Vampires have been hot subjects in novels and films with the Twilight series, True Blood, and more young adult (YA), romance and general fiction than you can shake a stick at. Although vampires are always popular, the Next Big Thing may be…mermaids. Really? Apparently so. USA Today points to a slew of recent mermaid books,…
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Amazon Launches @author
Amazon has begun a limited beta of a new author community where readers can communicate with their favorite authors through the Amazon.com website or directly through their Kindles. @author lets readers ask questions of their favorite authors. When a reader asks a question, Amazon will tweet it to the author and post it on the…
Buy Kindle Ebooks Without a Kindle
Although Amazon will not confirm how many of their popular Kindle e-readers have been sold, the number is estimated to be in the millions. One testament to the Kindle’s popularity is that there are more than 950,000 ebook titles available for immediate download from Amazon’s Kindle store. Add to that all of the ways readers…
What Does ISBN Mean?
You have seen ISBN barcodes on book covers, but what do the numbers in an ISBN mean? Although it may appear to just be a random sequence of numbers, each portion of the ISBN provides information about the book to which it is assigned. An International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique 13-digit number…
Independently Published Author Sells One Million Kindle Ebooks
John Locke is the newest member of the “Kindle Million Club,” and the first independently published author to reach this milestone. As of June 19th, John Locke has sold 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). The Kindle Million Club recognizes authors whose books have sold over 1 million paid copies in the Kindle…
Why Many Authors Choose Pseudonyms
Most authors want the whole world to know that they have written a book, and the typical author is thrilled to have his or her name on the cover. However, some authors choose to use pseudonyms when publishing. Why do authors use pen names, instead of their own names, when publishing books? Here are some…
Find an Agent for Your Book
Having an agent can make it easier to sell your manuscript to a major publisher and, in some cases, is an absolute necessity. But how can you find an agent for your books? More importantly, how can you find the right agent? There are a number of good directories where you can find listings of…
Internet Book Order Scams
You have just received the largest order your small publishing company has ever seen, and you are excited. But this may not be the good news you think it is. In fact, you are about to get scammed. Almost every small publisher gets some version of this shipping scam tried on them. Here is how…
Avoid Clichés Like the Plague
Although clichés may express truth or convey information, they do so in a way that has been overused to the point of becoming trite: Beauty is only skin deep Cool as a cucumber Blood is thicker than water Raining cats and dogs Free as a bird Reinventing the wheel Neat as a pin Take the…
When to Use ‘I’ or ‘Me’
One of the hardest grammar questions for many people is whether to use “I” or “me” in a sentence. And what about using “myself” instead of (or in addition to) “I” or “me”? The grammar rule is that you should use “I” when the word you are using is the subject of the sentence and…