Category: Announcements

#PublishingFoul Mid-Month Update

Predatory Publisher Month at Indies UnlimitedIt’s March 16th and we’re halfway into Indies Unlimited’s #PublishingFoul month – a series dedicated to those who have been taken by publishing predators. We’re hoping that by telling their stories, we can spread the word about industry scammers and prevent others from being taken in. Please share these articles far and wide. The more people who know, the better.

At any time during this month, just go ahead and click on the referee in the right-hand sidebar. That will take you to an index of all the #PublishingFoul features.

Here are some other handy links:

How to Spot a Scam

Indies Unlimited Authors’ Legal Resource Page

And don’t forget to take our Publishing Predator survey, even if you have not been scammed! Help us to get a good sampling of what’s going on out there. Please share!

So check those pages out, and make sure to stay tuned for more of #PublishingFoul month. Thanks for being a part of IU.

Global Internet Slowdown

constructionYou may have noticed a delay in loading the IU site, and sometimes you may get a failure message. Many major websites including iTunes, hosting providers, and networks are currently experiencing these types of delays and outages. These are a result of a global slowdown caused by DDoS attacks. According to the specialized site DigitalAttackMap.com, “A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.”

Thankfully, the Indies Unlimited site has not been compromised, so there is no need to be concerned about that. We apologize for the inconvenience and we appreciate your patience.

March Madness: What To Do When Your Publisher Scams You

Predatory Publisher Month at Indies UnlimitedWelcome to March. This month we’re doing something a little bit different – we’re having a theme month. Spearheaded by the lovely Lynne Cantwell, we’re going to feature articles from minions and guests alike about being scammed by publishers. We want those who have fallen victim to these publishing predators to know they’re not alone.

Since March is a huge sports month, we’ve tied that into the theme, with our great referee-type dude throwing the penalty flag at those bad eggs, and we’ve registered the hashtag #PublishingFoul.

Lynne will be kicking off the month (get it – another sports pun!) on Thursday and will give you all an idea of the great features she has in store for you. Meanwhile, if you have a story you’d like to share, please drop us a line through the contact form. We want to spread the word so that these types of things won’t happen to anyone else.

2014 IUEA Winners

STARVoting for the Indies Unlimited Excellence Awards has concluded. We’d like to thank everyone for vigorous participation. The votes constitute an important part of the process, but do not exclusively determine the winner. To balance the votes and prevent the awards from becoming an outright “popularity contest,” we used the Alexa rankings of the finalists in the final calculation. Alexa is is the leading web traffic ranking service, and we regard it as an impartial standard.

The total votes received by each finalist by the close of the polls was divided by each candidate’s Alexa ranking. The rankings used were those recorded for each site on the morning of February 1, 2015.

This methodology was chosen for several reasons. First, while it gives significant weight to the Alexa ranking, it does not allow a site (even with an excellent rating) to win without getting votes. Second, of the various methodologies we tested on dummy data, this was  the only one that did not produce ties. It also removes any potential elements of favoritism.

Both the winners and the finalists exemplify the very spirit of the indie community. We are pleased to present the recipients of the 2014 Indies Unlimited Excellence Awards.