7 Author-Friendly Changes Bowker Could Make

Business of Writing

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigBowker

The subject of ISBNs tends to make authors anxious. Sometimes writers are defensive about why they choose not to use them or choose to use the  free ISBNs offered by CreateSpace and other retailers/distributors.

This isn’t a post debating the merit of ISBNs, although I do choose to use them myself.  Briefly, there are a few reasons for my choice.  One, I’m just old school.  Another, as a self-publisher, I like the idea of my sales being counted (just as my trad-published sales are counted).  For another, I like having my name listed as the publisher on record…not Smashwords or CreateSpace (nothing wrong with either of those guys and I use them both–just not their ISBNs).  Most recently, my publishing through IngramSpark has required me to use a personal ISBN, so it worked out well that I already have them.

That being said!  Bowker (the US agency that assigns  ISBNs) annoys the dickens out of me.   Here are some ways I believe the service could improve at Bowker.  Or, let’s call it 7 ways for Me to Love Bowker Better:Continue reading

3 Reasons Your Writing Routine Will Land You On the Floor

Motivation and the Writing Life, Uncategorized

by Colleen M. Story, @colleen_m_storydownload (3)

I was working too many hours a day. I knew it, but I had deadlines to meet. As a full-time freelance writer, it’s not like I could tell my clients I was getting too tired.

I kept going. Thirty-something years old, I wasn’t even thinking about my body. Sure, my back was a little sore when I finally shut the computer down for the night, but no pain, no gain, right?

I operated like this for months. Long hours. I still exercised—jogged several times a week and did about 30 minutes of yoga every night. I met my deadlines. But one weekend, while cleaning house, I leaned down to pick something up and lightning hit my spine.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engineBlog (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 30,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

One Reader: New and Old World:  http://ow.ly/Y7lOp @deanwesleysmith

Writers’ Consortiums and Co-ops: What They Are and How to Start One:  http://ow.ly/YaXCN  by Ursula Wong

Finding the Energy to See Our Writing Through:  http://ow.ly/YaWSs @reallucyflint

Has the Fantasy Literature Genre Become Stagnant? http://ow.ly/YaYWF by Nicholas Cockayne

5 Ways to get Unstuck:  http://ow.ly/YaWZO  @GuidedGoals               Continue reading

Introducing the Reedsy Book Editor

Tools for Writers

by Ricardo Fayet,  RicardoFayet, @reedsyhqReedsy

When starting Reedsy, our ambition was not only to connect authors with vetted, hand-picked editors, designers and marketers. As I wrote when I first introduced Reedsy on Elizabeth’s blog, “we are a technology company at heart”. We wanted to be more than a simple marketplace, we wanted to reinvent the way authors and editors work together – let’s face it, Word wasn’t made for writing books.

That’s why we’ve spent the past several months now on something that we like to call the Reedsy Book Editor. I offered a demo of the tool at the NINC conference last year, and now we are ready to make it live.Continue reading

Apple Makes it Easier to be an Affiliate

Business of Writing, Tools for Writers, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigitunes auto

Although I don’t make a fortune as an affiliate with Amazon and Apple, so far it’s proven to be reliable income.  And it’s  fairly passive income.

The only problem is that it’s something of a hassle.  You run your links through the retailer’s affiliate URL link-maker, it assigns your affiliate code for credit, and then if someone clicks on your link, you make a commission from whatever they buy on the site during that shopping session. I do keep my affiliate links in a document so that I can just copy/paste them without having to run through the link-maker again, but it’s still a bit of a time suck.  We also have to be careful to follow the retailers’ terms and conditions for use and be sure to put a disclosure on our site when we use these links.Continue reading

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