NEW TITLE: BECOMING by Trace Hentz

I don't push people to buy chapbooks I write. I want to give them as gifts. I plan to print out 100 copies. That's it.

Becoming: Then it Hit Me (MMXX) is out today in both paperback and ebook.

ebook ASIN: B086J8QK18

paperback ISBN: 979-8619923025

There are short stories (hybrid memoir), and lots about my life today...

ABOUT The Book

Trace L Hentz’s BECOMING: Then it Hit Me MMXX is a fierce uplifting hybrid memoir that is wholly unique to the award winning Native journalist’s lived experiences as a curious but traumatized child/adoptee, as a young actor and rock musician traveling the states, as a wife and grandmother, and as a working writer-publisher-blogger. Weaving together true stories and conversations, Hentz addresses themes of opening her adoption, identity, family reunions, transformation, spirituality, a sense of home, and claiming an identity in her two worlds. Becoming is about becoming the change… Writing about how she got the name Lethal Journalist and her foray into becoming a news editor, Terror Bunny is the story she tells her granddaughter Cami, and Butt Dancer is a chapter about birthdays and her “my bad” and so much more“ in over 20 true short stories.

Short Story writing help? Try FREE 2020 Creative Writing Lectures + Bookshop

Do you need free audible reads? READ THIS

Hyperallergic's film reviews will be listed on Rotten Tomatoes! 
Yesterday, we also published a report on why many independent publishers are giving up Amazon to use Bookshop, a new service that shares 75% of book sales with publishers (far more than Amazon). We also announced this week that Hyperallergic will now use Bookshop links whenever possible going forward.
Consequently, we’re happy to share that we will now be working with Bookshop to support our colleagues at small presses, wherever possible. This decision comes in response to an initiative led by Ugly Duckling Presse, a nonprofit publisher of poetry, translation, experimental nonfiction, and artist books based in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Together with a group of over 30 small presses, they recently issued a collective call for independent media outlets and book reviewers to  “rethink [their] links” and help mitigate the damaging effects of linking book pages to tech behemoths like Amazon. 

Why Hardcover Books Are Published First (by Big Publishing Houses)

Despite their popularity, it's still impossible to find paperback versions of many new books when they debut. It's a common practice among publishers to release new titles as hardcovers and publish the paperback edition about a year after the initial print run. People who do their reading at the beach or on the subway may not be happy about it, but the financial benefits of this model mean it likely isn't going away any time soon.

"While a hardcover book is more expensive to print than a paperback, the publisher does traditionally make more money on that edition, allowing them to earn back the author's advance and the costs they incurred for printing, shipping, marketing, and distribution," Dinah Dunn, a partner at the book packager Indelible Editions, tells Mental Floss.

Source: Why Hardcover Books Are Published First | Mental Floss

Blue Hand Books doesn't do hardcovers.

Meet Bookshop

More often than not, when people buy books online, they do so by clicking little thumbnails of novels and essay collections on Amazon’s website. Those thumbnails then materialize as physical copies on their doorsteps in a matter of days. Easy-peasy. The online retailer is the most dominant force in American bookselling today, accounting for over 90 percent of ebooks and audiobooks, and around 42 to 45 percent of print sales, according to BookStat. Into this fray jumps a new online retailer, Bookshop, which is betting that people will see the value in choosing to buy somewhere else—at a business meant to give independent booksellers a chance to grab back some of the market share. “It's not really about disrupting an industry,” CEO Andy Hunter says. “It's about reinforcing an industry. Bookshop is about pulling back from the disruptive influence of Amazon.”

BIG NEWS: Meet Bookshop, the Startup Helping Indie Booksellers Take on Amazon | WIRED

2020 LIBRARY EXTENSION

We endorse: Library Extension... it will show you if books and e-books you search for online are available for free at your local library, and helps you borrow them in one click.

Looking for a way to kick your addiction to shopping for books online? A new web browser extension might be of help.

Screenshot of search results for Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale on Amazon.com

Library Extension will show you if books and e-books you search for online are available for free at your local library. Library Extension has been around since at least January 2013, but it just got discovered again in 2020.
The extension, which is available for Chrome and Firefox, is activated after entering your location and selecting libraries in your area. E-book services are also available.

One installed, every time you browse for books at an online bookstore like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and Audible, Library Extension will pop up and show you if the books are available at your chosen library.

We tried out the extension by looking up Margaret Atwood’s bestseller The Handmaid’s Tale on Amazon.com. Library Extension appeared on the right side of the screen and showed that 29 hardcover copies (out of 143 total) of the book, and 89 audiobook copies (out of 365 total copies), are currently available at the New York Public Library. More copies are available at the Brooklyn Library (40 hardcovers and 20 audiobooks).

With just one click, you’ll be directed to the chosen library or e-book service page to borrow the book online or join a waiting list.
Source: Hyperallergic

Hakim Bishara 

January 7, 2020

blue hand books uses firefox

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libraryextension/

The Best Native Books of 2019

read his list

Dana Lone Hill

  Dana Lou Lone Hill  Oyate WačhíŋyAŋpi

(age 47) February 29, 1972 ~ November 15, 2019 (her obituary is on her author page)

An Inspiring Lakota Writer, Activist

her writing for the Lakota Country Times

Buffalo Dreams is now available! Price reduced on both ebook and paperback!

"Buffalo Dreams" ebook by our Blue Indians author Jaga'de is available in the Kindle Store here.  Price :$3.99. PRICE REDUCED!

Jaga'de explains:

Dreams are a great source of healing.  Often they will exaggerate to get your attention.

This book is an attempt to help people realize the importance of dreams in our daily lives.

When I lost my beloved husband of 42 years, grief took on an aspect I did not imagine.  I had grieved more for my dogs than for human beings.  My husband’s walking on left me staggering in unexpected ways, ways in which I could not have prepared myself.  It was as if the world had blown up and me with it.  The pieces are still falling out of the sky.  And yet, I have learned so much in the two years of sorrow.  I have lost, but I have also gained.

Once again a dream gave me strength to go on.

Perhaps you have a question you would like to have answered.  The answers can come at any time, in many ways.  The answer just peeks out at you from a book, a movie, from a conversation, from Nature or from Life itself.  The answers will come. The thing to do is to stay tuned in for three or four days.  People often have dreams that help point the way.  Some dreamed an answer.

Dreams have helped me make decisions, make moves, act on things I wanted to do but kept putting off.  Dreams can be real lifesavers.  With this book, I wish you… Happy Dreaming!

And then there are the Dreamers among us who have dreams, visions and hallucinations thrust upon them by the Universe.  It is these people for whom I have written this book.


The paperback Buffalo Dreams: on the importance of dreams in our daily lives, is available to buy on Amazon. 
ISBN:
ISBN-13: 978-1696272308 
$15.00 Proceeds to benefit St. Joe's School in SD.

It's wonderful! It is truly amazing! Trace, BHB founder

Vine Deloria on Native Americans (1972) - The Best Documentary Ever

Vine Deloria Jr. on Technology’s Toll

#MarkYourCalendars

The brand new book BUFFALO DREAMS (under the imprint BLUE INDIANS COLLECTIVE) by Jaga'de, and new editions of Sleeps with Knives by Trace Hentz are out!

When We Disappeared/One Small Sacrifice: The Grief Memoir will come out in 2020.

John Christian Hopkins will be publishing a collection of his humorous columns for the Westerly Sun newspaper.

To read a preview of Sleep with Knives:  here

What has happened to publishing?

This blog post by Nicholas C. Rossis in Publishing has a series explaining the history of publishing. Also watch the movie THE WIFE with Glenn Close to get an idea of the male dominated industry.... Trace

Our books on Kobo

We did publish Two Worlds: Lost Children (Second Edition) on KOBO in Canada in 2017.
These are our current stats (July 2019):

• #200 in Nonfiction, History, Americas, North America
• #331 in Nonfiction, History, Canada
• #4093 in Biography & Memoir, Historical

Hentz releases new creative non-fiction (NEW! REVIEW!)

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hentz releases new creative non-fiction

Charles Grolla

Charles Grolla's Ojibwe name is Ogimaagiizhig (Boss of the Sky) and he is of the Adik (Caribou) clan or totem.  He is an enrolled member of the Bois Forte reservation in Minnesota and was raised mainly on the Red Lake reservation in Minnesota.  While growing up in the Bikwaakwaang (West End) area of the Red Lake reservation, Charles became a contending player of Ojibwe style moccasin game before the age of 14.  Charles graduated from Red Lake High School and completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in Ojibwe Language at Bemidji State University.  Retiring after 17 years of service from the Red Lake Police Department, first as a police officer then as a conservation officer, he started a new career and is currently a teacher at Cass Lake – Bena High School where he teaches Ojibwe language, culture, and moccasin game.

Trace Hentz

Sleeps With Knives: Has It Hit You Yet + special essay: EBOOK out today https://t.co/rc04hBdDdw via @amazon @StonePony33

— Trace kalala Hentz (@StonePony33) October 5, 2019

LISTEN TO A NEW INTERVIEW

new ebook and paperback

John Christian Hopkins

John Christian Hopkins, a member of the Rhode Island Narragansett Indian Tribe, is a descendant of King Ninigret, patriarch of the tribe’s last hereditary royal family. Hopkins is a career journalist who has worked at newspapers across the U.S. and has been a nationally syndicated columnist for Gannett News Service. He and his wife Sararesa live on her Navajo reservation in Arizona.

John's Blog (click)

Narrate Your Own Audiobook

ACX Audio Submission Requirements

https://www.acx.com/help/acx-audio-submission-requirements/201456300

Update from Trace

HER LATEST BOOK: Mental Midgets | Musqonocihte 

Borderline: Invisible #poemenvylopes

This makes too much sense... too much OVER THE TOP marketing and 1 million new books a year - this has obviously tanked our author's book sales.
And you know what? We here at Blue Indians will continue, as we have since 2011... we will NOT stop.
I have a short book out now. And plan more.   Trace

THIS is the most important commentary on publishing I have EVER read.↓

A Writer’s Choice to Be Borderline Invisible

Small presses and editions remind us that that we’re free to stay below the radar in an age of self-promotion.

John Yau

Small Press Success

Graywolf Press  is one of many independent presses that have found their place in the shadow of bigger publishing houses. In the past few years, Graywolf has released some of the most groundbreaking American nonfiction. Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, which won the 2015 National Books Critics Circle award, complicated notions of sexuality and desire with tender, cutting prose. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric conveyed a sense of exhaustion of American racial harassment and violence that resonated with many readers.

The Argonauts and Citizen are each less than 160 pages long. They’re built from fragments and vignettes that don’t so much combine genres—personal essay, critical theory, poetry, and photography—as they put them into a blender and shred them. Both play with method and perspective to offer insight into crucial subjects: One explores what it’s like to love a fluidly gendered person, the other grieves the continued killings of black citizens by the police. Rather than depending on preexisting notions of what succeeds, these writers pursued faith in new models, and The Argonauts and Citizen both happened to do quite well among mainstream audiences (the latter sold over 60,000 copies). The Argonauts won a National Book Critics Circle Award, Citizen was a finalist for a National Book Award, and both can be found in major bookstores just about everywhere.

Another notable press subverting traditional publishing standards is Dorothy, which is “dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or about fiction, mostly by women.” Run by the experimental writer and book designer Danielle Dutton, Dorothy publishes just two books a year, and the books are small, beautiful, and cost only $16.

(click links)

11-11 anniversary | new Mental Midgets | Musqonocihte

11-11 is the anniversary of the very first book we did for John Christian Hopkin's book Twilight of the Gods!

Vine Deloria Jr. on Our Relationship to the Unseen

Introducing Kindle Create

From CREATESPACE to KINDLE DIRECT PUBLISHING

Createspace is coming to an end (this month)

If you have published paperback titles using Createspace, it is time to think about moving your books to Amazon KDP. (Kindle Direct Publishing)

There have been many problems with Createspace over the years.

READ

 

As you may know, Amazon is merging its two print-on-demand publishing services. CreateSpace is becoming part of Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).
Originally, KDP was for Kindle eBooks, while CreateSpace was for paperbacks (and videos and even audio).
However, in recent months KDP has added print-on-demand publishing for print books. It has slowly evolved, and now matches CreateSpace in terms of quality, service, and prices (with a few subtle exceptions). Overall, in a few ways, KDP’s print-on-demand is a little above and beyond CreateSpace (it wasn’t originally, but now that it has finished evolving, it is now).

Our authors should have received an email about this. Go sign in to your KDP account asap.