By Shelley Sturgeon
It’s already the beginning of December. How did that happen?!?! The countdown is on! Bet many of you are thinking about:
- the number of days left for shopping, gift wrapping, baking…
- what to buy for the writers on your list
- the number of days left in the year to complete your writing and self-publishing goals for 2017
- how many days are left to submit to our Carnival of the Indies blog carnival for our next edition which will be published here on New Year’s Eve.
Whew! If you’re worn out just thinking about all of it, distract yourself for a couple of minutes by reading this week’s selection of posts from some of the best writing and self-publishing blogs on the web.
Judith Briles on The Book Shepherd
Book Acknowledgments: Who’s in Your Village? … Who Are You Going to Thank?
“One of the last items on the book publishing “to do” list is to create the Acknowledgment Page … the Thank Yous to the team that assisted you in creating your baby. These are the people who got you here … don’t ignore them. Think in the narrative … let your readers know what your team did to get your book birthed.”
Admin on Self-Publishing Advice Centre
Newsflash: PublishDrive Expands Its Ebook Publishing Operations to US – Great News for Indie Authors
“PublishDrive is announcing today the launch of a presence in the US, after securing £1.2MM funding from Credo Ventures, a venture capital firm based in the Czech Republic and Silicon Valley.”
Melinda Clayton on Indies Unlimited
Tutorial: Enabling X-Ray for Your eBooks on Amazon
“Some of you may have seen discussion board and/or Facebook posts flying around recently about X-Ray for authors. What is it?”
Deanna Cabinian on Jane Friedman
5 Things I’m Not Doing to Launch My Book—Plus What I’m Doing Instead
“The gist of all marketing advice for authors essentially boils down to: try everything and see what works.”
Michael Larsen on Nonfiction Authors Association
Creating Diverse Income Streams That Build Your Brand and Your Income by Michael Larsen
“Authors of practical nonfiction will be able to benefit more from these opportunities than storytellers, but you’re only limited by your imagination.”
Self-Publishing News You Can Use
By Amy Collins
Amazon Launches Short Story and Short Fiction Imprint
Amazon announced this week that they are launching a new imprint that will publish works of fiction between 5,000 and 20,000 words. The focus of the sales platform will be mainly Kindle at $1.99 and some will include an audio format as well. One of the ways to submit for consideration is through the Kindle Scout Program. Julia Sommerfeld, editorial director of Amazon Original Stories, said in a statement.
“As we’ve seen through the great response to work available through Kindle Singles, powerful stories can be told in a single sitting and are another wonderful outlet for writers to reach readers. We plan to introduce new storytelling experiences in the coming months.”
Links of Interest
https://kindlescout.amazon.com/submit
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/75489-amazon-publishing-launches-new-imprint.html
Photo: BigStockPhoto
X-Ray for Authors.
Have you had any feedback on the new X-Ray for Authors features launched by Amazon? I just had one of my authors use it to link to all of her glossary words (over 200 entries) and none of her work is showing up in the Kindle book despite an Amazon notification that her edits were successful. The X-ray portion of her book is now completely blank.
She has been in touch with Amazon but, as of this morning, it has not been resolved.
I’ve used it for my YA historical novel Risuko. It seems to have worked perfectly.
One thing your author may not have realized: after you’ve added all of your X-Ray notes — mine are glossary items, character names, place names, and occasional little “director’s cut” asides — you have to review and publish them.
Once you add an item, you have to go through three steps before it’s published to the Kindle file:
At the top of each item is a radio button that asks whether you want readers to see the description; you need to set that to “Yes.” Then at bottom of each item (each item!) is a little toggle that reads “Item reviewed” You need to slide that to the right — it will turn red.At that point a button in the upper-right hand of the screen that reads “Review and publish X-Ray” will turn gold. Press it. Once you’ve done that the items should all publish.
The fact that there are THREE steps that need to be taken for EACH item is a drag. But I think they want folks to be very careful with X-Ray — it could be conceivably abused in so many ways.
Also, recognize (as you may already) that Amazon doesn’t automatically push changes to an ebook out to readers’ Kindles. You have to go into your Amazon account’s Manage Your Kindle Content page (https://www.amazon.com/mn/dcw/myx.html/) and re-download the book to get the update. Kind of annoying, if you ask me!
Thank you, David, for your thorough explanation. I will find out if she went through this three-step process and let you know.
By the way, your book cover is beautiful and I want to read your book. Don’t care if it’s YA.