Inventing Reality Editing Service

How to purchase an ISBN for your book

Every book that is printed for sale needs an International Standard Book Number, aka an ISBN. This is a 13-digit number given to each book; no two books have the same ISBN. You can find it near the barcode on the book’s back cover and also on the title page.

ISBNs used to be 10 digits long, but since 2007, all are 13-digits long.

To sell your book, you must have an ISBN. All paper, audio and ebooks should have an ISBN so retailers can more easily track book inventory. The advantage to you as an author is that an ISBN allows book ellers or anyone doing an online search to quickly find your book.

If you a print a book that isn’t for sale – such as a gift for family members or as a free giveaway – you don’t need an ISBN. Should you later change your mind and decide you want to sell the book and have bookstores or online sites distribute your book, you always can go back and get an ISBN.

There are three ways to get an ISBN for your book:
• Buy one online from Bowker, the official ISBN Agency for the United States and its territories (this means you are the book’s publisher).
• Allow the self-publishing company to buy one for you (they then become the publisher).
• Buy elsewhere – but while the cost may be less expensive than Bowker, most self-publishing companies won’t accept these ISBNs, and so you end up buying from Bowker anyway or allowing the self-publishing company to be your publisher.

The least expensive option is to let the self-publishing company purchase an ISBN for you; typically this is free. It also means that KindleDP, Lulu.com or whoever your self-publishing company is will be listed on your book as the publisher. Alternatively, Bowker sells them for $125 each, but you can buy as many as 10 for $250, at least as of this blog’s publication.

You’ll need to include the ISBN in two spots on your book, First, it must be placed on your title page. Secondly, it needs to be next to the barcode that goes on your back cover. Usually you don’t need to worry about getting the ISBN on the barcode because the self-publishing company will take care of that for you.

As a final note, you typically don’t need to purchase a barcode for your book when buying an ISBN. Most self-publishing companies create the barcode for you at no expense.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Denver, Colorado, or a small town like Dewey Beach, Delaware, I can provide that second eye.

Excuse me, er… Mam vs. ma’am

Sometimes an apostrophe can make all of the difference. So it is with these words.

“Ma’am” is the correct spelling of the polite address of a woman, as in “Thank you for the change, ma’am.”

“Mam” refers to a member of a Mayan people of southwestern Guatemala or to the language they speak.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like St. Louis, Missouri, or a small town like Cheesequake, New Jersey, I can provide that second eye.

When exposition is necessary in a story

Of course, sometimes exposition is necessary for expediency’s sake. But it should appear sparingly. A quick sentence noting some historical event or a common trait of an alien species is fine. After all, on that rare occasion, showing rather than telling would add far too much length to a story. If falling into this situation, remember to only include just the amount of exposition that is needed to move the story forward.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like San Diego, California, or a small town like Eek, Arkansas, I can provide that second eye.

Create a riveting opener for your story

A vital part of your story is the opening lines, also known as the inciting incident. In this section of your story, we learn who the main character is, the central problem facing him and a little about the setting.

For example, in the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “The Doomsday Machine” (written by Norman Spinrad), the opening section reveals that Captain Kirk (the main character) is trying to determine what destroyed another starship, which in turn likely poses a threat to his own ship (the central problem), while in deep space, specifically near solar system L-374 (setting).

If the inciting incident fails to be interesting, the audience almost certainly will stop reading or watching. Some writers pay so much attention to this section of the story that it’s far more interesting than the rest of the story – yet despite diminishing returns, readers or television viewers keep on with the tale just because the opening was so gripping.

When writing the opening of your story, follow these guidelines:
• Start the story in media res, or “in the middle” - “The Doomsday Machine” doesn’t start with the starship Kirk is looking for engaged in the battle that results in its destruction. That would delay us from meeting the main character and result in less dramatic tension. Dispensing with the story’s background and starting “in the middle” has been a time-honored way of telling stories since Homer’s “The Iliad”.
• Introduce a crisis that affects the main character - This jolt sets the story in motion. For readers, finding out how this problem will be resolved is the reason to keep turning the page. In “The Doomsday Machine,” Kirk’s capable friend is in charge of the destroyed starship; if something can destroy his friend’s ship, then he knows he’s also in trouble.
• Present a “challenge of the unknown” - That your main character faces something thought impossible is fundamental in science fiction plots. The exoticness of an alien locale or an extrapolation of known science is part of what brings many people to this genre. In “The Doomsday Machine”, this exotic unknown is some force that can wreak havoc upon starships, the very device our future Earth depends upon to protect it.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Minneapolis, Minnesota, or a small town like Nothing, Arizona, I can provide that second eye.

Thanks to Chapter 2 for hosting novel reading!

A special thanks to Chapter 2 bookstore, which hosted my book reading of Windmill on Saturday afternoon, and to all those who attended. I read the novel’s Prologue and Chapter 1 (In fact, one person in attendance said she read Chapter 2 in anticipation of me reading Chapter 1!). Windmill tells the story of Carl Steinar and his sons, Peter and Lyle, who for 15 years have maintained a tenuous balance keeping together their family and farm on the western plains of Nebraska. Like blades in a well-oiled windmill, each works in harmony with the other. But when Abbie Blaire, the new reporter in town comes to write a story about them, a monkey wrench is thrown into their perfect machine: She is the spitting image of the wife and mother the Steinar men lost years ago. Windmill is available for sale at Chapter 2 bookstore, which is independently owned and located in beautiful downtown Hudson.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Scranton, Pennsylvania, or a small town like Funk, Ohio, I can provide that second eye.

Five quotations about writing as self-discovery

“I knew as I wrote them (journals) that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me.” – Colleen Wainwright, “communicatrix”

“Writing takes you into a confrontation of self.” – Gene Roddenberry, television producer and writer

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” – Cyril Connolly

“If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages.” – Elaine Liner, “We Got Naked, Now What”

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.” – George Bernard Shaw, playwright

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Tampa, Florida, or a small town like Deadhorse, Alaska, I can provide that second eye.

Promote your book by using Facebook

If you don’t yet have a Facebook page to promote your book(s), you should give serious consideration to getting one. Facebook is the largest social networking site on the globe. Everyone on Facebook has a page on which they can post updates, photos and videos about their life. A page can be set up so that only “friends” (and you get to approve who is your friend) or anyone can see it. The social networking site offers an excellent way to reach potential readers.

To promote your book via Facebook, you’ll have to begin by setting up your personal page. It’s quite easy to do, and Facebook takes you through the entire process with a step-by-step tutorial. It’s also free to join.

Once you set up your personal page, you then can create a page just about your book. This page won’t contain all of those updates, photos and videos about your kids and trip to Mexico that you’ll soon be posting on your personal page.

To set up your business page, you should have jpegs on hand of your book’s cover and some vertical photo that might be used as your “cover.” The book cover will serve as your profile picture. The vertical cover photo could be of you at a book signing, a photo related to what your book is about (for example, a spacecraft orbiting the earth if your book is about why we should spend more money on space exploration), or a close-up of the book cover.

You’ll also want to write a description of your book in the “About” section.” This description essentially can be what you’ve placed on your back cover blurb or the home page of your website. Also, there is a spot where you’ll be able to place links to your website and blog, so be sure to do that.

What to post on Facebook? Anything that you might blog. Given this, I essentially post what I write for my Twitter feeds (which are just links to my blog) on Facebook. This may sound redundant, but not everyone on Facebook uses Twitter and vice versa. You’re just covering your bases.

To make Facebook truly useful, you’ll need to get “friends” to maximize the number of people who view your page and will potentially read your book Once you get friends then you can ask them to “like” your business page. Each time you make a post on the Facebook page for your book, it will go out to a “wall” where anyone who “likes” your page can read what you wrote (along with what all of their other friends wrote).

How do you get “friends”? You have to ask them to be your friend via Facebook (it’s a simple click or two of a button). Look for the following people on Facebook to be your friends:
• Family
• Friends (Makes sense, doesn’t it?)
• Colleagues past and present
• Former classmates (high school and college)
• Friends of lots of your friends (You may not know them personally, but you do have a lot in common!)
• Pages on related subjects and “like” or “friend” them (If you’re book is about coffee, seek out coffeehouses.)

All of your posts show up on each of your friends’ walls, so hopefully others who are not friends will take an interest in your page.

Some savvy Facebook users reduce some of this work simply by making their personal page their book page. If you do this, however, you’re counting on people to buy a book by an author rather than buying a book about a specific subject or from a specific genre. Since you’re a new author, you probably don’t yet have much name recognition to generate many book sales. People will come to you because of the book’s genre and subject matter, not because you wrote it.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Miami, Florida, or a small town like Normal, Illinois, I can provide that second eye.

Don’t get hung up on watching book sales stats

Whenever you self publish a book, you’ll have the opportunity to track sales, or see how many books you’ve sold. You may have to go to a couple of different web pages to do this, though, if you sell a book at both KindleDP and Smashwords. Be aware of where these pages are and check them out – but don’t obsess over the numbers.

If you were an internationally-known author whose books regularly made the bestsellers list, you’d have an agent who watched those numbers for you. As an indie author, your numbers may not change significantly (if at all) for a few days at a time.

While knowing the total number of books you’ve sold is interesting, put the information to good use by seeing what promotional efforts result in sales. Sales numbers may not always be easy to correlate to a specific effort, but over time you can make some generalizations.

A personal example: Watching sales of four published works for more than 18 months, I’ve found that when a blogger reviews or features one of my books, its sales go up. They also jump (not surprisingly) between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Book readings move a couple of books as well. Radio interviews on a show targeted at those interested in the arts always leads to book sales, much more so than when newspaper articles appear about the book. However, if the newspaper article mentions one of my book readings that’s coming up, the host book store typically sells a few more of my titles. What conclusions can I draw from this? The more I target my marketing to specific audiences who would be interested in my book rather than a general, albeit large, audience, the better my book sales. Knowing this helps shape my promotional efforts for future books.

There’s one other good reason to track sales: You want to ensure your royalties match what is paid out to you. Though such problems are rare, they do occur.

In any case, refrain from checking out your book sales stats every few hours let alone from day to day, especially if you’ve published only one or two books. Your time will be more effectively spent promoting your books – or penning your next one!

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Seattle, Washington, or a small town like Uncertain, Texas, I can provide that second eye.

Seduced by wrong word? Sensuous vs. sensual

What’s the difference between an enjoyable afternoon of wine tasting and a night of artful seduction over wine? One is “sensuous” and the other is “sensual.”

“Sensuous” means to appeal to the senses or to have strong sensory appeal, as in The Klingon found the Grapok sauce sensuous.

“Sensual” pertains to fleshly or sexual appeal, as in The Klingon warrior found B’etor’s ample bosom quite sensual.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Cleveland, Ohio, or a small town like Roachtown, Illinois, I can provide that second eye.

What if I edit out too much exposition?

One dilemma that novice writers often run into when writing a new draft of their story is a fear of cutting too much exposition. It’s an unfounded fear.

You probably can’t cut enough exposition. No story should include writing that slows the forward movement of plot, amounts to lecturing the reader or forcing him to read an encyclopedia entry or violates viewpoint.

The real dilemma facing the writer is that he hasn’t fully fleshed out a scene. If the reader doesn’t have enough information to understand the story, then the author isn’t fully showing us the scene. Telling us what needs to be shown is just cutting corners.

Sometimes the issue is that the writer doesn’t have enough faith in his own writing or in his readers. The reader probably gets what you mean when exposition is replaced with indirectly showing what’s occurring. Of course, this is where a good editor or another reader of science fiction can step in; they can tell you that they don’t understand something, and if writing science fiction, that’s a good indication that you need to include some more material about your novum. Don’t do overdue it, however – a single phrase or sentence at most often is all that’s needed.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Sacramento, California, or a small town like Intercourse, Pennsylvania, I can provide that second eye.