Category: Staff Articles

Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.

Smashwords Summer Sale and More

Smashwords LogoThose of you who have opted to publish with Smashwords will want to look at this. I have participated in these sales, which they also run in December, a few times with decent results. It’s about the easiest sale you can be part of. It literally takes only a couple of clicks and your books revert to their original prices automatically at the end of the sale period. Here’s a summary. Much of this is directly quoted from their recent email.

The Tenth Annual “Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale” Runs July 1-31 

Enrollment is now open, and, for the first time ever, they allow you to enroll ALL your books at a single discount level –  25%-off, 50%-off, 75%-off and 100%-off (FREE).  Continue reading “Smashwords Summer Sale and More”

A Survey of Your Newsletter Readers Provides Info, a Sense of Community

google formsAuthor newsletters have been a topic of conversation here before. These newsletters let you communicate with readers, telling them about upcoming books, sales or appearances, and a variety of other fun topics you choose. However, your newsletter doesn’t have to be a one-way street. You can use it to ask readers questions that help you learn more about them, help them feel useful, and help you hone your author business.

So, what types of things should you ask your readers and how? There are generally two categories of questions to ask your readers: ones that help you get to know them better and opinion questions that help make readers feel more part of the process (and also help your author business). Continue reading “A Survey of Your Newsletter Readers Provides Info, a Sense of Community”

Solving Pronoun Problems Can Benefit Your Writing in General

PRONOUNS (002)One of the most effective ways to obfuscate, distract and otherwise confuse your readers is to misuse pronouns. Here are some writing tips that will straighten out your pronoun use and add punch to your writing at the same time.

Overuse of Pronouns

I’m sure you’ve seen it:

He screamed and flailed at him, while his father desperately tried to pull him away.

Without some context, all we know is that there are three characters in this scene, all are male, and one of the younger pair is upset with the other. What is actually going on, and who is doing it, is quite opaque. And all because of a few little pronouns. Continue reading “Solving Pronoun Problems Can Benefit Your Writing in General”

New Amazon Rules on eBook Bonus Content

kindle stuffing
Oh, come on – don’t tell us you don’t get this!

Poor Chance Carter. Poor, poor Chance Carter. Here he is, just a guy trying to make a living at this indie author thing, and he gets caught in Amazon’s bookstuffing dragnet.

Bookstuffing works like this (don’t try this at home!): In an effort to get the largest possible payout on Kindle Unlimited borrows, certain authors have been shoveling several books into a single book file and marketing it as a single book. Sometimes they reuse the same bonus books multiple times; David Gaughran recently shared a chart that shows how an author named Cassandra Dee does it (again, please don’t try this at home!). These authors will put a come-on at the front of the file to entice readers to click to the last page of the book in order to enter a contest or get a free short story; the bots at KU then count the whole book as read. Continue reading “New Amazon Rules on eBook Bonus Content”