New Release: How to Create a Wraparound Book Cover using Canva, by M K Prince

I've just published a new book under a new author name M K Prince, because it's a non-fiction book, for Indie and Self-Published authors who want to create their own covers using Canva.

I've been doing it for years, and several people have asked me if I could show them, and I have promised people I would write a book about it, but of course it's time consuming as you have to take a lot of screenshots to show the process. 

How to Create a Wraparound Book Cover using Canva is now available on Amazon. I am debating making it wide, but I am not sure if it will sell more.

Click on the cover to pick up a copy.

Review: A Haunting at Collingwood House by Jack Rollins

A Haunting at Collingwood House by Jack Rollins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a brief and brutal introduction to Jack Rollins style and writing.

It's a tale of school bullying and Rollins really encapsulates the sheer terror when you are the victim. And this terror is mixed with the scary, creepy location they end up in. It delivers a nice little horror punch.

If you are looking for a new horror author to discover, this is a great starting point for Jack Rollin's books.

View all my reviews

Review: The Balance, by Kev Harrison

The Balance by Kev Harrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have read a few of Kev Harrison's books now and this was one of his earlier stories, a novella. It's one of those books where you think you know where it's going, then it goes beyond.

The story is set in a village that is surrounded by forest in the middle of winter, and it tackles the division between pious religion and those that follow the rhythms of nature. It doesn't shy away from depicting church goers shunning herbalist or holistic living - seeing it as pagan and witch-like. If anything it shows how the witch hunts came about. (I live in Holland where I can visit the Witch-Weighing house that used to be considered the authority in the country - if you got a certificate from there saying you weren't a witch you were untouchable. But it only took your neighbour whispering it to someone to get you put on trial).

Anyway, Kev captures this kind of mindset in this dark tale, and then we get to see the consequences, which went further than I expected. An excellent bit of story telling and well worth it.

View all my reviews

Review: No Excuses, Brian Tracy

No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline by Brian Tracy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I spent my time reading this, my first book from Brian Tracy, and I took a lot from it. Each chapter offer something, even though sometimes they follow a more 'sales' orientated pitch.

There are actions and questions at the end of every chapter which really help you focus, and Tracy drives home the need for self discipline and how to go about it through three overall themes: personal, work and lifestyle. And how you apply self discipline to several aspects within them, laying out a perspective and action to take.

This was very much the book I was looking for to help train myself into getting more out of my day to day life. I'll definitely be dipping back into it.

View all my reviews

Review: Wide for the Win, by Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Wide for the Win: Strategies to Sell Globally via Multiple Platforms and Forge Your Own Path to Success by Mark Leslie Lefebvre
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have been self published for a long time, and I was looking for some help with going wide. I felt this book had some tips but was mostly full of padding. The first half deals with whether or not to stay exclusive with KDP (Amazon) and the author used other people's articles (with permission) about this (one a particular anti-Amazon take), to flesh this out.

The author talks a lot about their success - not least making money off other author by selling this kind of book - despite them actually starting in self-publishing years ago, long before it became the challenge it is today. This book is also four years old and some of the information is already dated. This book is a platform to upsell, things like courses by Mark Dawson (who sells how to get published courses for extortiate amounts of money - when you get them free from people like David Gaughran and Dave Chesson (Kindlepreneur)), and also for his courses and other books.

He is one of the founders of a facebook group called Wide for the Win, that does has some valuable information, but is also a conduit for those selling courses to authors. I paid 100 dollars to one of the founders for a course, but realised it was just a single video (though a long one) from a webinar they'd done, and even though I had questions there was no option to get them answered. Shame.

I skim read this book. And although there were bits that were interesting, it didn't offer much that was new to me. Personally there are better places to get this information.

View all my reviews

Review: The Raindrop Ramblers by J R Bee

The Raindrop Ramblers: A Fantasy Middle Grade Action Adventure by J.R. Bee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even though this book is marketed to children, if you are a lover of stories like The Borrowers or Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad series or Nome Series (Truckers, Diggers, Wings), you might enjoy this too.

It follows the plite of Rein as he ventures out of 'Haven' into the world outside in an attempt to find water, and he gets caught up in a big political 'war' of sorts. He is a 'rambler', which are like little microscopic beings. They tame ants, and ladybirds, and come up against various other insects.

It's light and funny and the characters are well developed. I hope this will be turned into a series.

View all my reviews

ISBNs - Should you buy them for your books? And where do I buy them?

I've been asked several times by self-published authors about ISBNs. Questions like: do I need them? Where do I buy them? Can I use the one's Amazon provides? So here I have gathered some information together, because it can be hard to find up-to-date information.

Okay, let's start at the beginning. The ISBNs Amazon provides for both ebooks and paperbacks can NOT be used anywhere else outside of Amazon. If you want to 'go wide' - meaning sell on other bookselling sites or in shops you will need your own ISBNs for print books. For ebooks go to Smashwords, or actually Draft2Digital (who have taken over Smashwords so it's in the process of being merged but not completed yet - as of June 2024) - they distribute to the likes of Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple and various others online stores. They issue free ones for ebooks like Amazon, but Smashwords don't do paperbacks - or distribute to Google Play, who also provide their own ebook numbers if you don't have an ISBN for it. You can use ISBNs for ebooks too, but you don't have to, it's not required. 

As for buying ISBNs, which you will have to do if you want to sell paperbacks outside of Amazon - and don't want to use their extended distribution option (I'll come back to why it's best not to in a minute) - each country has its own rules, and you have to buy them in the country where you are a resident. You can not buy them from another country as it is linked to the country you are paying tax in. For the US, it is Bowker, and in the UK it is Nielsen. Each country has its own rules with them: how many you can buy and for how much. If you are lucky enough to live in Canada they are free! Here in the Netherlands where I am, I can only get 10 at a time, they don't do bulk selling as they don't want large gaps in numbers, and it costs me almost 300 Euros. ISBNs are not cheap.

USA: Bowker: https://www.bowker.com/isbn-us

UK: Nielsen: www.nielsenisbnstore.com/Home/Isbn

To put your paperback books up 'wide' outside of Amazon, you need to go to IngramSpark who will distribute to Libraries and other places, making them orderable in shops. Now the twisted thing here is that Amazon actually use IngramSpark for their distribution, so if you ARE using extended distribution for your paperbacks in Amazon with free ISBNs, and then you want to put them up in IngramSpark, you will have to faff about transferring the book over from Amazon to IngramSpark, and then upload your book with your own ISBN. It is possible. I have done it with Dead Lake. However, with my other paperback, Sleep, as I didn't have it in Amazon Extended Distribution, I just put it up on IngramSparks with its own ISBN. Amazon will pick up the one with the best price, so although in some ways it is duplicated, it is not noticable to the buyer.

Now, back to why it's best not to use Amazon's Extended Distribution. Besides the fact you get only a titchy tiny royalty doing it that way, Libraries will NOT buy from Amazon, so if you don't have your book with IngramSpark, they will say it is not orderable as far as I understand it. I have a friend who is an editor for the big publishing houses, and this is insider information. Publishing houses hate Amazon due to their monopoly, so won't buy in bulk from them. But it is a personal choice.

IngramSpark: www.ingramspark.com

IngramSpark is a bit of a faff to use, it's a bit out-of-date and slow in its system, but they were quite helpful with the transfer. They have just made it free to publish books on their site (this year - 2024) but you need to have the complete finished product ready to go. You can get a template for a cover, they are slightly bigger than those for Amazon. Any edits are free up until 60 days after publication on IngramSpark, but after that if you want to make changes it will cost you $25 each time. BUT the workround is becoming a member of ALLi (Alliance of independent authors) and you can get free codes for this.

I have as yet been unsuccessful obtaining an author copy from IngramSpark for comparison because I ordered one, and wasn't prepared to spend over £23 postage for one book for it to be tracked etc, so only paid for basic postage and it never arrived. When I asked them two weeks later if they had any information they sent me quite a rude reply telling me off for not paying the extra! I said I wasn't prepared to pay that much for one copy of my own book (because they are UK based and I am not).

Just to clarify, you can only buy ISBNs in the country you are residing in. And the ISBNs that both Amazon and Draft2Digital/Smashwords provide are not transferrable to anywhere else.

Through Draft2Digital you can publish paperbacks too apparently, though I have never done it. I chose IngramSpark because they automatically distribute to Libraries and shops. 

If you are looking for more information on how to self-publish, check out these two guys who have all the information for free! 

David Gaughran

Dave Chesson, Kindlepreneur