Month: February 2014

Adding Google+ Comments to your Blogger Blog

Google plus commentsThe idea of having a blog is not just to sell books – although, hey, if someone’s moved to buy mine after reading one of my posts, I’m not going to stop them. But ideally, you’re blogging to offer your thoughts and ideas to the Universe, and maybe even get a dialogue going.

“Having a dialogue” implies that your readers are responding to your posts. And yet, one of the biggest problems I had when I began blogging on Blogger (also known as Blogspot) was that people had trouble leaving comments. Blogger’s native comments system had multiple quirks – the sign-in process was kind of crazy, and oftentimes it wouldn’t let people post replies at all. I ended up with comments about my posts on my Facebook page, on my Facebook timeline, on Google+ – everywhere but on the actual post. Makes it hard to get a dialogue going.

Blogger users, as well as Blogger itself, had come up with several workarounds. I tried a few, and they worked, more or less. But really, you shouldn’t need a workaround for something as basic as allowing a reader to comment on your blog. Continue reading “Adding Google+ Comments to your Blogger Blog”

Short Stories Have Been Priced out of the Market

John PhythyonGuest Post
by John R. Phythyon, Jr.

Ninety-nine cents doesn’t sound like a lot of money. It’s less than a buck. It’s not even enough to get something on the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s.

But 99 cents is a huge number in the world of independent publishing. It’s come to mean so very much to indie authors, and that meaning has changed in the last year.

Ninety-nine cents is the minimum amount Amazon will let you price a book. It also nets Amazon’s worst royalty rate – 35%. However, authors often think it’s worth charging (and making) so little because consumers see a book for 99 cents and figure that’s worth the risk. So you make up in volume what you lose in percentage.

But the market has changed, and the strategy behind deciding which books an indie author should price at 99 cents has to change with it. In particular, individual short stories (not necessarily collections) are no longer viable. Continue reading “Short Stories Have Been Priced out of the Market”

Flash Fiction Vote: A Dozen Delights!

IU Flash Fiction DonutsTwelve tasty flash fiction entries this week – such a variety – which one will be this week’s winner? You decide. Take a read; cast your vote. Which was your favorite?

Check out this week’s entries here. Make your choice, then use those share buttons at the bottom of the post to spread the word.

Voting polls close Thursday at 5 PM Pacific time.

Which flash fiction entry delighted you most?

  • The Happy Amateur (28%, 25 Votes)
  • tdmckinnon (28%, 25 Votes)
  • nadiakilrick (12%, 11 Votes)
  • Kathy Steinemann (9%, 8 Votes)
  • DW Davis (8%, 7 Votes)
  • Jon Jefferson (6%, 5 Votes)
  • Stephanie Johnson (3%, 3 Votes)
  • James R Tate (2%, 2 Votes)
  • ALKaplan (2%, 2 Votes)
  • Mark Angevine (1%, 1 Votes)
  • MatoSkaChikala (1%, 1 Votes)
  • Venkatesh Iyer (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 90

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

Planning to prepare to begin…

keep-calm-and-do-it-tomorrow-38I am writing two books just now. Well, no I’m not, I am brewing two books just now. They are percolating, as it were. Not actually writing them, ever, would be fine if I hadn’t started calling myself a writer but the trouble is, well the trouble is Indies Unlimited.

When I first started reading this pesky blog I had one book to my name, written way back in the mists of time when Author Solutions was the brilliant new alternative to ‘real publishers’. It languished way down at the bottom of the Amazon sales figures and my Mum kinda liked it. I thought of myself as a bit of a diarist, life amused me and I wrote little tales of derring do for entertainment. When blogging was invented I was cock-a-hoop…the interwebs had made a thing just for me. I posted tales here and there with ambitions, nay pretentions to a spot of website writing and ghost blogging.

Then this bloke called Hise put out a call for guest posts in some Facebook group I’d stumbled into. That was the start of the trouble. Three guest posts later and The Big Email came. Would I like to be an IU staff writer? Would I? You bet! That made me a real writer. Continue reading “Planning to prepare to begin…”