Maryville Public Library Director Presents Information to Group

Last night, August 27, the Maryville Chapter of the Missouri Writer's Guild met for its regular meeting. The presenter was Stephanie Patterson, Director, of the Maryville Public Library.

Stephanie provided a wealth of information related to the library's role in the community, as well as its local goals and objectives for the 2019-2020 period, and provided information related to the NWMO regional goals for 2019-2023, in which the library plays a large part.

In addition, Stephanie answered many questions related to how the library makes its decisions regarding book purchases and retention, as well as how it addresses updating of the library's many other resources. She also discussed the issues that librarians face today as they are being called upon to do much more than their predecessors decades ago as technology has grown, and larger social issues and expectations for services change.

Included in her presentation was information related to local authors, briefly discussing the expansion of self-publishing and how that is affecting decision making. What are the trends in various genres? What materials are used to determine how purchases and resources are acquired? What is the process of deciding what books are retained? Do book reviews make a difference in the decision to purchase? Issues such as cover art, internal art, audience, and subject matter that all authors need to keep in mind. She provided some insights into e-books and some of the changes that are taking place that affect pricing and access.

As the meeting came to a close, Stephanie answered questions. Her expertise and education in these matters made the meeting a very productive one and gave attendees a lot to think about as they move forward with their individual projects, hopefully with some insight on how to partner with the local Maryville Public Library, and other libraries. Based on her presentation and information provided the Maryville Public Library appears to be on track with respect to their mission, which is to "help the citizens of Maryville (ages birth to death) succeed and enjoy life through reading, learning, creating, and connecting."

We thank Stephanie Patterson for taking the time to speak to our group and for providing so much useful information and insight.

Writing Group Calendar

To make information more accessible to the public regarding meetings and events related to writng, a Google Calendar has been set up for the Maryville Chapter of the Missouri Writers Guild, where meeting information will be posted, as well as member book signings, poetry readings, presentations, and special events, conferences, book launches, or special appearances that may be of interest to members. 

Link of Interest to Writers

This weekend's search for useful information on the web yielded these sites. Check them out carefully before diving in. 

A listing of conferences and such. 

Places to submit your books for reviews: 

Midwest Book ReviewCurled Up With A Good Book
Self-Publishing Review
American Book Review

And, don't forget to send press releases to your local newspapers, radio stations, and television stations when you are ready to release a new book. 

Maryville Chapter MWG Meeting

Are You a Wholesale Buyer and Retailer?

Here's a new little something to think about. 

Retailers buy at wholesale and sell at a profit. 

As an author, are you a wholesale buyer and retailer? If you are a self-published author purchasing author copies of your book that you then sign and sell at book signings and events you are. Do you have a sales tax number, resale certificate, wholesale tax-exempt certificate, or whatever the form may be called in your state? Every state calls them something different, if that state has a sales/use/vendor tax to be collected. If you do have one, have you provided it anew to Amazon so they don't charge you taxes on your author copies? If not, then you've been costing yourself money.

Let's look at KDP/Amazon. It can be an easy platform for publishing and getting copies for resale, but it is also a complicated structure when it comes to finding out where you fit in as a self-publishing author/vendor. If you look closely at your orders of author copies, since the change over from CreateSpace to KDP, you may find you have been charged taxes on those copies. You shouldn't be if you are going to be reselling them AND if you have the appropriate tax exemption certificate from your state. You probably filled out a form, maybe submitted a bond, when you first set up in your state to resell your books. Did you provide that information to CreateSpace earlier. The information may not have transitioned over when it changed to KDP.  

This question came up in the KDP discussion forums not long ago. You can read about it here if you're a KDP author. If you have not gotten a tax-exempt certificate for your state, do so. Once you have one, you need to check out the Amazon Tax Exemption Program (ATEP). There is wizard to walk you through the process. It is linked in the line of text, 

"To access the wizard click here." on their page.

We don't want to be taxing people twice. If you're paying the sales/use tax on your author copies at the time of purchase from the Amazon Marketplace, then should you be charging those taxes again when you resell them? That would be a good question for your State Department of Revenue to answer for you since every state has different rules. You should have already added their "contact us" email to your contacts list for easy access. I've had to ask questions from time to time and it's easier to find it in my contact list than it is to find it buried among multiple webpage links. It is worth your time to investigate this further.

You can read up on the discussion online. Here's one article I found that got me thinking. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/everything-need-getting-wholesale-license-12921.html

Poetic Devices - How To Incorporate Them Into Your Writing

Webinar - Writing For The Christian Market

I invite you to check out this upcoming webinar. Writing For The Christian Market. June 6, 2019 at 7:30 p.m. CST. Details may be found on the SCBWI website.

A Very Interesting Discussion

This is a very interesting presentation. The presenter is Steven Pinker. The video includes the follow-up discussion with host Ian McEwan, and some excellent questions from the audience. Enjoy. 

The Bad Taste of Book Stuffing

Book Stuffing - have you heard of it before? If you're a KDP author, you might want to find out why it's bad and why you shouldn't do it. It could get you into serious trouble. It could get you banned as an author in the Kindle Store. Others tried it. They and their books are banned now.

It's not new. Book stuffing has been going on for a while. I think I may have downloaded a book or two from Kindle authors who have engaged in this, whether deliberately or innocently I don't know. I will be deleting their content immediately, if not sooner.

Book stuffing is where page count in Kindle books is increased by tagging on at the end of the book file some samples of upcoming books or past books, and, in some cases entire books. The more pages of an author's work that gets read, you see, the more that Kindle author gets paid, under the KDP Select, and the higher they rise in the rankings. We're not just talking a few dollars. It's more like thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of that now-$25 million pot of money from which KDP All Stars are paid. You've gotten the emails that are sent out to apprise KDP authors how the fund is growing.

Book stuffing is, at least, a violation of Amazon's (Kindle's) Terms of Service. Last year, a lawsuit was initiated against a self-publisher in the UK for engaging in this practice.

Book stuffing makes it difficult, if not nearly impossible, for honest authors, publishing one book at a time, who are enrolled in the KDP Select, to compete legitimately, unless they're writing 'War and Peace' length novels. Then, they might stand a chance. In July 2018, Amazon updated its terms. You may want to familiarize yourself with them again. 

It looks like Amazon has won some ground in this battle, and I encourage you to read up on this issue. Before stumbling across the Twitter posts linked at the top of this post, I had never heard of it. But, as with any good thing someone found a way to manipulate it to satiate their nefarious purposes. If you come across any authors doing this, it might be well to flag their e-book so Amazon can at least take a look at it and ensure that they're on the level playing field and not sending in 'ringers' to undermine the game.

Blogger Issues

If you have been using Blogger as your blogging platform, or Picassa albums to store your images for posts on your blog, you need to check them. I have found that over a year's worth of images on my blogs, including the one for our group, have gone missing. It's not just us. It has happened on a lot of blogs. I'm not sure if this has something to do with Google shutting down Google+, but that's a suspect. Most of them are posts and images after I began putting up after associating my Google+ profile with my blogs rather than the old blogger profile.

As for the author pages on our groups blog - yup. A lot of them are missing too. I will try to get some of them uploaded again so the blog doesn't look like it has some kind of weird virtual image mange, if I can. It will take a while, so please be patient.

Check your blogs. You may be missing more than a few images you had hanging on those virtual walls. You may only need to refresh your blog pages a couple of times to get them to reappear.

UPDATE: The images on this blog seem to have reappeared.

April Meeting

The Meeting's On!

We are finally going to have our writers meeting: 7 pm, Tuesday, February 26! We will meet at the First United Methodist Church on the third floor, room 303. Sandy Wood and I are hosting. Catrina Pelton will be speaking on writing oral histories.

An oral history is: "A recording containing information about the past obtained from in-depth interviews concerning personal experiences, recollections, and reflections" (Merriam-Webster)

Catrina teaches history at Maryville High School. Through the Civic Voices International Democracy Memory Bank Project sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers she studied techniques and strategies for recording oral histories. She will share with us the importance of recording history that would otherwise be lost to us and ways in which oral history can enhance writing projects.

Google+ Going Away Soon - Tweak Blogger To Stay Visible

With the impending doom of Google+ just around the corner, and deletion of Google+ profiles, communities, etc., you may need to adjust a couple of things.

For instance, if you're using Blogger for your website pages or a blog, and if you have previously associated that with your Google+ profile, then you need to tweak your settings.

Go into your blog and go to the "Settings" section. Choose "User Settings" at the bottom of the list. Then, to the right, make sure the button for "Blogger" is selected and not the "Google+" profile. Right beneath the "Blogger" button is the word "Edit." This is for your Blogger Profile, which you need to fill in, update, whatever, especially if you have the profile set to be viewed on your blogs. Click Edit and fill in the blanks, then "Save Profile" at the bottom. There's even a spot on there to upload your picture, as the one you had on your Google+ profile will no longer show up soon.

On the left menu choose "Posts, Comments, and Sharing" and scroll to the bottom. There you will see "Use Google+ comments in this blog?" Make sure it's set to "No." Right below that you may see a large drop-down box. Make sure it says, "Google+ Disabled."

Google+ users should have all received an email by now telling them how to download their Google+ stream, comments, etc. Do it. Just in case you ever want to access it to search for something later. It will be in an html file. Have it saved to your Google Drive or to your own laptop. I went ahead and opted to delete my Google+ profile ahead of schedule, to avoid the April rush. However, when you go to do that, you DO NOT have to delete your YouTube channels, or any other stuff. Just Google+. Unless you are a Google Suite user, then that's different. Follow the instructions in the email you received. I think it stays active.

If you have more than one Blogger blog, you will have to adjust these settings for each one. Okay, that's it. Tweak away. Happy blogging.

Tonight's Meeting Postponed

The meeting scheduled for tonight, Tuesday, January 29, 2019, has been moved to February 26th due to the frigid temperatures expected overnight. Please stay safe. See you in February!

Write Today and Every Day

Original photo by @kaitlynbaker at
unsplash.com

Today is a good day to write. In fact, every day is a good day to write. So many interesting things happen in life that we should not find it too difficult to pen a few words about something. Don't forget to take a second glance at the seemingly mundane things, too. As humans, we often take them for granted, but they can be just the trigger a writer needs for the next great poem, short story, novel, or nonfiction book. 

What did the dog do this morning that was out of character? Did you fish the cat out of the koi pond? How long did your spouse spend looking for their misplaced glasses, only to realize they had pushed them up on top of their head and forgotten they were there? Did someone ask you an unusual question today? 

Writing every day is a good discipline to develop, even if you're just jotting down poem and story ideas in a journal - take a few minutes to write out a synopsis of the idea, and don't forget to include those sensory inputs - sight, sound, smell, touch. First impressions matter. You'll need those later when you take the idea further.

Be sure to come back and review your journal entries, whether you hand write them in a notebook you carry with you, tap them out into a note-taking app on your phone, record a digital message, or make an entry into an electronic document on your computer.  OneNote is an excellent program for keeping a journal, but a simple Word document or Excel document will work as well. They are easily searchable and tabled data allows you to organize by a category you set.  If you can't stop to make a physical note, carry a digital recorder with you. You can replay your recorded message later and transcribe it into your written or electronic journal. 

Be sure to write today, and every day.