Last month, I shared here the details of moving my books from CreateSpace to KDP Print in 3 easy steps. I also promised to see if there’s anything else you need to do next. Amazon has done all it can to ensure an easy move but it turns out that yes, there are still some issues and possible glitches that require your personal attention in order to ensure that the move goes as smoothly as possible.
Here is a checklist of things to check for after moving your files:
Create Space had fewer keywords than KDP. You can now add more keywords to your paperback.
This month, Amazon bestselling author Effrosyni Moschoudi is releasing her new novel in four compelling kindle episodes. If you’re looking for a cracking good read to enjoy this Halloween, this is a great choice!
Lizzie waited twenty years for her return to Corfu…
Lizzie is not your average tourist. She may have just arrived on the idyllic Greek island of Corfu, but her mind is not on having a good time. Far from it, Lizzie has a daunting task to undertake: to claim back her twin brother who was kidnapped twenty years earlier on her previous visit. In a cave. By an evil witch.
When Lizzie sees her brother again, she receives the shock of her life. The witch has tricked her… And, as if this weren’t enough, a handsome local steals her heart to complicate her life even further…
No, it’s not that keywords are suddenly any less important — in fact, quite the contrary. It’s just that the way Amazon uses them to identify which books to display when a reader searches for a book to read seems to have changed lately.
Amazon Keywords, The Old Way…
As David Kudler of The Book Designer explains, it used to be that you could use natural-sounding phrases of two to five words for your keywords, especially those which returned between two hundred and a…
The Psalter World Map, c. 1260 Photo: Atlas Obscura / Public Domain/Wikipedia Commons)
East is placed at the top. The sun and moon hold lush forests. Jerusalem is the center of the world. And dragons hold the globe up at the bottom. But there is one aspect of the Psalter World Map, created in the 1260s, that is even stranger: a line-up of grotesque men located near Africa, two of whom have faces in their chests.
Blemmyae
These monsters, called blemmyae, were actually based on the writings of Classical authors such as Pliny the Elder. In The Natural History, penned in 77 AD, Pliny wrote of the members of a North African tribe who were “said to have no heads, their mouths and eyes being seated in their breasts.”
Over 1500 years later, authors were still talking about these chest-faced men. In Othello, none other than Shakespeare wrote…
Machete is an Amazon Advertising (formerly Amazon Marketing Services or AMS) add-on. You install it on your browser and it transparently adds some extra features to your Amazon Dashboard. When I first used it, Machete was little more than a way to track your sales through time and edit multiple keywords at once. Not a game-changer, just some nifty little extras. At $25/month, it wasn’t worth it unless you were constantly tweaking your Ads, which is why I’ve never mentioned it before.
Recently, however, Machete has made two dramatic changes which have led me to this post. The first one was to introduce a great new feature called Bid Optimizer.
How to move your books from CreateSpace to KDP Print
Moving all your books from Createspace to KDP Print is now as simple as following a five-minute process Amazon refers to as Verify > Link > Move.
In my earlier post announcing the news of Createspace merging with KDP Print, I mentioned that Amazon had promised us an easy way of moving all of our books at once. Well, I’m pleased to say that the company has delivered, letting me move all of my books at once in a matter of minutes!
So, here is a detailed guide of how to move your books from CreateSpace to KDP Print (luckily, I took screenshots as I was racing through the process).
1. Log Into Createspace
When I logged into Createspace, I got a prompt to move my books to KDP Print. Being the risk taker that I am (ha…
As you may remember, I’ve been experiencing computer trouble for the past week, so I’ve been using Electra’s computer. The first time I tried to log in, I was stunned to see a new login screen asking me to specify what kind of Advertising I was interested in:
This was the first I realized Amazon has retired three of its ad services and products as well. The move looks like a response to Google’s move earlier this year which saw the search engine giant dropping many of its advertising brands. Despite becoming America’s second $1 trillion company, Amazon’s marketing and advertising division still lag behind its two direct competitors: Google and Facebook Ads.
The All-new Amazon Advertising Department
In an announcement made last week, as reported by The Passive Guy, Amazon SVP Paul Kotas introduced the all-new Amazon Advertising department. Amazon will be retiring three of the company’s most popular marketing platforms: Amazon Media Group (AMG), Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), and Amazon…
Traveling and writing sounds like a great idea, especially for young writers looking for an extra income from their writing career. This is a guest post by Sam Ross with some tips on getting started. Sam runs the blog thehammockhombre.com – a travel blog focused around the digital nomad lifestyle. Over the past 3 years, he’s traveled to every continent, so writes on a broad range of countries, cities, and destinations.
How to Kickstart your Travel Writing Career
Image: Pixabay
For many aspiring writers, travel writing is the Holy Grail; the job that gives you the ultimate freedom to enjoy your work and everyday life as one. Starting a career as a travel writer can be a little daunting, as it’s very competitive – so many writers are doing it that you’ve got to put your all into this work to stand out from the crowd.
Willful witches, supernatural sorcerers, cruel queens, and powerful priestesses fall out of favor and rise to rule in this highly sought-after collection of spellbinding stories!
More than 20 award-winning and bestselling authors have come together to curate this bewitching boxed set collection of the best PARANORMAL ROMANCE and URBAN FANTASY books in the genre, each brimming with stories of royal magic.
Journey through worlds of danger and mayhem, where witches and warlocks battle for influence and wizards fight for unrestricted power.
But reader beware: the highly addictive stories in RITE TO REIGN will put you under their spell. One click to secure your limited edition copy today!
It is time for a revising of a writing aid called Writer’s Cafe. I first reported on my experience with Writer’s Café two years ago when I began using it. I had used it daily for almost two months. I produced two books with it, then took a year off. Looking at it this week I decided to talk about it again. Writer’s Café is a text editing, story planning, writing software.
Linux has been my favorite computer operating environment for about 20 years. Linux is a base level software that competes with Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac iOS. Android, used on smartphone and tablets is related to Linux. My main computer today runs Ubuntu Linux. If I were using a Mac or Windows computer I would probably be using Scrivener. However, the full up-to-date version of Scrivener does not work on Linux. So, I searched for a similar program.
Ubuntu Screen
For years, I’ve written several books in Sigil. This program is not a sophisticated story building system, what it does is help with formatting ebooks. I eventually found Writer’s Café from Anthemion Software Ltd. Writer’s Café is a program for writing text and aiding with many aspects of the writing work. Let me quote from the authors of the program: “StoryLines is a multi-storyline planning tool that helps you weave a set of virtual index cards into a finished, formatted story.” Here are the features advertised for the program, Drag and drop cards, Formatting including custom styles, Screenplay auto-formatting, Text and screenplay import, Instant reports, Outline view, Navigator view, Tag-based searching, Multiple sheets (for different versions of the same story), User-customisable structure (Chapter, scene, etc.), File export (HTML, OpenDocument, etc.), Makes HTML Help books, Character profiles, Story locations, Spelling checker, Pockets (store unused scenes for later placement), and Keyboard shortcuts.
The first useful feature I found for my writing was the ability to easily see the scene and story overview and jump to any scene at any time. For me, this is a huge advantage over a flat word-processor, like Word. I also am glad for the character and location files. I can instantly look up a location or character I have entered, to check spelling and details. Now after using the program for some time, I am still most impressed with the setup that allows me to see at a glance which character is featured in each scene. I write stories with more than one POV character. It is important for me to get a sense of how often and how recently a character has been covered. I get this in one glance from the program.
Writer’s Cafe has preference screens where settings can be adjusted for how I want to write. I can adjust the font and locations of different screens. Another important feature of the program is the ability to record characters and locations. It’s important to remember the names and spellings you use over a book and series, and it helps to have a quickly accessible reference.
Finally, after I’ve produced some work, I need to get it out of the program. When printing the document out I can choose which information I want. Do I just want the raw content, to import into a word processor, or ebook creator? I can do that. Or I can choose to get other information.
Now, let’s mention some negatives, since no software is perfect. I suspect the software was probably originally written for helping a screenwriter to write a screenplay. There are extensive tools to aid with formatting screenplays. Of course, whether you find this a negative depends on your writing audience. Another daily annoyance has been an issue of cutting and pasting. When I cut to and from LibreOffice, the font transfers, but have been losing the style on emphasized words. Another minor annoyance that I now find a positive, is the forced scene structure. The program defaults to a scene structure, instead of chapter structure. This annoyed me, at first. Now, though, I would probably not go back. It makes sense to think about a scene as a unit that I work on.
All-in-all I have been very happy with the program, and plan to keep using it in the future.
So, there you have it. A quick overview of the Writer’s Café program. It is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The purchase price is $40 US, or $30 for students. I tried the free download first. The free version is mostly full featured, except you are limited to the number of scenes you can enter.
If you don’t have a writing program, or want to try something new, I recommend Writer’s Café.
Last month, I shared here the details of moving my books from CreateSpace to KDP Print in 3 easy steps. I also promised to see if there’s anything else you need to do next. Amazon has done all it can to ensure an easy move but it turns out that yes, there are still some issues and possible glitches that require your personal attention in order to ensure that the move goes as smoothly as possible.
