Dennis’s Comments (group member since Feb 06, 2017)

Dennis’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Perhaps you already know this but I thought I would share it anyway. You can put whole sentences in Google and Google will find every time the whole sentence appears. Great for finding things like, for instance, scientific peer reviewed journal articles.

Had a little trouble with requests going to my spam folder. If you want a copy of the YA blogger list please DM me.

For those who asked for the list these have just been added:

Boats Against the current http://boatsagainstthecurrent.net/
Books Without Any Pictures http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/po...
Chapters Pages Words http://chapterspageswords.blogspot.co...
Insane About Books http://insaneaboutbooks.blogspot.com/...
Madhatter Reads http://www.madhatterreads.com/
Once Upon a Twilight http://www.onceuponatwilight.com/p/re...
Pink Fluffy Hearts http://pinkfluffyhearts.blogspot.com/...
Ramblings on Readings http://www.ramblingsonreadings.com/re...
Rampant Readers http://rampantreaders.com/review/revi...
Readers in Wonderland http://readerswonderland.com/review-r...
Sher A Hart: Written Art http://www.sherahart.net/policies/
The Reading Cave http://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/...
The Reading Nook Reviews http://www.bookrookreviews.com/review...
Tea and Book http://teaandbook-shauni.blogspot.com...
Words We Heart https://wordsweheart.wordpress.com/re...

When we first started publishing our Hard Science Fiction we also edited all of our books so they could publish as Young Adult editions. Back then I compiled a very long list of YA bloggers. If anyone would like my list I can email it to them as a attachment, the list is way too long to post here. Finished updating it today.

Joni Meredith
editor@glyphus.com

We have used http://octagonlab.com/ for covers, they are reasonably priced and did a great job.
I agree with R.L. your second cover is great!

I know we all get so many tweets that we can't possibly see or read them all. Here is a tweet by @rickchapman53 that I got to see:

Hello @rickchapman53's 2715 followers - thank you so much for following! Wishing you all a happy Friday! >Want it🆓❓

I have never thanked my followers like that, my bad :(

Thank you Merrell R Chapman!

We submitted our first published Hard Sci Fi novel to the Midwest Book Review and although they did accept the book for consideration, they did not review it.

The Rainbow Virus

Fast forward to today: the review of The Rainbow Virus Second Edition http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/... (Of course you have to scroll down to find it, they review a lot of books) If you have had a book first accepted, then not reviewed by Midwest Book Review, go to their website, follow the procedural rules; basically all you need to do is ask someone who gave you a great review if you have their permission to submit their review to Midwest.

Here is a link to the "Publisher's Information" at the Midwest book Review:

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/inde...

As of January 2014, we have instituted a new policy especially for authors and publishers whose book passed the initial screening, but didn't make the final cut because of "too many books, not enough reviewers". These authors or publishers may submit the MBR a review from any other reviewer or review resource, as long as they have that reviewer's permission to do so. We will run the review in our monthly book review publication Reviewer's Bookwatch, under that reviewer's byline. This policy is retroactive, so if you have ever submitted a book to the Midwest Book Review in the past and it failed to achieve a review assignment from us, then this offer is open to you.

I found this list while looking for bloggers who do author interviews. We have had some wonderful connections with bloggers RE: author interviews with giveaways.

http://bit.ly/2p18HPx

Maybe sometime in the future we can coordinate and do a NavIndieWorld group at a convention. Let's keep the conversation going.

How To Fix It

Some good advice from Book Daily

http://www.bookdaily.com/authorresour...

In case you are wishing this was still your main writing obstacle.

http://anxietyink.com/2014/05/closing...

Tips from 'Being Author':
http://bit.ly/2jKy0T7

Alex wrote: "Here's the link, Dennis

http://navigatingindieworld.com/alexi..."

Thanks for this. I have time this weekend to really give it my whole attention.

Christine wrote: "Alexis,
I just read your post on the 5 apps for banner and Gif making. Thank you for posting it! It's so helpful. I can't wait to try them."

Groovy wrote: "I just read it too, Alexis. You are sooooo creative. I posted it on my FB page. People will love to know about those APPs. Thank-you!"

I have been looking for that post, I saw it one day when I was just too busy to check it out but would love it if someone could post again, "5 apps for banner and GIF making"

RL,

We did go to the IAN meeting in Denver one year and it did give us a lot of information, this was years ago when we first started out as an independent publisher.

We hired a publicist for one of our first books, it was expensive but we also learned a lot. The publicist suggested that meetings are really good to go to and said the Romance Writers of America meeting was one of the best and although it may not be your genre, it was a good meeting to go to just for general helpful information.

I also had a friend who went to a book convention in the late 80's, his booth was right next to John Grisham and they exchanged books. My friend did not do as well as Grisham, but a few years ago he needed money and sold his autographed first edition of a Time to Kill for $1000.

Securing A Literary Agent Is Bit Like To Trying To Catch The Wind. http://bit.ly/2jzUcwG

Groovy,
RE: the other side of reviews: I recently was asked to do a review and was horrified that I could only give it one star. So I wrote to the author and told them why. I was sent a mobi and either the author does not know how to use punctuation correctly or whoever produced the mobi did not know what they were doing. But they used wrong punctuation marks throughout the manuscript. I had no way of knowing why there were so many obvious errors but I do not think any work should be given to a reviewer unless it is as perfect as it can be. I know even professional proof readers never catch everything, only God is perfect. But you should never offer a book to your reviewers with such egregious errors (By the Way - Egregious is one word I really do not like and if I see it more than once when I am proofreading it is like someone is scratching their fingernails on a chalk board.)

Great article from Derek Haines:
Amazon Kindle keywords are one of the most powerful book marketing tools

Amazon is, in fact, a big retail search engine, so when potential book buyers start looking for a new book to read, they very often begin by searching.

http://bit.ly/2mQ78Dp

We also did not have time to do two events and did the NavIndieWorld one and are so glad to be part of this group. We did a similar event a couple of months ago, it took three days to show any results but we are still getting hits, Patience Is A Virtue.

SIA is also running a book event from March 31 - April 2. Does not explain or excuse, we should be supporting each other not competing.

Thanks for this post, I cut and pasted it. :0)