Why free or discounted ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) are a bad idea   Free and Discounted ISBNs An ISBN is a code that tells several things; among those things is who bought the code. The owner of the code is the person or business who will be contacted when a purchase is desired or, in the case of Sasha Black, a resource to go to when there is a dispute about book ownership. More about Sasha’s situation in a bit. On the chance that you don’t know what an ISBN is for or what it looks like, it’s the numeric code that goes above the barcode on the back of your book and it’s used by publishers, booksellers, libraries, …

How do you entice readers to give you their email? Through one or more reader magnets. That’s a good start, but how do you keep them coming back to see what’s new on your website? The answer is that you need to create a reader magnet initially, then develop a system that keeps readers engaged. This can be fairly straightforward for non-fiction writers, but fiction writers may scratch their heads and come up blank. Fiction author Lorena Angell does an excellent job of keeping her readers engaged and begging her for more. To explain how she does this, let me share a bit more about her books. Lorena writes a young-adult fantasy series called “The Unaltered”, and in each book …

Finding keywords to enter for Amazon’s keyword choices is a challenge for many writers. Writers generally fall into one of three camps when it comes to keywords. 1. Either they don’t fill in anything at all for keyword selection because it’s not required to do so by Amazon and they haven’t a clue what kind of information to enter. 2. They do their best to fill in something. Their choices are guesswork . . . and forget about keyword phrases, that’s far outside their knowledge base. 3. Then there are those who know what to do and their books rank well because of this. If you find yourself resonating with one of the first two camps, you’re among the majority. …

Crowdfunding For Writers Yes, sometimes there is such a thing as the kindness of strangers. It’s called crowdfunding. So how does crowdfunding work? You ask for money in a spellbinding way (or as close as you can get to that effect) and then people give you money to pay for all the things you may need for your book or eBook, such as editing services, cover art, purchasing an ISBN, etc. One person may give you a dollar or two, another throws $50 your way, and yet another may give you thousands. The sum of all these individuals forms the crowd. I think you get the funding part. I’ve highlighted the three sites I deem most writer-friendly and then go …