Henry Baum | Self-Publishing Review

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.

SPR is For Sale and/or Needs a Co-Editor

I can’t do this alone anymore. Big site, needs a lot of content. With self-publishing growing as it is, this site could become a major magazine…if it had a staff able to take on the amazing number of books being released. And I’m talking about good books, not just a way to review as many books as possible. As time goes on, the quality of self-published books is going to get better and better, meaning there has to be a staff on hand to review the growing number of books. But alas, I’m in no place to actually pay anyone […]

Henry Baum2010-05-26T09:45:18+02:00May 14th, 2010|Categories: Lead Story, News|

Lulu Has it Together

This was a comment on the Get it Together, Lulu post. Warrants its own post:

I don’t work for Lulu, but I do work for one of their competitors. And while I find it amusing to see them get bashed by bloggers on a regular basis, there are a few points that I think you should consider when you create your posts.

1. Self-publishing companies have to make money in order to exist. If they can’t make money, then they can’t help people publish their books. So, complaining that they have a profit component to their business model isn’t […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:19:25+02:00May 12th, 2010|Categories: Publisher Reviews|

Distribute to Bookstores! Maybe!

From BookstoMarketNow.com:

Calling All Self-Published Authors!

Do you yearn to see your book in book chains, your local independent book store, catalogs and on all of the major book-selling websites beside Amazon.com?

Would you like to be doing 30 or more broadcast and internet radio shows that showcase and promote personal development authors — and then see your sales leap as a result?

Are you too overwhelmed with work, promotion and coaching to launch a social marketing campaign for your book?

Do you have $7500 and want to give up 30% of sales? So it goes. Nobody ever […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:27:08+02:00May 11th, 2010|Categories: Publisher Reviews|

Get it Together, Lulu

Lulu’s been exhibiting quite a few problems lately. Here are two posts on Lulu’s mishandling of ebooks and their clients. The first is reprinted from Mike Cane’s iPad Test blog, titled Lulu And The iBookstore: Say NO!

Get Your eBook in the Apple iBookstore

Don’t do it.

Here’s why.

Lulu says:

ISBNs. Apple requires ISBNs on eBooks. Lulu can assign one for free.

And who will own that ISBN? If you’re getting it for free, I doubt that’s going to be you. See why ISBN ownership matters.

Lulu says:

Validation. Apple has a strict file validation process. All files

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:27:50+02:00May 10th, 2010|Categories: Lead Story, Publisher Reviews|

Yudu and Figment

Two recent discoveries that illustrate the shifting landscape in publishing.

First, Yudu, which comes from a press release, but still interesting:

A shortcoming of all eReader platforms, including Apple’s iPad, is their inability to process Flash, a multimedia platform commonly used for web sites, digital magazines and other interactive media. Because Flash is the basis for the page-turning technology used by most digital publishing solutions, this meant that page-turning digital publications such as eMagazines, eCatalogs and many types of eBooks were difficult to port to these devices. Publishers had two choices: format content separately for each individual mobile

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:28:05+02:00April 29th, 2010|Categories: News|

Don’t Sign Up for Book Galleries

I can’t say that definitively, as there are possibly success stories in the past, but the likelihood that you’ll sell any books at a showcase – or even that someone will remember your book after seeing it – is small. This past weekend I went to the LA Times Book Festival, an enjoyable madhouse of booth after booth of publishers/writers, etc. selling their wares. There were booths for Authorhouse, Xlibris, iUniverse, and Author Solutions.

Fairly daunting, but fascinating. You can read about 300,000 books being self-published a year, but until you’re in a booth like this one it really […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:28:43+02:00April 27th, 2010|Categories: Publisher Reviews|

The Independent Self-Publishers Alliance

The newly-discovered Independent Self-Publishers Alliance looks promising:

The Independent Self-Publishers Alliance is an organization for writers who publish their own books. There is no charge to use the website or forum or to join the Alliance.

This website exists to encourage and help writers to become truly independent self-publishers, so they can avoid using vanity publishers. We’d also like to help self-publishers produce better books, get more respect and sell more books.

Many vanity publishers call themselves “self-publishing companies.” They’re not. Just as no one can eat lunch for you, no other person or company can self-publish for you. The

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:30:18+02:00April 14th, 2010|Categories: Resources|

Crowdsourcing is Not the Answer

A great post at the Tomorrow Museum about the pitfalls of crowdsourcing and how it’s not necessarily the answer to what ails publishing – namely, writers not making any money. The gist of it is this:

The trouble I see with crowdfunding for creative projects is not that it doesn’t work, but that it couldn’t possibly work for everyone. First of all, the very act of crowdfunding requires a level of self-assuredness that does not often come naturally for artists and writers….

The least remarkable novels I read seem written as though the author knows his mother will see it

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:30:36+02:00April 14th, 2010|Categories: Features|