About

Author E.M.S. Mission:

Our goal is to help authors save time, reduce stress and improve focus on the creative work by offering simple structures and systems and developing efficiencies in the areas of basic business, research, promotion, social media and self-publishing.

Restoring humanity & sanity to your virtual life.

Author E.M.S. was born from my genuine desire to resolve what I see as a growing problem: how to prevent the meltdowns authors suffer when changing technology overwhelms them and drags their focus away from writing.

Sound familiar?

There are books out there, but once purchased, the book’s information could become out-of-date within a few weeks. There are blog posts by dozens of experts, but most don’t address authors specifically. There are fellow authors who provide helpful tips and training, but you have to take the time to find them. The simple task of updating a Facebook author page can turn into an all-day affair—one that’s as frustrating as it is time-consuming.

And so I started building Author E.M.S. in 2011. With the help of some amazingly generous people, it continues to grow.

What Is It?

At its heart, Author E.M.S. is designed to be a one-stop resource center for all questions relating to the business of being an author. From understanding how to build your Amazon Author Central page to how to manage your Twitter feed through TweetDeck, from where to find book reviewers who love steampunk to whether you should use Smashwords or distribute directly with PubIt!, we hope you’ll find Author E.M.S. is helpful in providing information, education and perspective. Knowledge is power, and we definitely want to provide a simple, central place to share knowledge.

Author E.M.S. is a public website. The website features free access to all of our public pages, including our Daily Tips blog, articles by guests such Jane Friedman and Kristine Rusch, general resources about writing organizations, the publishing industry, social media and more.

Author E.M.S. is an online library. Our Resource Library contains hundreds of tips, tools, links, and how-tos. There are entire classes on WordPress, Creating a Business Plan, Understanding Self-Employment Tax, Formatting Your eBook and more.  We’ve included video tutorials and downloadable books. And, like a real library, it’s all FREE to our Basic Members.

Learn More For Authors Author E.M.S. provides services and classes. We’ve built the first searchable Database of Online Reviewers (DOR) and we’re working on a Freelancers Database (FRED).  We offer online classes and we now also offer .epub and .mobi formatting and assistance to authors who wish to upload books to Apple’s iBookstore.

Author E.M.S. partners with book reviewers and freelancers. We welcome book reviewers and freelancers who provide services to authors to join as Basic Members. We offer a bi-monthly newsletter to reviewers, featuring news, articles and upcoming book releases by our Charter Members. Learn More For Freelancers Learn More For Reviewers

Author E.M.S. is human. We’re not just pages of facts and links. We’re people who understand that computers and the Internet are part of an author’s livelihood. We understand the stress and frustration when things don’t work. We’re a small but dedicated team. If you email us, we promise to reply. Meet Our Team.

Who Is It For?

While Author E.M.S. is open to non-fiction and fiction writers of all genres, published and unpublished, we’ve targeted information toward the following groups:

Debut Authors. Many debut authors need to build or redesign their website, grow their social media connections, and find ways to introduce their book to readers. We’re covering a wide variety of topics from an entry level.

Technophobes. We understand that not all authors are tech-savvy. They’d much rather write books than upload a blog or attach a photo or add a tab to their Facebook page. We’re keeping our overviews simple and adding pictures and videos to help explain the how-tos.

Established Authors with Reverted Rights. We’re aware that many authors have regained rights to older titles and are re-releasing them, either with small presses or independently. For some of these authors, working in the digital world is new. We’re gathering lists of freelancers for authors who would rather hire someone to take over some of the workload.

Self-Published Authors. Many authors are exploring the new independent publishing models, particularly in digital formats. We’re gathering information on formatting, distributors, marketing and more.

Start investing in your writing career today by joining as a Basic Member absolutely FREE.