Category: Staff Articles

Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.

The Double Shot. (for Louis L’Amour)

The man came into the border town at dawn.  He sat tall in his saddle, and he was a tall man.  A handful of inches over six feet, but slim and wiry.  He was some dirty, and a week’s worth of stubble smudged his rawboned face.  Behind him, the desert heat was building and the red sun was rising like a phoenix.  It had been a hard ride, but Thane Johnson was a man used to hardship.

He sprang from the saddle and threw his reins over the strangest looking hitching post he had ever seen.  Looking up and down the quiet street, he realized that it wasn’t just the hitching post.  This was the strangest town he had ever seen.  And he had seen many. Continue reading “The Double Shot. (for Louis L’Amour)”

Custom Facebook URLs

Wow.  One of the most common…flubs, for lack of a better word…that I see is a Facebook author page with a discombobulated URL.  I must see at least one or two a day.  “Come check out my page!” they’ll say to me, presenting me with a link that looks like “http://www.facebook.com/pages/Judy-the-author/260458930631195”   Hey, Judy, guess what?  No one’s going to remember how to get to your author page with a link like that.

Don’t feel badly, authors aren’t the only ones who fall into this — lots of folks with “Business” and other kinds of pages do as well.   And guess what?  There is something you can do about it.

Continue reading “Custom Facebook URLs”

The Indies Unlimited Holiday Bleg

I launched Indies Unlimited in October, and have done my best to bring high-quality infotainment to millions of people (as far as you know) from all corners of the globe. Everybody knows you just can’t get this kind of weapons-grade blogging on any street corner, and I’m sure you guys and gals are all wondering what to do to repay old Uncle Steve during this season of giving. That’s the kind of fantasy world I live in. Continue reading “The Indies Unlimited Holiday Bleg”

Book Signing Blues – Part 2

In part 1, we established that you are an author and not a salesman. Writing a book is different from selling a book.

In person.

At a book signing event.

You wonder how I presume to tell you how to conduct a book signing when I’ve never had one myself. First, I have been in the vicinity of book signings before, and by “in the vicinity,” I mean I was one of those people cutting your table a wide berth as if you were selling dog-poop kebabs. So, I know why people don’t come up to you and engage you.  Second, I’ve had most of a bottle of cough syrup now and this all makes perfect sense to me, so try to keep up. Continue reading “Book Signing Blues – Part 2”