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There’s some confusion as to what role the Library of Congress (LOC) plays for a properly published book. This is because the LOC not only provides cataloging information for most published books, but also houses the US Copyright Office, which has nothing do to with cataloging. Let me briefly elaborate on a couple of different reasons your book and the Library of Congress may cross paths.

Wheatmark sends one copy of your book to the LOC upon publication for cataloging purposes. We do this to fulfill an obligation we incur every time we request a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) prior to the book’s publication.

Why do we put an LCCN in your book?

Local librarians want to be able to shelve a new book correctly as soon as they receive it. They don’t have the time to catalog books upon receipt, so they turn to the Library of Congress for […]

You may remember that a little over three years ago we asked you if now you thought ebooks were going to make a difference to you as an author. That is the time when Amazon released its Kindle reader.

I know what your answer is now. But back then, we had spent the previous decade waiting for ebooks to come of age, to no avail. There were multiple formats and substandard readers that few people wanted. The early Kindle could have seemed to some as simply the latest untested entrant into an otherwise failing e-reader market.

There were early signs, however, that an e-reader like the Kindle would actually stick. You see, the biggest obstacle ebooks had faced prior to this was the inability for people to download them to their readers without having to hook them up to a computer first.

That all changed in late 2007 when Amazon introduced the […]

You wrote a book. You followed the steps:

• You had it professionally edited
• You had it professionally designed
• You made sure it was distributed with full returnability to sites like Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com
• You even did a book signing at a local indie bookstore just for fun
• You created a website and blog for the book

But the sales are just not rolling in. At least not at the level you had expected. What went wrong?

One possibility is that you haven’t transitioned your lifestyle to that of a published author. You are most likely still in “writer” mode.

When people ask you about your experience and hobbies (say at a church potluck), do you still self-consciously say, “Well, um, I actually recently wrote a book,” or do you smile, rummage in your pocket for a business card, and say, “I published my second book last month! Check out my website and read […]

Like most niches of the creative world, there is a learning curve to joining that community. The language book people speak is often one that can befuddle the new author. Here is a quick rundown of some important terms publishing professionals may say, ask your opinion about, or need you to understand.
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Manuscript – The manuscript is the document that is your writing. It can be printed on paper, sketched on a napkin, or better yet, typed up in a Word document. When book people talk about a manuscript, they mean the work that will be transformed into a book.

Paginated interior – After your final manuscript is accepted, the next step in the publishing process is layout. The paginated interior is the end product of layout. All of the formatting choices the designer makes to mold your manuscript into a book is part of this. What the author receives to review […]