help wondering what he was talking about. This article helps clear that up. Thanks for sharing it!
To read this article, click on the link or photo of Author Laurie Boris below: almost-everything-you-need-to-know-about-isbns/
Thanks to Brittney Sahin for a look at some of the promotion options available! I haven’t tried this yet, but this post encourages me to consider it!
During the holiday season I decided to try out 3 different e-mail marketing companies for my first novel, Silenced Memories. I will discuss the results of each below. I did attempt to submit my book to 3 other websites as well, but they were booked (because many other authors were probably thinking the same thing-holiday promotion!)
Sale price Dec. 5th-Dec. 6th
Price for ‘romance suspense’ – $45 (price varies depending on genre)
E-book discounted from $2.99 to $.99
Books sold on day 1: 208 Amazon; less than 10 between ibooks & nook
Books sold on day 2 (no promo running): 46 Amazon; less than 5 (ibooks/nook)
Overall results: I think this campaign was very successful. Gaining that many new readers was great. I also reached #69 on romance suspense on Amazon (for a few hours!) & #49 on romance military. I made my money back…
View original post 532 more words
Something here for every aspiring writer! Strauss is one of the best resources around! Info on contracts, social media, marketing, promotion—check it out!
Filed under blogging, business of writing, ebooks publishing and selling, Finding literary agents for writers, indie publishing, Learning to write, looking for literary editors and publishers, Money issues for writers, Myths and Truths for writers, Publishing, publishing contracts, reversion of rights clauses, Self-publishing, Writing, writing novels
Found this at Writers in the Storm today. Here’s what I wrote as a comment:
I had old contracts that required me to give notice and then wait 90 days for the publisher to decide whether or not to re-activate the titles. While I was pretty sure the rights to at least one of the books had already been passed on and then returned to me by another publisher, I went through the steps as laid out in the contracts. The hard part was finding the right place to send my notice. The web site (of a major publisher) was no help. I found a “permissions” link and wrote asking that my request be forwarded to the right person. That eventually happened. and I eventually received written confirmation of the reversion.
The clauses you provide would have saved me a lot of trouble. I’m not sure they were standard when my books were originally published, but for future publications, I’ll be on the lookout! Thanks for some solid advice!
Reblogged on WordPress.com
Source: This is how you get your book onto a bookstore shelf
Have you had success at getting your books into stores in the U.S.? My guess is that we can best count on independent booksellers–or is Barnes and Noble completely out of the question? In any case, I’m inspired to get going on POD versions of my books to find out. Let me hear about your experiences!
Thanks to Sue Vincent for this piece, which I found via Chris the Story Reading Ape, always a good source for news. The presence or absence of the reblog button has been an ongoing mystery to me. Sue’s tip about clicking on the title of the article to make the button appear is a godsend–it worked on this piece!
I generally agree that WordPress is fairly intuitive and has good support structures. I’ve had several productive chats when I encountered a problem or didn’t know how to do something (not so productive recently when my correspondent was trying to help me remember how to create anchors within a page–have to go to my stand-alone HTML book on that one, but most have provided what I needed to know). But Sue is right that it’s easy to miss features you haven’t needed or didn’t know about. So help like this is wonderful for me, and perhaps for those of you who also blog and who explore WordPress serendipitously, as I often do.
I’m no technical genius and when I first started blogging, I needed to learn my way around the WordPress system. It is pretty much common sense and easy enough to set up. If you get stuck, there are plenty of helpful articles and forums that show you how to do pretty much anything. Just type the question into your search engine.
The one thing they cannot do, though, is answer questions you didn’t know you should ask. Over the past few days I have become aware of how many of those little tweaks and tricks we learn about, then just take for granted. Reblogging was one area I found frustrating for a good while. It is a simple process, the press of a button, until the button is not there…
1. Can’t see the reblog button?
This took me ages to work out! Many blogs, including this one, have their…
View original post 606 more words
Filed under blogging, business of writing, Publishing, Writing
An earlier version of my post incorrectly stated that Chuck Sambuchino was in charge of this one-day workshop in Indianapolis on Oct. 24. In fact, he was subbing for another volunteer. The workshop was actually coordinated by Jessica Bell, of Writing Day Workshops
. I thought folks might appreciate learning about this organization, if they aren’t already familiar with it. It hosts a range of workshops at different locations around the country, and will definitely be on my list of possible conference options.
It’s unusual to find a conference that changes the way I think about my novel and about myself as a writer. This one-day conference, less than a day’s drive away, did just that.
The Workshop featured presentations by Brian Klems, online editor for WritersDigest.com. The basic fee covered four all-group presentations by Klems and a “first-page” critique by four agents of randomly selected submissions. Participants could pay extra for ten-minute pitch sessions with up to six agents and for a personal query-letter critique by Chuck Sambuchino, author of a number of books and blogs on writing as well as humor books.
Klems’s presentations covered a huge amount of nuts-and-bolts information most valuable to writers who had not attended many conferences or mined the web for information on the business of writing. The pitch sessions were well-coordinated; all three of the agents I queried were generous listeners. The published schedule did not build in meals or receptions for the social networking that many writers find rewarding.
So what made this conference so productive? Two things: Sambuchino’s critique of my query and the “first-page” session, at which some 20 or so of the first pages submitted were thrown down and stomped upon.
I didn’t receive Sambuchino’s comments until the Thursday night before the conference, and Friday was hectic, so it was evening before I could settle into my motel room to digest the veritable armada of comments he had supplied. Everyone reading this can probably empathize with my stomach-twisting lurch when I realized that the back-of-the-book blurb I had workshopped over and over with multiple audiences was No Good. Basic questions—what is Michael’s wound, his need? What is at stake? How does this event lead to this one?—still loomed. Sambuchino wanted A LOT more information than any back-of-the-book was going to accommodate.
The feeling of utter inadequacy that settled over me produced a complete rewrite. Was that the right strategy? All I know is that when I sat across from agents and talked from the notes they were glad to let me use, not one broke in with a confused frown to tell me I wasn’t making any sense. (Believe me, this has happened.) There’s no experiment that could tell me whether my response to Sambuchino’s comments made the difference. But I do know that when I revise my query letter, the pitch itself will look a lot more like the one I wrote Friday night than the one I have now.
Lesson learned? First let me talk about
Couldn’t reblog this from Colleen M. Story on Writers in the Storm (no button), but I wish I could. It’s a great post that really resonated with me and might with you.
(Can anybody tell me why some WordPress sites have reblog buttons and others don’t? Is thiis a choice the blogger makes? I HATE seeing good posts I can’t share in their entirety.)
In any case, this could so be me! I’m just now trying to decide whether to self-publish my way-outside-the-conventional-genres novel or to go on submitting to agents. I haven’t gone the small press route because I found myself thinking that if I have to do all the marketing, why share the net? But this post makes me realize that I’m probably thinking too short-term. Having a new novel picked up by a press (I published five with big presses before going back to school) would 
be a gateway to new contacts and new opportunities.
Story’s thoughts on feedback also resonated. Having gone the beta-reader route as well as working with my writing group, I’ve decided not to tear up my work unless it’s for someone who has made a commitment to the book, for the very reasons Story states: six reviews, six different ideas as to what just has to be done. In my excellent writing group, I listen for consensus and a good argument that the advice is well-grounded. I often receive the kind of feedback Story praises, the kind that strikes me instinctively as valuable, sometimes pinpointing a problem I knew at heart needed attention but which I hadn’t quite identified.
Check out the post for her seven inspirational messages. They were a call to action for me, and might be for you.
Chris the Story Reading Ape posted this link; it’s important reading. For the record, the pictures I’ve begun using are from stock photo sites that state expressly that they can be used for blogs, book covers, web sites, etc. These sites use the terms “resale and distribution” in ways that I find confusing; for example, depositphotos, which I have used quite a bit, says that the regular license is fine for book covers, but then says this license is only appropriate for ebooks if the photo file plays “a minor role” in the product. Since many of the book-cover designers on Mark’s List at Smashwords use sites like this, it would seem to this non-lawyer that the images are available for such use in ebooks just as in regular books.
In any case, I have found the sites I’ve used to be easy and inexpensive. You can buy images for as little as $1.00. The article this post links to lists a number of free sites, including Creative Commons sites. When I checked out Wiki Commons, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the selection there; the pay (royalty-free) sites seemed to have a larger selection of what I was looking for.
Perhaps others can share their experiences and expertise on this topic!
Paddy and his mom!
Just Can't Help Writing 