Month: July 2013

Vote Here, Vote Now!

It’s that special day of the week: time for Indies Unlimited readers to choose the next Flash Fiction Star. Remember, all our winners will be included in the next edition of the IU Flash Fiction Anthology. So, support your fellow writers and participate in this week’s voting, then spread the word, bang the drums, and share the link to let everyone know the vote is on.

Polls will close tomorrow at 5 PM, so act quickly, while supplies last!

We had a number of great submissions this week. Kudos to all the entrants. Check out this week’s entries here. Vote for your fave then use those share buttons at the bottom of the post to spread the word.

 

Which author do you think wrote the best flash fiction entry this week?

  • Marjorie McCoy (48%, 20 Votes)
  • Jon Jefferson (24%, 10 Votes)
  • Kevin O. McLaughlin (19%, 8 Votes)
  • Rich Meyer (10%, 4 Votes)

Total Voters: 42

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NOTE: Entrants whose submissions exceed the 250 word limit are eliminated from the poll.

Ten Blogs and Websites Every Indie Author Should Know

As Kristine Kathryn Rusch is fond of pointing out, writing is a business. At least it is if you hope to make more than a handful of spare change from your endeavors. All the activities involved after you’ve written your book until it is in the hands of the reader are the business side of publishing. If you don’t give it attention you might as well be one hand clapping in the forest (or something like that).

Here, in no particular order, is a list of websites and blogs I’ve found valuable and read regularly. Some might seem obvious, some are less well known. Continue reading “Ten Blogs and Websites Every Indie Author Should Know”

A Dinosaur in a Young Adult’s World

Guest post
by Parker Moose

On June 8th, I released my debut novel. The world replied with crickets. The next day I sent a message to all of my contacts on Twitter and Facebook asking them to buy my book. That got me about a 10 percent response rate and a brief bump in Amazon’s rankings. But then I ran out of people who thought they might have known me in high school, and it was back to anonymity.

Lured by the siren song and royalties of KDP Select, I chose to be exclusive with Amazon and tried my first free promotion. The results of that were inconclusive, except for another brief bump in the standings and the unexpected finding that Germans really love free books. But then, sales tapered off again. It was time to get serious. Continue reading “A Dinosaur in a Young Adult’s World”

Write short stories? But I’m a Novelist!

Get your short stories published, win a couple of contests, then reference them all in a query letter to convince an agent to convince a publisher to take a chance on your novel – that is the path to a traditional book deal, said all of the articles I read.

But don’t they require different skill sets, I wondered: generating an experience in a few hundred words vs. building a world over several hundred pages? What if you’re good at one and not at the other? What if you have limited time to write? Don’t you need to choose?

Fast forward six or seven years to today’s bigger and braver world of indie publishing, and the idea of selling a novel with a portfolio of short stories can seem like an archaic and unnecessary paradigm—and worse, a waste at the expense of the World’s Greatest Novel. But writing short stories can be a good use of time for novelist, budding or otherwise. Below are ten reasons why: Continue reading “Write short stories? But I’m a Novelist!”