Author: K.S. Brooks

K.S. Brooks is an award-winning novelist, photographer, and photo-journalist, author of over 30 titles, and executive director and administrator of Indies Unlimited. Brooks is currently a photo-journalist and chief copy editor for two NE Washington newspapers.  She teaches self-publishing and writing topics for the Community Colleges of Spokane, and served on the Indie Author Day advisory board. For more about K.S. Brooks, visit her website and her Amazon author page.

The Genre Analyzing Generator

automated reciprocator
The stylish GAG, shown here in antique chrome

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Here at IULabs, we take pride in creating products designed to help indie authors. It’s all about making life easier and taking your money. And the Genre Analyzing Generator (or GAG) is yet another in a long line of inventions to assist authors in finding their niche and making money!

The great thing about the GAG is how easy it is to use – and how accurate it is! We know it can sometimes be a chore to decide under what genre to classify your magnum opus. Don’t sweat it! Just feed your manuscript into the GAG and it will search for phrases, keywords, and dialogue in order to find just the right genre for your book.

Here are two perfect examples for you:

We fed Twilight into the GAG and got:
Juvenile Fantasy
Urban Fantasy
New Age
Kissing Fiction

And for 50 Shades, we got:
Cult Literature
Romance
Autobiography
Parody

As you can see, the GAG was right on the money, both times! So don’t spend anymore time fretting over the best genre categorizations for your novel. Order your GAG today, and get a move on!

Use the GAG as directed. Other uses are not sanctioned by IULabs. Do not insert anything other than manuscripts into the GAG. Not meant to be used while driving or sleeping. Bodily injury, coma, or death may come as a result of improper use. Should a manuscript become lodged within the GAG for more than 4 hours, do not attempt to probe the GAG. Instead, dial the technical support number in your user’s manual. User’s manual sold separately.

Indies Unlimited Resource Pages

gradutation capHere at Indies Unlimited, we are constantly trying to identify the needs of authors at all levels of the publishing spectrum. In an effort to provide useful information in a sea of internet data, we’ve recently introduced some Author Resource Pages. Some of our new resource pages include:
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I’ve Written a Book, How Do I Publish It?
This resource page includes articles on the entire process from proofreading to how to find an editor to the anatomy of a copyright page, all the way to pushing the publish button. It’s a great resource for newbies and experienced authors alike.

 

Glossary for Authors
Sometimes it’s just not obvious what abbreviations mean, and sometimes it’s just a wee little bit embarrassing to have to ask what someone’s talking about. This glossary will help.

 

How to Spot a Scam
Scammers change their company names all the time. The best way to protect yourself is to know what to look for. This resource page will teach you what you need to know, so you don’t become a victim.

 

Reviews and Review Sites
As you hopefully know by now, IU does not review books. This handy resource page will help you figure out how to find the right reviewers for your book(s).

 

KnowledgeBase
This page contains all the useful IU articles arranged by tag. Know what you need? Just click on the subject which interests you and all the articles associated with it will magically appear. Yes, we did this just for you.

 

We’re adding new resource pages all the time. Please feel free to share these pages if you know someone in need, and please use the contact form if there’s a resource page subject you’d like us to research.

Anthems for Authors – My Book

Wouldn’t it be kinda neat if, when someone asked you what your book was about, you could pick up a guitar and sing a song about it? Okay, maybe not. I’m not sure what The Beautiful South is doing here while performing My Book – what with those hats and all – and is that dude reading his lyrics out of the book? In any case, if you can get past the nagging sensation that you’ve heard this tune before (*ahem* Spooky by ARS), then you should be able to get a kick out of it.

Like Anthems for Authors? You can see more here.

Keywords Vs. Tags

keywords and tagsWhat is the difference between a keyword and a tag? That’s a very good question. Theoretically, they are the same thing. Since most of the time this question is being asked from a blogger’s standpoint, that’s how it shall be answered. And I’ll be using Indies Unlimited as an example to make it easy to follow.

The incredibly simplified answer to the question is: keywords are used to find things via search engines; tags are used to find things within your own blog. So, you would use keywords to help label your article so when people search on Google, they hopefully use the words in your article (or in your article’s keyword Metadata). Just so you know, metadata is “a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.” Thank you, Wikipedia. By the way, did you know Wiki has a series of pages on George Clooney? Anyway, your keywords make up a set of data that describes the information in your article. Got it?

Tags also describe your article, but they do it more like an internal filing system, if you will. About a year ago, the Evil Mastermind wrote an article about using keywords in book titles. Let’s say that article wowed you (of course it did!) and you want to read other articles with similar content at Indies Unlimited. At the bottom of the article, under the share buttons (which you always use, right?), you will find this: Continue reading “Keywords Vs. Tags”