Category: Staff Articles

Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.

Amazon Suspends Authors! Promo Sites Closing Down! How to Deal With These Calamities

Dont-Panic1A couple of major and somewhat jarring events took place in our self-publishing community recently. An author had her books banned because Amazon detected a one day increase of her page-views from a couple of hundred to 25,000. They’re investigating the situation, but the author’s books have been withdrawn for sale and her agreement with KDP has been terminated.

In other news, Pixel of Ink, one of the major eBook promotion sites, shut its virtual doors. Many of the promotion sites we use have been in contravention of Amazon’s terms of service for some time. Amazon is now taking measures to make them comply or they’ll cease doing affiliate business with them.

Tons of bandwidth has been devoted to discussing these two topics. Authors, readers, and promoters all have opinions. I’ve put together a list of things you should be doing to deal with these situations. Continue reading “Amazon Suspends Authors! Promo Sites Closing Down! How to Deal With These Calamities”

Is Editing a Book Like Home Repair?

editing and home improvementMy mind wanders when I work at something manual. And often it wanders in the direction of writing. So perhaps it’s not surprising that when I was working on a house repair, it occurred to me that the process could be compared to editing.

Our little cottage was built in 1883. The previous owners had done some repair to the brick, much of it badly. Restoring it to its original state was out of the question.  Leaving it unattended was also out of the question unless we wanted it to fall down around our ears. Well, maybe not quite, but you get the picture. Continue reading “Is Editing a Book Like Home Repair?”

TaleHunt: Flash Fiction on the Go

talehuntlogoIf you’re looking to get a little writing practice in while on the go, but tweets are too short for you, maybe TaleHunt will fit the bill.

TaleHunt is a smartphone app available for Apple and Android devices. (The developers are working on a version for Windows phones.) It’s free to download and install. I didn’t see any ads or in-app purchase options – although I presume one or the other, or both, will be coming eventually.

The app allows you to write and post 250-character stories – not words, characters – which other users can then read and vote on. The developers are billing it as the first dedicated flash fiction app. It debuted in January and has about 10,000 users right now. Continue reading “TaleHunt: Flash Fiction on the Go”

New Algorithm Alters What You See in Your Facebook News Feed

Increase Facebook interactionsWell, there you have it. Facebook is too big. On June 29, 2016, Facebook admitted that it is officially too big for the typical consumer to acquire meaningful information. So what do they do? They change the News Feed Algorithm, of course.

As always, people get in a tizzy when they hear about a change. “No one is going to see my content!” they scream. Remember, hardly anyone sees your content anyway. Here’s the low down on the newest changes. In the past, Facebook opened up the News Feed to all the big boys—The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and any other media company that strived to be a player. This meant that you had tons of content in your News Feed that you could care less about. The more of these “players” in your feed, the less you saw the content you really cared about. I don’t know about you, but if I want “news” I would go to my favorite news source, not Facebook. Continue reading “New Algorithm Alters What You See in Your Facebook News Feed”