Link Of The Week-EVAN Your IT Guy!!!

Holy cow! I am so glad I found this week’s link! It is something every writer, every small business owner needs.

https://www.evanyouritguy.com/

How many times have you found your computer running slow, acting funny, not talking to your printer, not able to access email, and on and on and on……. I have found the solution!

 

EVAN is a network of IT professionals ready to provide on-demand help with your computer needs.

SECURITY

EVAN’s top priority is to provide peace of mind to its customers.

RELIABILITY

EVAN is always available, 24/7.

TRANSPARENCY

 Honesty and openness are at the top of our list. Nothing to hide, ever.

SPEED

 The faster we fix it, the faster our customers can get back to work.

Link Of The Week For Purists!

Link Of The Week- Weather Watch

As writers, we often need to know things about the weather for our books. My first published one talked about an “Ice Tsunami”. I had never heard of that phenomena, but I knew I wanted to put it in.

This past week and a half has had weather on all of our minds with Hurricane Harvey. Jenn and I are both proud native Texans and are horrified at the loss our great state has incurred. Now, we have Hurricane Irma barreling down on islands in the Caribbean and will slam into Florida soon. After that? The models have conflicting reports.

Here’s a place for great research and current weather happenings! Stay safe.

https://weather.com/

Link of the Week – Clearing a Building

Whether for your own personal knowledge or for authors who write suspense, time travel, fantasy, sci-fi, military, and the like, today’s link is detailed post on how to clear your home or other structure of intruders. It’s from one of my favorite blogs, The Art of Manliness. The post talks about safety and gives you the best chances for survival, including how to hold your weapon, the best weapon of choice, how to utilize decor to your advantage, and the tactics used for clearing stairs, halls, corners, and rooms with closed doors.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/07/12/safely-clear-home/

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