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.

Video Trailer Nuts and Bolts

Movie Clapper BoardMany people are intimidated by the thought of making video trailers for their books. I used to be. Then Carol Wyer taught me how to use Animoto, and I became a video trailer-making junkie.

A lot of people just take their book’s description, type it into frames, and then show those as a slideshow with music. That really isn’t going to draw the interest that could be garnered by this visual media.

You need very little to make an effective book trailer video. And, depending upon what platform(s) you use to create your video, everything you need may be at your fingertips. Here are a few tips I use which you may find helpful: Continue reading “Video Trailer Nuts and Bolts”

Registering a HashTag

twubs logoThe other day, I was chatting with an author who had registered the title of her book as a hashtag. She really had it together – mentioning the hashtag in her book, and even in her book’s description. I was wowed by this level of planning and technology.

“How did you know to register the hashtag?” I asked.

“It was in an article on Indies Unlimited,” she answered.

Well, I’ll be. And it sure was. Lynne Cantwell interviewed Kriss Morton and wrote Hashtags 501 – and I must have been so dazzled by the amazing amount of hashtag knowledge that I missed that part.

I kind of liked the idea of registering a hashtag, so I decided to give it a shot. I went to Twubs.com and entered “MrPish” in the big “enter a hashtag” box. A little wheel spun for a moment, but there were no results. Cool! This hashtag was mine, all mine! *rubbing hands together in an evil manner* Continue reading “Registering a HashTag”

Amazon’s New Series Pages

amazon book series
Is this really a useful tool?

Last year, Smashwords introduced a neat tool called Series Manager which allows authors to link books in the same series together for better discoverability. Well guess what? Amazon has now done the same thing. Supposedly. But not quite. Frankly – not at all.

To be perfectly honest, Smashwords outguns Amazon with this feature – by a longshot. I’ll explain why in a minute. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty first.

Unfortunately, there is a catch, the same as with Smashwords. If you have books that are in a series which are both self-published and published through a press (which uses a different KDP account), you cannot link those together yourself. You can only link the books under your control through your KDP account. To do that, go to your KDP Bookshelf (dashboard) Continue reading “Amazon’s New Series Pages”

Anthems for Authors – Tell Your Story Walking

Wow. With a haunting voice and poignant lyrics, Deb Talan’s song Tell Your Story Walking strikes a chord with any author. Supposedly, the song was inspired by Motherless Brooklyn, a novel by Jonathan Lethem, and she cleverly works part of the title in at the very beginning. Have a listen, and enjoy the slide show which was in turn inspired by the song. Great stuff.

Like Anthems for Authors? You can see more here.