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

Link Of The Week- A Different Kind Of Thesaurus

Hello My Peeps!

http://www.words-to-use.com/

I love this link. This will provide you with many, many, many different ways to say things! Check it out: For “Eyes”, they provide you with lists of the following types of words!

• Adjectives
• Nouns
• Verbs
• Eye Similes
• Eyelash Similes
• Eyebrows Similes

I now have a new site that has been bookmarked for A Lot of coming use!

Link of the Week – Magic Text to Sell More books

A friend shared this blog post with me recently and, like her, I think the information is worth passing along. It comes from the Where Writers Win blog. The post discusses results found testing a variety of text used describing books featured in BookBub daily newsletters. It’s worth the read and can help when creating your own descriptive text across the mediums. Check it out.

https://writerswin.com/six-magic-phrases-you-can-use-to-sell-more-books/

Link Of The Week- Habits?

Writing is a creative process, but a very long, drawn out one to tackle. The results sometimes takes, months or years to come to fruition. How do we get there? What process to you go through to stroke your muse? Here are 12 famous authors and what they do! Enjoy.

http://jamesclear.com/daily-routines-writers