Link Of The Week- Self Publishing Authors Podcast

They are called the SPA (Self Publishing Authors) Girls, and let me tell you, they know their stuff! The podcasts are free and informative with a ton of humor thrown in. This business can be overwhelming- they sift through the cacophony to find the true bits of guidance we all need. Enjoy listening and learning from interviews with Mark Dawson, Roxanne St. Claire, Brian Meeks and more!

http://www.selfpublishingauthorspodcast.com/

 

 

They also have a book that is fantastic! Here’s the link for that as a bonus-

https://goo.gl/rB5ByH

 

Link of the Week – Kindle and Clickfarms, WTH?

Clickfarm employee

I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. As a consumer, I love the ease of shopping with them. As an author, I am in no way happy with their changing book-selling landscape, their elusive algorithms, the near impossible discoverability on their search engines, and how difficult it is to make sure I’m getting paid correctly. I’m very much aware of pirate sites and scammers hanging around on Amazon and stealing MY money. And I am aware Kindle Unlimited is flawed. But I had no idea just HOW flawed. I have been apparently (and blissfully) clueless of scammers that are also authors. Clueless of clickfarms. Clueless of the unethical manipulations of popular Amazon lists—the coveted lists that also help spread author names and titles to more Amazon readers. This not only affects hard-working (starving) authors, it affects readers, too. So why isn’t Amazon doing anything about it?

Read more (in detail) here on this post by David Gaughran and what we can do to make changes (she says with only a shred of hope).

https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/scammers-break-the-kindle-store/

Link Of The Week- FaceBook Infringes On Publicity Rights

 

This is a link to an article about FB’s policy of using well known artists’ names in other people’s ads. Specifically as advertising keywords. This is something you should be aware of because Amazon has similar issues. So far, it looks like their stable of lawyers are keeping things at bay…….

Let me know what you think. I’m very curious!

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2017/01/selling-artist-names-as-keywords-facebooks-misappropriation-problem-.html

Link of the Week – Amazon’s Buy Button (and it sucks)

So Amazon has quietly made more changes in the selling of books. One that seems to benefit everyone but the author. Third-party sellers can now “win” the Buy Box. What does that mean? It means this seller would be listed as the default for the Buy Button. It means that these third-party

Book Burn Open Knowledge Hot Fire Paper Old

sellers can mark books down to whatever price they want (so long as the meet some Amazon criteria…haha).  It also means that slices into any profit the author MIGHT make. I say might because there are various ways these third-party sellers can get their hands on “new” copies that would cut the author completely out of the sale. And it could mean that potential customers may only have a third-party seller as a choice to buy from.

This went into effect back in March and a buzz about it was made last month, but it has only been recently that authors have noticed and/or felt the pinch.

To read more about it, check out the links below to articles from Publisher’s Weekly and Huffington Post (with visuals). Definitely worth the read.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/73542-new-amazon-buy-button-program-draws-ire-of-publishers-authors.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/590b309be4b05279d4edc31f

Link of the Week – Amazon and Third-party Booksellers

Why does it seem like Amazon is anti-author? Here is an interesting link to news from The Author’s Guild that reports on Amazon’s newest policy allowing third-party booksellers to claim featured “buy boxes” and how this can potentially hurt publishers and authors.

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/amazons-taking-another-bite-publishing-pie/

Link of the Week – Persona Poem

One of my Ruby sisters, Shelley Coriell, has an awesome and simple characterization trick which really hones in on a character’s goal/motivation/conflict. The eight-line Persona Poem is a quick exercise meant to draw out your characters and make them dimensional, no rhyming necessary. I’d never heard of this technique and just had to share it on MuseTracks.

I think you’ll find this as handy as I do.

Check out the blog post on The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood.

http://www.rubyslipperedsisterhood.com/character-the-heart-of-great-story/

 

Link of the Week – Oatmeal

I like snark. I’m a snarky person. People fear my snark. Naw, just kidding. They either roll their eyes, are clueless, or engage in a snark war.

So it’s no wonder that this week’s link is a bit on the snarky side. If you like snark, you might like The Oatmeal, too. It’s a silly site with comics that are fun, sometimes tasteless, and at weirdly educational.

Check out the link to the comics on grammar.  You just might learn the difference between who and whom.

http://theoatmeal.com/tag/grammar