What? Facebook Changes That Might Help?

Facebook makes changes for the positiveIs Facebook making changes for the better?

This past week, Facebook altered a few items that might actually help users rather than the attract the almighty dollar.

Let’s start with ads. Did you know that you could hide certain ads? If you keep seeing ads that annoy you or don’t apply to you, you can tell Facebook that it’s inappropriate. When you hover over the ad you’ll see a small “x” in the upper right-hand. Click the “x” and you’ll view a general list of reasons you might not like the ad. Select whichever applies and Facebook will display another list to choose a more specific explanation of why you do not like the ad. Presto, no more ads from that brand. Continue reading “What? Facebook Changes That Might Help?”

LynneQuisition: Rachel Thompson

Interviews by Lynne CantwellYou may know Rachel Thompson best as RachelintheOC on Twitter, or you may know her through her social media consulting firm, Bad Redhead Media. But Rachel is also an award-winning indie author. She has written two humor books, as well as a book of poems and essays about sexual abuse called Broken Pieces. Rachel has graciously consented to take a seat in the comfy chair and tell us about how she uses activism in connection with her work. Continue reading “LynneQuisition: Rachel Thompson”

LynneQuisition: Authorly.com

Interviews by Lynne CantwellI keep seeing these ads on Facebook, enticing me to make an app, and I keep thinking it might be kind of cool to be one. Wouldn’t it be neat for my fans to be able to pull me up on their smartphones, so they can tell all their friends about me?

But the app builders I’ve seen all seem to be aimed at brick-and-mortar businesses, or else they want to include just a bio and a list of your books. And then there’s the cost. One place I saw charges for uploading your app to places like iTunes – which would seem to be the whole point of the exercise, you know? – as well as a monthly hosting fee.

Authorly.com is an app-building service that is aimed at indie authors. Devika Soni with Authorly has agreed to take a seat in the comfy chair and answer a few questions for us. Continue reading “LynneQuisition: Authorly.com”

Kindle Unlimited

KindleUnlimitedYou’d have to have been living under a rock for the past week (or on vacation somewhere where there’s no internet) to have missed Amazon’s big news about its newest feature, Kindle Unlimited.

For the low, low price of $9.99 a month, Amazon.com will let readers download an unlimited number of ebooks and audiobooks from its special Kindle Unlimited store. (Those of you who are forced, by geographical happenstance, into shopping from Amazon’s other storefronts are out of luck. Sorry about that.) And this month, Amazon’s making the service free, so everyone can try it out.

This would seem to be a boon for the voracious reader. One trad-pubbed novel can set you back $9.99 or more, and a single audiobook costs easily twice that. The drawback for readers, though, is that Big 5 books are severely under-represented in the KU store. So people who pick books based on the bestseller lists are going to be disappointed. There are other factors limiting reader interest in KU, but I’d rather talk today about what this means for indie authors. Continue reading “Kindle Unlimited”