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.

Anthems for Authors – Don’t Mean Nothin’

Being an author can make for a lonely life. Other than each other, many times we have no one to encourage or praise us – or even validate our existence. So when I hear a song about the struggles of being a writer, I like it – a lot. In this case, I think Richard Marx’s song could apply to anyone in the arts.

My favorite lines from this song are: “take a good look around and you’ll find, people trying to mess with your mind.” I love the defiant attitude. It’s something, as writers, we can all use. And now, Don’t Mean Nothin’ by Richard Marx.

Tuesday Tutorial: SEO Plug-Ins

Google Search for Evil Mastermind
Be Evil, and Be Seen!

You don’t have to be an Evil Mastermind to take advantage of Search Engine Optimization tools (SEO) for your blog. In fact, you don’t have to be a mastermind at all.

While this tutorial targets WordPress blogs, the same philosophies apply to tagging and SEO for all blogs. How do I know this, you ask? As much as I hate to admit it, it’s because back in my previous life, I worked as Director of Operations for a Search Engine Positioning company in Boston. Continue reading “Tuesday Tutorial: SEO Plug-Ins”

Judging a Book by Its Cover

The Kiss of Night by K. S. BrooksI’m constantly looking at book covers as part of my “job” here at Indies Unlimited.  I run into authors posting their covers in groups all the time, asking for input. So I see a LOT of covers. And most of them all have the same issues.

What I find most ironic is that the same people keep posting book covers with the same problems.  I don’t get that.  Please allow me to make something perfectly clear. And I’m not just making this up to be difficult or bossy or right. I’m speaking from experience. I enjoy providing my own cover art to my small Indie publisher – and because of that, I’ve taken some lumps. But I’ve also learned some important things about book covers. I share this knowledge freely, to help my fellow Indie authors. Book covers are important. We all want to make a good first impression. Book sales count on it. Continue reading “Judging a Book by Its Cover”

The Most Expensive eBook in the World

In one corner, you have the fully-bearded JA Konrath, preaching to the Indie masses to make their books more affordable in hopes they can sell more of them, therefore increasing their income. In the other corner, wearing a goatee befitting an evil mastermind, you have Stephen Hise.

Hise is trying a different approach. In fact – he’s going in exactly the opposite direction. Stephen Hise today announced he was raising the price of all available versions of his book UPGRADE, on Smashwords, to one million dollars. This makes UPGRADE the most expensive eBook in the world, obliterating the old record held by Nuclear Energy, now on sale at Amazon for a mere $6,232.00.

Asked why he raised the price so dramatically, Hise said, “I read an article by somebody or other who claimed that his sales actually increased after raising the price. I figured if I raised it high enough, I’d only need to sell a couple of copies—half dozen at best.” Continue reading “The Most Expensive eBook in the World”