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Can I Be Ernest?


Guest Ernest K. Aning

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Guest Ernest K. Aning

Can I Be Ernest?

 

By: Ernest K. Aning

 

Can I Be Ernest? delivers an uncensored look at his childhood struggles in a quest for adoration, admiration and acceptance. His search leads to a series of unfathomable events greatly impacting his life... forever.

On this winding journey, Ernest targets the inexperienced and immature on the importance of owning their idiosyncrasies without succumbing to the pressures of social acceptance and life's deceptions. He examines education and corporate America, sheds light on toxic relationships, fatherhood and the significance of friendships, while gushing over his love for America's pastime... baseball!

Can I Be Ernest? is deeply reflective, exposing raw emotions, truth-telling, self-deprecating humor and enough nostalgia to last a lifetime!

 

ISBN: 978-1-7324573-0-0

Published: August 2018

 

I would absolutely appreciate a review!

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@Mel Hopkins You know your suggestions for the missing information is really important.  I'm thinking about writing an article for the minimum set of information an author should provide when sharing information about their book with booksellers, readers, reviewers, news sources, etc.  

 

From personal experience if I have to take extra steps to find the required missing information, if there is not other compelling reason for me to do it, I simply won't. The hashtags you provided could also be described a keywords.  Ernest provided the ISBN13, which is perhaps the single most important piece of information to me.

 

There is a hot topic in publishing surrounding all of the information regarding a book and it is called metadata; it sounds more technical that need be, so I suspect authors don't think about it very much.

 

This has always been important to me, and has become increasingly important since AALBC is now database driven.  I spend a lot of time cleaning up bad or supplementing missing metadata for a book.

 

Here is an example.  A publisher uploads a book's, title, series name and series number into the title field when uploading information to Amazon or some other database, This information should be uploaded the 3 fields provided for this information.  Not only does this make the book title wrong, it looks sloppy. 

Sleeping with the man Metadata

When I retrieve this information from Amazon I have to manually parse it out and I only do this for paid clients. Amazon does not care, they just take what the author uploads. Another common problem I see on Amazon's site is ISBN13 in the ISBN10 fields. This matter to me because I have a process that pulls this information from Amazon (sadly many author give exclusive rights to sell their books Amazon, so it is the only place the information is available). I so when I pull the ISBN10 but it is actually an ISBN13 -- it srews up the book's record in my database.

 

More importantly is many authors don't make proper use of the BISAC codes.  This is a list of almost 5,000 categories in which a book is associated. I just added a new feature to the website that will list books by these categories, which make it so much easier for readers to discover the books they are interested it (this also help search engines as well)

 

For example Mel Sleeping with a D-Man: An Urban Fantasy Novel BISAC category is "Fiction / Romance / Fantasy" and "Fiction / Science Fiction / General."  Now visitors to the website can discover all of the books written by Black writers which fall into these categories -- no other site is doing this!

 

If a customer is a paying client I'll apply the BISAC codes that are appropriate for the title -- not other sites does this either 😉

 

I have 9,300 more books for which these codes need to be applied.  I will then update my top 10 lists to be based upon these codes -- making my life so much easier, while improving the discoverability of books 🙂

 

Metadata matters!

 

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Troy said:

Now visitors to the website can discover all of the books written by Black writers which fall into these categories -- no other site is doing this!

@Troy  yes, I agree and I look forward to the article.  I will definitely follow that format everywhere I post my book lol -

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21 hours ago, Troy said:

For example Mel Sleeping with a D-Man: An Urban Fantasy Novel BISAC category is "Fiction / Romance / Fantasy" and "Fiction / Science Fiction / General."  Now visitors to the website can discover all of the books written by Black writers which fall into these categories -- no other site is doing this!


Thank you for this @Troy ! It looks sharp and clean! And a sci-fi /horror /fantasy fan like me would definitely use this feature! Also I found more information on the BISAC. Although it appears to be very involved, I've bookmarked it for further reading  https://bisg.org/page/BISACFaQ

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Yep @Mel Hopkins, the link you provided was the source of my data.  So far I have codes applied to about 12% of the books in may database , so the number of books listed in your category will likely increase.  Of the books I have already categories 800 different codes are used.  I saw some book using nine codes.  Technically there is no limit, but practically you'd probably want to use 5 to 10.  I'll know more after researching the subject a bit more.

 

I assume you selected the BISAC codes for your book.  If not, do you know you applied them? I obtained the codes associated to your book from Ingram's database.

 

 

 

 

 

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13 minutes ago, Troy said:

assume you selected the BISAC codes for your book.  If not, do you know you applied them? I obtained the codes associated to your book from Ingram's database.

@Troy Not this time.  I supplied all the information to Lulu.com in 2006 and paid them a fee to prepare my title for global distribution.  Recently, I provided this information for my memoir while using Pressbooks.com . That was my first direct experience with BISAC but I didn’t understand the significance until now. So, you are providing us independent authors a real service by sharing the importance. 

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Hi @Mel Hopkins

 

Thank you for the kind words!

 

If you click on the book title in the original post (or my name), it should direct you to my Amazon page and website respectively (I hope the links aren't broken). The book is also available on Barnes & Noble. Also, are you suggesting that I include the tags in my posts? (sorry if I sound inexperienced - I am : / ). Writing the book was the easiest part, everything else?! sssssssssss! lol.

 

Thank you guys in advance.

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On 11/2/2018 at 8:38 AM, ErnestLiving said:

If you click on the book title in the original post (or my name), it should direct you to my Amazon page and website respectively

@ErnestLiving  You're welcome!   One thing @Troy chat about in the #readingblack.com forum is how authors should make it super EASY for prospects to purchase your book.   Consider directing interested readers to your own platform before sending them to Amazon.  That is unless Amazon has your book exclusively.  If amazon has your book exclusively I hope you  got a nice advance on your royalties. 

 

If your own all the rights to your book then tell readers how they can purchase your book -and then list the price, s/h and what forms of payment you accept such as  PayPal, checks, money order, et al.   Also please join us over readingblack.com for more selling tips! Much success!

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Can I Be Ernest? by Ernest K. AningI previously recommended that  authors select 5 to 10 BISAC codes for their book.  However BIAC recommends choosing three as a best practice: https://bisg.org/page/BISACSelection

 

I find it is useful, at least in my database, to apply more if they are truly applicable.  Again, it makes it easier for books to be found. I'm already creating my own codes and applying BISAC for books that don't have them.  

 

@ErnestLiving are you planning on writing any more books?  Also email me at  troy@aalbc.com ill send you my mailing address.  I added your book here: https://aalbc.com/books/bookinfo.php?isbn13=9781732457300

 

 

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