Celebrating Independent Authors
Congrats to Chris James, the readers’ choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge.
The winning entry is recognized with a special feature here today and a place in our collection of winners which will be published as an e-book at year end.
Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Guest Post
by Paty Jager
Traditional publishers have known and used the power of cooperative marketing for decades. Business savvy independent authors are now joining together and forming co-ops to meet their needs for shared technology, publishing, and/or marketing.
What is an author co-op? It’s a group of like-minded authors who band together to promote their books, brainstorm promotion options, and provide support in this growing and changing atmosphere of publishing.
Each author co-op has its own expectations of the members and individual methods of running their organization. Continue reading “To Author Co-op or not to Author Co-op”
This article has been updated with a step-by-step tutorial providing screen captures to guide you through the process of How to Change a Book’s Title Without Losing Reviews (click here). We hope you find this new article helpful.
A couple months ago T.D. McKinnon wrote a post for Indies Unlimited that discussed literary fiction versus genre fiction. He also mentioned “…the increasing number of genre labels that sometimes seem to me a little obscure, with the assignment to the various categories certainly more subjective than objective.” In this post, I’m going to discuss genre labels, a bit about their history (at least as I see it), their positives and any negatives.
As I see it, the purpose of genres is as a shorthand to classify a book’s content. It helps bookstores arrange books that are similar to be close together. In turn, this helps readers determine if a book is something they’re interested in or as a way to quickly focus in on the books that potentially fit what they’re looking for. Imagine visiting a brick and mortar bookstore where all the books were on the shelves arranged by author last name, ISBN, or some other method without first having them grouped into genre. Could you find what you were looking for? Genre has historically been one of the most critical factors in book discovery. If a potential reader can’t find your book, they can’t buy or read it. Continue reading “Genre: Good or Evil”