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.

Seven Years and Still Going …

Seven years ago, the Evil Mastermind launched Indies Unlimited. Since then, we’ve had over 2.5 MILLION page views, been named as one of Six Great Blogs for Indie Authors in Publishers Weekly, and ranked as one of the top writing-related sites by Alexa.

We have evolved greatly since those early days, but never lost sight of providing free, high-quality content for independent publishers and readers.  We’re proud that readers and authors alike trust our content, and we’re grateful to all of you for spreading the word about us.

Indies Unlimited is run by volunteers. Kudos to all the minions past and present for donating their time and energy to provide excellent articles, advice, and tutorials for our audience.

Thank you, everyone, for making Indies Unlimited a success and a community. It could not be one without the other. We look forward to another year filled with great things for all.

CreateSpace to be Phased Out

createspace logoAs many of us have feared since the introduction of KDP Print, it was finally announced that CreateSpace would be merged into the newer entity. The email, sent from CreateSpace early this morning, stated:

We’re excited to announce that CreateSpace (CSP) and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) will become one service, and in the coming days, we will give CreateSpace members the ability to move their account and titles. To ensure a quality experience, we will add links to the Continue reading “CreateSpace to be Phased Out”

Book Description Basics

book descriptionThe number one problem we run into during the vetting process here at Indies Unlimited is a book’s description, also sometimes known as the book sales pitch or the book blurb. Too long, too short, too detailed, too vague, too too too, blah blah blah. What it comes down to is: many authors cannot write a book description on their own.

There’s nothing wrong with this. In most instances, it takes an outsider to point out what’s missing from (or not needed in) a book description. After all, an author has been married to the book for years. An author is most likely going to overlook points that a potential reader needs to know. It’s like explaining how to use a computer program that you know like the back of your hand. You’ll always skip over the basics or the foundation and get right to the good stuff. Meanwhile, your pupil is sitting there with a stupid look on his/her face, completely confused.

The basics for writing a good book description don’t change. Who, what, when, where, why, and how, and why do I want to read/buy this book? We’ve had plenty of articles about this already. We have an article that specifically explains how to write a book description. We’ve had a post on the most common book description issues. The Evil Mastermind even felt the need to break down book description epic failures into categories.

I’ve put together a list of the questions I most commonly ask after reading a book description that has confused me to the point of needing Dramamine. Reading these questions won’t replace the lessons in the articles linked to above. But hopefully, they will help prevent you from achieving the Epic Fail categories. Continue reading “Book Description Basics”

Our Gift to You: Knowledge and Author Humor

snowflake holiday shopping timeHere at Indies Unlimited, we’ve been taking pride in supporting the indie author community for more than six years. We’ve won accolades and honors, and those are great – but that’s not why we do it. We do it to help others – to prevent them from being preyed upon by vanity presses, and to save newbie authors from struggling to figure out how to publish.

Everyone at IU – minions past and present – works for free. And not only do they work for free here on the blog, but many of them put themselves out there and give self-publishing seminars free of charge. This is, indeed, a wonderful community.

And speaking of free – yes, IU is free, but we do incur quite a lot of expenses each year maintaining this monstrosity of a superblog. If you want to help out, you can donate through PayPal, or you can simply click through on a Thrifty Thursday book (or a book in the sidebar) and then make some purchases on Amazon. Every little bit helps.

In the spirit of free – here’s a little something I put together this year to help authors. I hope you enjoy the video – and all of us here at IU hope you are never “that guy.”

Happy Holidays to you and yours.

How to Produce a Professional Book from BiblioBoard Library on Vimeo.