We’ve been talking about libraries of free images, now we’re going to introduce you to a library of free digitized books. Since 2004, Google has partnered with libraries and publishers around the world to preserve books and make the information accessible to people everywhere. To date there are more than 40 million titles scanned.

Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving, too. We’re very “Please” and “Thank you” people. We have turkey and sides (sometimes we call them “fixin’s”) and people travel from all over to be at the family’s gathering spot. But that’s where most of the similarities end.

Indie Authors in Your Local Library If you’re an Indie author, you know how hard it is to market your book and get it in a library collection. Now public libraries have gotten together and created The Indie Author Project. Authors are able to submit their e-book directly to their local public library to then…

Whoever said history was boring? Our forefathers used urine to tan animal skins, so families would pee in a pot. Once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive, you were, “piss poor.” But worse than that were the really poor folks who couldn’t even…

Well, no, Maybe? This is a question we get all the time. And the final answer is a lawyerly “Maybe.”Here’s how it works.The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (better known as the “Berne Convention” because it was originally signed in Berne, Switzerland and has been amended several times since) was…

Overtones of old books with hints of wood, leather and glue. West coast bookstores, Powell’s, has happened upon a new product for bibliophiles—“Powell’s by Powells.” According to reports by CNN they have developed a unisex perfume that “creates an atmosphere ripe with mood and possibility, invoking a labyrinth of books; secret libraries; ancient scrolls; and…

All part of the Hallard Press proofreading process. But what about Grammarly? “Editing” is a nebulous term authors keep hearing and that often means whatever you want it to mean. Depending on whom you consult, the definitions vary considerably. Authors also keep hearing about the critical nature of the editing process. “Behind every great writer…

Millions of Free Images and Illustrations You’re a writer. Looking for an image, an illustration, a graphic that will illuminate your prose. You have the choice of the usual contemporary online stock image companies that might work. Of course, there’s a cost for licensing and maybe even usage restrictions. There is another source, often overlooked,…

Up to 3,000 Words of Timeless (Covid-19) Prose​The 2021 Hallard Press Covid-19 Short Story Competition kicks off November 1 and entries will be accepted until December 15, 2020. The top five short stories (curated by our judging team) will run in the online Hallard Press Breakfast Serial feature beginning in January 2021. (Read more about…

Why that’s Good News for Indie Authors “Book cover prices have risen significantly during the past six months to a year,” according to Nancy Hellekson, Managing Director of Hallard Press. “Possibly due to the demand—people staying home and buying more books—during the virus, and other reasons.” Hellekson believes that indie authors are placing more value on…

It’s the month of the fiction thriller novel for those long cooped-up June Covid-19 days, and Hallard Press brings you three new, exhilarating adventures. Plunder from Keith Wilson sees Dr. Ben Carson, a CDC doctor fighting a viral epidemic (that sounds familiar!) while he and his new love, Kari Wheeler, are being chased by rebel soldiers in Guatemala…

Eyam is a picture-perfect English village of less than a thousand people in the Derbyshire Dales. Through a series of happenstance events, Eyam, in 1665, was one of the pioneers in the concept of self-quarantine and social distancing. That summer a flea-infested bolt of cloth arrived at the local tailor shop. Within a week, people…

What is BISAC? BISAC is an acronym for Book Industry Standards and Communications. The BISAC Subject Heading list is an industry-approved list of subject descriptors, each of which is represented by a nine-character alphanumeric code. The descriptor itself consists of two, three or four levels in the manner described below The BISAC Subject Heading list was developed to standardize the…