Social Media

Social media what a perplexing place.

When everything works like a machine, it gives you a place for people to get to know you and to promote your wares. But when the well-oiled machine gets a kink in its armor, what do you do?

There are no quick answers.

Get a cup of coffee. Call a friend and see if they can work you through it. But if that does not work, you have to investigate it yourself and this does not always work well.

The other day I got an instant message. I thought I had signed out of this type of email-message system so I did what I did before to not participate in it.

However, this also said I no longer was in a certain Facebook program. I checked the system out and it seemed to work fine, but then again there were some changes in the way the program appeared. Although I seldom use this communicating system, you still want it to work when necessary.

Then a couple of days later I got the answer. Facebook changed the way the program operates. I would sure like to know why they keep changing their system.

Anyway, all I know is busy people do not need to spend time readjusting what they thought was perfected.

This experience reminded me of what happened last summer when I got locked out of Facebook. I used a different devise to log into it, thus Facebook would not let me onto my page. This was exasperating since I had used this same device before and did not have this problem.

In order to gain access, Facebook required me to look through a series of friends’ photos. Have you ever tried to identify past pictures of friends? Honesty, I did not know them when they were two, twenty, etc. I failed the test and tried three times with the same result – one failure was because I took too long.

I was about to scream and sipping a cup of coffee did not help this time then a dear friend found some links which enabled me to change my password, and I was back on it like I never left. Here they are http://www.facebook.com/KnownIssues?v=app_4949752878  Help Center Home http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=749  Login Bugs

Try these links but whatever you do change your password. Once you do that, you will get back into Facebook.

Well, my coffee sits beside my desk. I am ready to take a sip, watch what pops up next and hope to work through this perplexing networking system. God bless.

Changes to Create Space Pro Plan

If you have books enrolled in create Space’s pro plan, you probably got this email a few days ago:

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As a member with Pro Plan, we’re emailing to let you know that Pro Plan is being discontinued  as of January 18, 2012. We’re now offering industry-leading royalties, low costs on copies of your books and improved distribution options to all our members, free of charge.

Here’s how you are impacted:

• The availability of your title(s) through our free Standard Distribution channels, including Amazon.com and CreateSpace eStore, will remain unchanged.
• If you purchased Pro Plan for any of your titles, the availability of those titles through Expanded Distribution channels will remain unchanged.  You have the option to change enrollment in Expanded Distribution channels at no charge. To make your selections, go to your Project Homepage, click Channels, select your Expanded Distribution channels, and hit Save.
• You’ll continue to receive the benefit of improved royalty payouts due to lower unit costs on orders for all your titles.

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What about the expanded distribution? It’s now only 25$ with no impact on your book pricing – except that to qualify for it you ahve to price your book higher. Huh?)

Here’s what I mean. With the new changes, I was able to price Legacy of Ghosts and Ties of blood at $7.99 each, however to keep Shades of Gray available in the “expanded” channels (which as far as I know have sold 0) I have to leave it priced at $10. I will probably take it out of the expanded channels and drop the price.

If you don’t have any pro books, all this means to you is that you can now price your books lower and earn the same royalty - or leave them as are for a higher royalty – and copies you order yourself should be cheaper.

If you don’t have a the pro option on your books, did you notice a significant change in the price options/royalties in your book? If you did have the pro option, what did you think of it? Are the expanded channels worth the cost and the higher price tag on your books?

 

Keep Writing

When I was a young writer the highly recommended quality of an author I heard most often was to write every day; and was lead to believe that if I didn’t do this, then I was somehow unworthy of the title of writer or author. I think one of these authors’s referred to those who didn’t practice their writing craft everyday as a writing hobbyist. I started to wonder if these authors who demand that others write everyday have more time on their hands, although I’ve noticed that many are single, childless, or men.

After High School, and before I got my “first real job” that didn’t include baby-sitting, cleaning the home of a homebound hoader, helping to put a paraplegic neighbor to bed so that they could save money on the nursing service, mowing lawns or shoveling walks of the elderly, or selling my mother’s crafts door to door, I had eight to thirteen hours to write. The thirteen hours might sound bad, but I should mention that I had a bad case of insomnia during this time and was lucky to get four hours of sleep a day.

My “real job” took up most of the day and it wasn’t so easy to find the hours I wanted to spend writing, but I found ways around it. The writing everyday was still an easy task because there were no demands on my time. But when I started a family with my hubby and began helping around the ranch, writing time became non-existent. An hour here, ten minutes there. Writing mothers will recognize the pattern.

I’m certain that a consistent time to write isn’t going to happen until both girls are in school and even then it’s subject to change with my husband’s swing shift schedule. So I’ve come up with two new aims since writing everyday isn’t a feasible goal for me.

1. Keep writing. Writing is my sanctuary from the stresses of the day. Writing is where my thoughts play out on the page. Writing is an act of creation, where worlds form, where characters play and live. Writing keeps me sane.

2. Do what you can do. No one can really ask more than that of anyone. If I can’t write for a day or a week, I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. If all I can manage is ten minutes a day, then I better be ready when that ten minutes comes.

What are some writing myths you have been told that you’ve learned are not practical for you?

Having Your Book On Amazon Helps Get the Stolen Books Removed Faster

Since I have now been through this issue twice, I have come to the conclusion that Amazon is faster about removing books if your books are already up on their site.  I didn’t get an email but was checking Amazon today just to see if the 1-star reviews had transfered to my legit books (because I did have them transfer to one of my romances last year).  Then I found that the stolen books were gone. 

Last year Amazon removed the stolen books that I already had on their site (Falling In Love With Her Husband and A Chance in Time).  They didn’t remove the book I only had on Smashwords and its channels (The Path to Christmas) until I got the lawyer to call them.  This year, I had the four Amanda Winters books already on Amazon, and Amazon removed them (I reported the stolen ones on Sunday). 

From this, I conclude they will respond better to copyright infringement if your books are already on their site.

Do You Have a Linked “Table of Contents” for your Kindle Books?

This morning, I got a message from a KDP author who told me they got this message in their inbox:

Dear Publisher,

During a quality assurance review of your title, we have found the following issue(s):

Table of contents has a linking issue. On clicking Goto-> Table of Contents option in the menu, an error message saying “Missing Table of Contents” appears.

Please make the necessary corrections to the title and republish it.

If you have further questions, you may write to us by visiting this page:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/contact-us/

Please be sure to reference your ticket number when contacting us.

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I’m passing this along to suggest that those of you who do not have a linked Table of Contents to do so.  I’ll be working on doing this with my books. 

Make sure you have a linked TOC and make sure it is labeled “Table of Contents” because the author who received this email put “Chapters” instead of “Table of Contents”, and even though it was linked, Amazon didn’t accept it.  So watch the way you word it. 

If anyone doesn’t know how to contact Amazon, go the your KDP dashboard, go to “Help” (top  right of the page), scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen, to the left is “Contact Us”.