Category: Staff Articles

Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.

Help! Someone else is selling my book!

Dont-Panic1While taking a short break from obsessively Googling your name and checking your KDP dashboard, you wander over to search for your book on Amazon. Imagine your surprise when – gasp – you see two listings. Or three listings. Or even more! Someone named IHeartBooks is selling your paperback on Amazon! Not only that, but – horror of horrors – they’re charging more than you are. Or maybe less than you are. Or maybe you’re one of those authors who’s stumbled across a copy of your paperback selling on Amazon for $6,789 or some such outrageous price.

The stinkin’ pirates! You should immediately fire off a DMCA takedown notice to have your book removed. Shouldn’t you? Continue reading “Help! Someone else is selling my book!”

Is It Creation or Appropriation?

connect with Indies Unlimited on Facebook hands-543593_960_720Recently Hal Niedzviecji, chief editor of Write Magazine, the quarterly published by the Writers Union of Canada, was pressured to resign as a result of his editorial, “Win Appropriation Prize”. His take was that there ought to be no barriers to writing about those we do not “know” and that readers would be the ones to take us to task if we cross the line.

The furor that resulted prompted me to explore the topic of cultural appropriation in writing. It’s a tricky one and the opinions run the gamut from “never” to “anything goes”. Continue reading “Is It Creation or Appropriation?”

Quote Me on This: Quotation Marks 101

quotation marks letters-1122421_960_720Here at Indies Unlimited, we often get questions about the knottier issues of writing. Recently, Lynne Cantwell discussed the use of italics; today we’ll talk about quotes. In my editing work, I use the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS), and that is my source for this information on using quotes.

The main thing to remember is that quotation marks (as all punctuation) are used as visual clues to your readers. It sends a signal to your readers about the context of what they are reading, and as such, they are necessary and invaluable to convey what you, the writer, want to convey. Imagine if you did not use quotation marks (or punctuation) in your writing. Continue reading “Quote Me on This: Quotation Marks 101”

Vanity, Predatory, Indie, Trad: What Does that Mean Again?

publishing types type-1161953_960_720The assignment I volunteered for seemed simple at first. Take four terms to describe different publishing entities and explain the differences.

1)      Vanity Press

2)      Predatory Publisher

3)      Small Indie Press

4)      Traditional (or Trad) Publisher

Let’s strike the Small from Small Indie Press. It’s kind of redundant. Indie Press is good enough.

The reason for the article is primarily to have something to point to when someone asks certain kinds of questions to at least establish a foundation for further discussion. Five or six years ago, this conversation would have gone something like this: Continue reading “Vanity, Predatory, Indie, Trad: What Does that Mean Again?”