Fake books sold on Amazon could be used for money laundering

 Nonsensical? Many high-priced books whose texts are gibberish are offered for sale on Amazon. Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images

“Worthless” books priced at up to thousands, of dollars on Amazon.com and which contain only nonsensical text have been identified as possible vehicles for money laundering by an author whose name was, he says, used to send almost $24,000 (£17,200) to an unknown and fraudulent seller.

Amazon’s self-publishing arm CreateSpace makes it relatively straightforward to publish a title that contains any text, provided that this isn’t “placeholder” or dummy text, and allowing fake books to be sold on the Amazon website at a price chosen by the seller.

Read the rest of this story HERE.

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Book clinic: do editors often have to cut authors down to size?

 Maxwell Perkins, editor, at Scribner’s, of F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas…

Often the first thing to catch a reader’s eye is your cover–does the image “speak” to them? is the title striking?

The second thing is usually the blurb on the back of your book. Now, if you’re traditionally published by one of the Big 5, they will handle this for you. However, if you work with a mid-size, small press or happen to be an Indie Author who self-publishes, you’ll know just how tricky getting the right words on the back of your book can be.

I’ve been following Katlin at Ink & Quills since she started her blog, and one thing I know for sure is that she takes the business of writing seriously and enjoys sharing her discoveries with other authors.

The “outline” below is a basic list of what to keep in mind when crafting your blurb. Just remember that combining intrigue and tension with crisp writing…

In an ever evolving effort to make this blog a better resource to Authors, Writers, poets and fellow bloggers,  I have created these pages to index various external sites and in-blog articles that I hope will be useful, (including over 530 HOW TO 101: articles)

Just click on the links below to be taken to the relevant pages:

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

EBOOK FORMATTING

EDITING TIPS: 101

EDITORS

GRAMMAR – ENGLISH

HOW TO: 101

HOW TO – MAKE AUDIOBOOKS

HOW TO – BUILD A BOOK TRAILER

INFORMATION-BUSINESS

MARKETING

PUBLISHERS

REVIEWERS

This index and associated pages will be added to over time 😀

Remember the devil is in the details.

Size and description do matter.

If the dimensions are under 250 x 250, some social media sites won’t pick it up off of your website. So don’t make them too small.  And if you fail to add information about the image, search engines can’t determine what your image is about.

Google, Yahoo, Bing or any of the search engines can’t “read” the image itself, so ALT TEXT is important for ranking your images in the search results!

The image title can be helpful to the viewer as it could increase the understanding the image. It can also be beneficial to those who use screen-reading software such as those with vision impairments.

When a reader hovers over the image, the IMAGE TITLE pops up. This can be a great tool. You could put “Click for info” or “Click to buy.” Get the idea.

Here is…

People who are growing in God all share one common trait; they attract criticism. Criticism is a compliment when you are doing what you know you are supposed to do right. I was reading a cover story on Billy Graham in Time Magazine and was not surprised to find out several criticisms of him from fellow ministers. Then I was reminded of the fact: all great people get great criticism. Learn to accept and expect that you will experience unjust and just critisms for your God-given goals and accomplishments.

If you are doing anything and you are not criticized check yourself, something is wrong somewhere. No matter how you do good, help people, relate in love, preach or work tirelessly in your company you must be criticized. Everybody can’t be happy with you and if you don’t know how to handle criticisms you will miss the mark. If you know…

There is so much writing advice out there from people who claim to be experts. As writers, it’s sometimes hard to wade through the information and decide what’s important and what’s not.  Despite the endless pool of writing advice offered by everyone under the sun, one fact remains. Your ultimate goal is to become a better writer.

I’m sure you’ve read and heard a lot of advice about writing. Some advice is useful. Some, not so much. Over the years, I’ve taken all the advice I’ve accumulated and compiled a list that encompasses the six main things that seem to be consistent no matter who is offering advice.

1. Invest in some reference books. Get a dictionary, thesaurus, and a book on basic grammar. Have them handy and use them.
2. Expand your vocabulary. I’m not talking fancy, flowery words here. This is more about using the vocabulary you already…