Month: March 2013

Createspace’s Expanded Distribution – Yes or No?

[For an update on Createspace’s Expanded Distribution program, please read Lynne Cantwell’s article here. – the admins]

Createspace is Amazon’s print-on-demand company. They’re the same guys but they’re run as a separate company. Amazon is in Seattle and Createspace is in Las Vegas. I self-published two ebooks through Amazon (KDP), and the same two books in print form through Createspace. Unfortunately, when I had to contact them to deal with different issues that sometimes come up when you publish your own book, I had to speak to each company individually. So, that means emailing Amazon for your ebook queries or contacting Createspace by email or talking to them on the phone. Yep, they’ll talk to you. You instant message them from their website and ask them to phone you. I’ve done the phone deal five or six times and each time my phone has rang within five minutes of messaging them. It’s a great system and they’ve been very good in helping me.

I was asked recently whether I utilized Createspace’s Expanded Distribution feature and paid the $25 fee. I did-both times. This is the blurb from Createspace’s website detailing what Expanded Distribution means and how it expands the reach of your book to their additional outlets and distributors: Continue reading “Createspace’s Expanded Distribution – Yes or No?”

Tutorial Tuesday Time Out

IU Tutorials and Tools for Prospering in a Digital WorldWell hello there fans of Tutorial Tuesday. Here at Indies Unlimited, we take pride in bringing you tutorials each week to help you get more out of social media platforms, software packages, handy websites, tools, and more. You can check out past tutorials for free here. If you don’t feel like going through all the tedious and strenuous labor of repeatedly clicking that “older posts” arrow, you can check out this nifty book here.

Occasionally I’ll get messages from folks asking for tutorials on specific subjects, or I’ll write them based on queries which come up during conversations with other authors. Of course, that means we haven’t covered everything yet…

So how about we open up the comments section today and YOU tell US what you’d like to see tutorials about? Let’s not get silly here, we can’t give you tutorials on picking the right lottery numbers or on how to build a laser death ray (that’s proprietary), but we can help in author-related topics other than becoming a best-seller overnight or how to get on Oprah. And please, keep it clean, folks. Here are some upcoming tutorials: How to Create a Sell Sheet; How to Find Media Outlets; Preparing for a Radio Interview; and How to Write a Bio Blurb. We look forward to seeing your ideas. If we’ve already got a tutorial on it, we’ll let you know that, as well.

Nobody Wants to Talk About THAT

You can do all manner of things to human bodies in fiction and readers will snap you up in droves. Turn them into zombies and spill their intestines into the street. Run them through with arrows and broadswords. Make them fodder for carnivorous beasts and alien spore. Let their sparkly vampire selves glitter in the sun.

But God forbid, don’t give them cancer.

Continue reading “Nobody Wants to Talk About THAT”

Sneak Peek: Beauty Rising

Today we have a sneak peek from author Mark W. Sasse’s new novel,  Beauty Rising.

“My heart sank. I dumped my father’s ashes in the heart of communist Vietnam – over a thousand miles from the death of his comrades – over a thousand miles from the smile of that girl. How could I have been so stupid?”

Only the bumbling, overweight, thirtyish, stay-at-home Martin Kinney could have mistakenly flubbed his dying father’s request with such gusto. This thousand mile mistake awakens the ghosts of long-held family secrets and puts Martin on a fateful course with an unlikely romantic interest – a young, beautiful, yet troubled Vietnamese woman named My Phuong.

Beauty Rising  is available from Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

Here is an excerpt from Beauty Rising… Continue reading “Sneak Peek: Beauty Rising”