Celebrating Independent Authors
Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.
Hashtags are a great way to direct your post on social media towards viewers who might want to see what you have to say. Everybody knows that. But there are about 60 million hashtags out there. How can you find hashtags that will attract the right people to your post?
Hashtagify is a handy tool for finding useful hashtags. Here’s how it works. Continue reading “Finding a Better Hashtag: the Basics of Hashtagify”
In the writing community, people often suggest soliciting reviews via Goodreads, but for the new author, how may not be immediately obvious. Today, I’ll give an overview of how to use Goodreads to solicit reviews.
Generally, the best way to solicit reviews via Goodreads is through the Goodreads Groups, which are established and run by members. Many of the discussion groups have programs that allow authors to offer a free eBook copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. The programs tend to be called R4R (read for review), R2R (read to review) or Authors Seeking Reviews. If you’ve never done R4R, here are the basics. Continue reading “How to Get Reviews via Goodreads”
Love it or hate it, Amazon is always looking to try new things to benefit their customers, which of course usually benefits the sellers as well. Recently I got an email from them about a new opportunity for books sold via their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. Most of you are familiar with their “Look Inside” feature that allows potential readers to see the first few pages of a book, but this is only while on the Amazon site itself. The new feature, the Kindle Instant Preview, lets people read a sample of your book directly from your own webpage. Continue reading “Kindle Instant Preview”
A discussion on Facebook page and the painful awareness that, for a number of reasons, I have not yet finished resurfacing the foundation of my house, sparked a train of thought on writing I’d like to share with you. I know that seems a stretch but hear me out. All will be revealed.
From my previous post discussing how home repair is like editing (and the other way around), you will recall that I learned the rudiments of a few skills, the results of which are in the picture here. Continue reading “What Makes Writing Stand Out”