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.

Tumblr Tutorial: Get Up and Running

Last Friday, Kat Cantwell introduced us to Tumblr, where all the young’ns hang out. So how about we show those young whippersnappers our awesome books? They don’t know what they’ve been missing. We just have to figger out how to use this newfangled Tumblr thingie. Honestly? It’s easier than WordPress or Blogger. Let me show you why.

The first thing you need to do is go to Tumblr.com and set up an account. It’s super fast (they’re not kidding).

tumblr signup step 1 2

Just follow the steps above – #1 through #3, then click Sign up (#4). That will bring you to a new screen where they ask – oh no, not that – your age, and to read the T&C. Then click Done! (#7) and you are signed up. You’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your membership. It’s that simple. Continue reading “Tumblr Tutorial: Get Up and Running”

How to Schedule a Blog Post

A few months ago, a friend of mine cranked out about six blog posts in one night. I asked her why she didn’t schedule them to publish once a week for six weeks. She replied, “I didn’t know you could do that.” Well, m’dear, it’s very easy. Here’s how.

If you’re using a WordPress blog – it doesn’t matter if you’re using .com or .org, it’s the same. Over in the upper right-hand corner of your admin screen, you should see this:

schedule post 1Notice “Publish immediately” is the default. (I’ve expertly highlighted that in yellow for you.) Click on edit and your screen will shift down, making room for the month, day, year, and time to be entered by you. Continue reading “How to Schedule a Blog Post”

Amazon Author Central Refresher Course

Author Central LikefestMany authors are unaware of the excellent resource provided by Amazon.com: the Author Central page. If you can’t afford, don’t have, or don’t want a website – your Author Central page is a great substitute. You can send people there to read more about you, see and hopefully buy your books, watch videos, read tweets, blog posts, and more.

Amazon Author Central pages are free. Each time we vet a book, we check to make certain a book is linked to one. If it’s not, you’ll be advised to make that happen before we run your feature. After all, if people can’t see all your books in one place and/or get to know you a little better in their book purchasing process – that sort of defeats the purpose of running a feature, doesn’t it? That’s akin to running an advertisement and listing a disconnected phone number. Epic fail.

Getting your own Amazon Author Central page is fast and easy. We have a number of tutorials here on Indies Unlimited to help authors take advantage of all the features Author Central offers. And now, here they are – in one convenient place just for you. Continue reading “Amazon Author Central Refresher Course”

How to Download and Install Fonts

fun with fontsNot long ago, an author asked me to take a look at her book cover while she was designing it. The old-style oil painting in the background was very nice – but I thought the title font was too modern. So, I searched for some rustic fonts online and gave her the links.

“Okay, now what?” she asked.

Hence, the reason for this tutorial. (By the way, she ended up going with a great font that fit the cover perfectly!)

There are lots of websites which offer free font downloads. As with anything you do online, check to make sure that before you open anything – you’ve ascertained it does not contain a virus, and check the licensing terms as far as usage goes. Some designers only allow free font downloads for personal use. Personal use is basically anything that does not generate financial income. Things like personal scrapbooking, family or non-profit websites, or anything printed to be used for non-profit organizations.

For a book cover, author website, advertising flyers, and/or swag – these items would fall under commercial usage. In these instances, if you really really want to use that font and it’s marked for personal use only, you would need to contact the artist directly to see what the terms would be.

So, with that out of the way, let’s locate a font to download. I’ve decided to try 1001fonts.com since Melissa Bowersock recommended them. What’s neat about this site is it actually gives you the opportunity to see what your book’s title (or whatever you need it for) will look like in the typeface before you download it. See screenshot below: Continue reading “How to Download and Install Fonts”