Henry Baum

About Henry Baum

Author of three self-published novels and one traditionally published (Soft Skull Press, Canongate, and Hachette Littératures). Recipient of Best Fiction at the DIY Book Festival, the Gold IPPY Award for Visionary Fiction, and the Hollywood Book Festival Grand Prize. He lives with his wife Cate Baum in Spain. He's the founder of SPR.

Self-Publishing Starter Kit

We get a lot of questions here from writers just beginning to self-publish who have little to no idea about the process. They’re all asking about the most basic nuts and bolts: how do I self-publish? We’ve gathered together the best services currently running (and have been running for a while) to publish a book quickly and professionally.

There’s still a fair bit of DIY involved with the services listed below, but you’ll have a more professional book and keep a larger share of the royalties.

So here’s a basic starter pack for the novice self-publisher who wants more of […]

Draft2Digital Adds Tolino to Distribution Partners

Draft2Digital LogoVia Draft2Digital’s press release:

You may not have heard of Tolino but trust us: Once we tell you a little about them, you’ll be putting on party hats and throwing streamers along with us.

Tolino is a cooperative of five German tech and media companies who teamed up to create a response to Amazon’s Kindle in their home country. They offer their own proprietary ebook readers that tie into a shared infrastructure.

But don’t worry if you don’t sprechen sie deutsch. The German ebook market is the third-largest English language ebook market in the world. And recent reports suggest

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2020-02-21T05:50:50+02:00January 27th, 2015|Categories: News|Tags: |

Review: Infinite Ending: Ten Stories by Frank Marcopolos ★★★★

Infinite EndingInfinite Ending: Ten Stories by Frank Marcopolos is the resulting book of a challenge to write a story a month over ten months. The ten stories follow two hikers on a long journey, a college baseball player assessing his prospects, erotica writers ruminating about the publishing business, a wounded soldier, and other tales where characters assess their present and future condition. By his own declaration in the foreword, these are “postmodern literary fiction,” not stories with high-concept premises or tidy endings.

These are rich quick-paced stories where not a lot happens, but still manages to be page-turning because of Marcopolos’ […]

2015-02-02T09:58:11+02:00January 20th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Most Writers Are Unsuccessful: A Pep Talk

Self-publisher Dylan Hearn has a very honest, but fairly depressing, post up on his site that’s gone pretty viral because it speaks to so many: 5 self-publishing truths few authors talk about:

1 You need talent to succeed but it’s no guarantee
The days of being able to publish an average story with an OK cover and finding success are over. There are many, many talented writers out there producing fantastic books who are struggling to find an audience. I know so many brilliant authors struggling to get themselves heard. An excellent story, professionally edited, well presented and with

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2020-02-21T05:52:11+02:00January 15th, 2015|Categories: Features|Tags: |

Review: Brothers in Arms by Jack O’Riley ★★★

brothers in armsBrothers in Arms by Jack O’Riley follows a group of friends who spend a lot of time drinking (and drinking and drinking) who takes their antics too far and end up violently beating up a husband and wife with a pious vanity plate. The victims of the crime are then pegged as snobs as the small band of misfits then become a major phenomenon in the Twin Cities, and the city is plunged into a debate about the nature of crime and punishment.

There’s a distinct Raymond Carver feeling to O’Riley’s narrative, especially in the lack of quotes for dialog […]

2019-01-22T15:50:55+02:00January 15th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

Writing Costs Money: On Crowdsourcing and Stacey Jay

Stacey Jay

Last week, there was a tempest about the young adult author Stacey Jay who started a Kickstarter project for her new young adult book. Traditionally published, her publisher wouldn’t take on the next book in the series and she looked to Kickstarter to fund the process of writing the next book. Her mistake (many claim) is asking for living expenses. It’s led to her dropping out of writing young adult (for the time being hopefully) and writing:

If you don’t know what happened to me last week regarding my cancelled Kickstarter and the insane backlash that followed, count your

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2020-02-21T07:53:21+02:00January 13th, 2015|Categories: Features|Tags: |

Review: Everything I Know About Zombies, I Learned in Kindergarten by Kevin Wayne Williams ★★★★★

Everything I Know About Zombies, I Learned in Kindergarten by Kevin Wayne WilliamsEverything I Know About Zombies, I Learned in Kindergarten by Kevin Wayne Williams follows 9-year-old Leticia leading a terrified band of elementary school students through the perils of a zombie apocalypse. As the promo materials make clear: this is emphatically not a book for 9-year-olds. However, for adults, and perhaps young adult readers, it is a stellar addition to the zombie genre, at once page-turning and lyrical.

Without scaring off genre readers, Everything I Know could be classified as a literary novel. Williams is an expert with dialect and the inner city setting. Leticia is a fully-realized protagonist, both mature […]

2019-01-21T09:38:24+02:00January 13th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

An Interview with Author Katherine Wynter

Katherine WynterTell us something about your book. The basics: what’s it about?

 Keeper Chronicles: Awakening is the first in a series that introduces the world of the Keepers, whose duty it is to protect the world from demons, and main characters Rebekah and Gabe. While Rebekah is dealing with her father’s death, she gets thrust into a world of secrets and monsters. Gabe just wants to keep her safe, but that doesn’t turn out to be very easy as the prime suspect in his investigation into the demon responsible for killing his ex’s father is her new boyfriend. He has to […]

2017-07-20T05:23:06+02:00January 12th, 2015|Categories: Interviews|
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