Author: Stephen Hise

Stephen Hise is the Evil Mastermind and founder of Indies Unlimited. Hise is an independent author and an avid supporter of the indie author movement. Learn more about Stephen at his website or his Amazon author page.

Preditors and Editors Needs Your Help

We were very pleased to learn that Indies Unlimited has been listed as recommended by Preditors & Editors (P&E) in the site’s Promotional and Marketing Services section.

For those few who may not yet know, Preditors & Editors is a valuable resource for writers, representing something along the lines of a Consumer Reports for the publishing world. Before you shop your manuscript, it pays to check with sites such as P&E. If nothing else, check them out before you ink any deals with anyone.

On a personal note, I will relate that P&E helped keep me from making what could have been a costly mistake. When I first finished my novel, I shopped it to every agent I could find. The only two who responded with interest were listed in P&E as NOT RECOMMENDED.

Both these “agents” saw a lot of promise in my manuscript if only I was willing to invest a little money in editing, formatting, marketing, cover design, publicity, carpet cleaning, etc., and fortunately, they happen to provide exactly such services. Continue reading “Preditors and Editors Needs Your Help”

Typopotamus

Typopotamus
© 2012 Anneliese Hise

I am no typist. Whether I am working on a manuscript or simply chatting with a supermodel on Facebook, my messages are sometimes as garbled as if I were dictating to a Hippopotamus.

A typo is not merely typing the wrong thing, but happens when you mean to type one thing and instead type something else. Sometimes, this is caused by a keystroke error—you end up with too few or too many of the letters you meant to type because your touch is too heavy or too light; or you were off by one key and typed the wrong letter altogether.

Spell-check is helpful, but it is no panacea. Auto-correct is responsible for some hilarious and embarrassing word replacements. There is simply no substitute for proofreading. Proof however you like. Proof as you go, proof each day’s work, proof the whole dang thing when you claim to be done. When you are finished, proof it again. Continue reading “Typopotamus”

Nuking the Newbies

Authors tend to be sensitive types. Perhaps thin-skinned is more accurate. After all, it’s not that writers are sensitive to you, but as a group, we tend to bruise easily, react strongly and bear longstanding grudges with a modicum of effort.

Whatever the reason, when you get a bunch of these daisies together in a forum of any kind, conflict is likely to occur.

Writers are people whose daily craft lies in the orderly application of carefully chosen words and phrases. To see them engage each other in a manner befitting a playground quarrel is both baffling and horrifying.  It’s bad enough to see veterans going after each other hammer and tong, but when I see a newbie getting a beat-down, it really bothers me. Continue reading “Nuking the Newbies”

One Year of Indies Unlimited

I launched Indies Unlimited on October 6th, 2011. It was always my intention to bring on more talent and turn this thing into a nuclear-powered Death-star of a blog.

K.S. “Kat” Brooks joined Indies Unlimited on December 12, 2011 as my co-administrator. Her knowledge and experience have been of inestimable benefit to the credibility and growth of Indies Unlimited. Kat and I set about recruiting a multinational team of all-star contributors.

Over the course of the last year, we’ve published over 1,700 features, including over 560 staff articles, 173 guest posts, 280 announcements, 110 interviews, 150 sneak-peeks, 52 like-fests, and more than 40 tutorials. Of course, we also feature like-fests and flash fiction challenges. We have quite the toolbox here. Continue reading “One Year of Indies Unlimited”