Tag: self-publishing

The Impact of the Dept. of Justice Investigation

The Indie Author in the world of Publishing

Last week, on March 24, 2012, we looked at a brief history of eBooks, Publishers and the Agency vs. Wholesale pricing model. You can review that post here.

Ironically,on Thursday March 29, 2012, the Huffington Post ran a story by Mark Coker the founder of Smashwords. Most of you are familiar with Smashwords as one of the first distributors to supply eBooks to retailers including, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, the Diesel eBook Store, and Baker and Taylor. Continue reading “The Impact of the Dept. of Justice Investigation”

Department of Justice v. How we make a living

I’m shifting gears a bit today. This has been bugging me for awhile. You see, I’m a #1 Bestselling Author on Amazon. Who am I? Nobody really—but that’s the point. Less than a year ago, nobody knew who I was, who Van Stone is or had never heard of The Card. Actually, to be honest, I had not heard of The Card yet either, because I hadn’t come up with the title yet.

How can that happen, you ask? Simple. The world of eBooks has allowed thousands of writers publish their material and either sink or swim in the big world of bookselling. Believe it or not—that may all be about to change. Continue reading “Department of Justice v. How we make a living”

Meet the Author: Rachel Rossano

Author Rachel Rossano

Rachel Rossano is an an avid reader and lover of books, as well as an an author of clean romantic fiction.  She usually writes fantasy novels that masquerade as historical, but she recently expanded into the science fiction genre.

She says her greatest writing strength is in her ability to write palpably real characters and relationships. “People intrigue me. Their decisions, interactions, and stories fascinate me. Running errands, I listen to the people around me and glean character and story ideas for later.”

The area she finds most challenging is plotting character conflict.  “I tend to avoid conflict in my daily life. It takes work to force it into my plots, but without it, my books would be boring reads.” Continue reading “Meet the Author: Rachel Rossano”

Helping you become a #1 Bestselling Author

Bestselling Author … Bestselling Novel … sounds good doesn’t it? A few weeks ago, I posted about reviews and their impact on ratings and readers. You can see that post here. Today, I want to discuss the elusive BESTSELLER.

When you have achieved bestseller status, it is yours for life. No one can take it away. Conveniently, Amazon changes the rankings hourly. Now, many of you might look at that as a negative but all you need is for your book to hit #1 just one time, and even if it drops out after an hour, you’ve just achieved “bestseller” status.

As with anything in our indie publishing world, you have to know the system before you play the game. First, when you uploaded and published your book, you picked five categories. These have nothing to do with how Amazon ranks your book—they’re used in keyword searches for someone browsing topics. Continue reading “Helping you become a #1 Bestselling Author”