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.

News from AWP

I just got back from the AWP conference – the Association of Writers and Writing Programs – in Denver. 9000 or so publishers and writers. A lot of litmags, university presses, poets, fiction and non-fiction writers, setting up shop. A great experience all around. I’d never actually been to a large-scale conference like this one.

50 or so panels a day. I was on one of them – “To Publish or Self-Publish” – with Ivory Madison, CEO of Red Room, Daniel Will Harris, a book designer, and author Christopher Meeks, who put the panel together. Read his […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:30:57+02:00April 13th, 2010|Categories: Features|

Smashwords Distributes to the iPad

If you’ve published with Smashwords, you’ve already gotten the email, but big news: Smashwords will now distribute to the iPad iBookstore, which is set to release on April 3rd. What’s interesting is this is being touted as the way into the iPad on Apple sites. While you can publish to the Kindle via Smashwords, you can also just upload a file to Amazon directly. With the iPad, this is now the best way to have your book listed. Here’s the lowdown from the email.

What does it take to qualify? Please read carefully:

1. Your ebook must be accepted

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Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:37:23+02:00March 29th, 2010|Categories: News|

DIY TV Advertising

I can’t claim to have done this yet, but it’s pretty amazing that Google TV Ads are even possible. When people start creating their own television advertising, how will something like putting out your own book lack any credibility? Answer: it won’t and we’re entering a brave new world where DIY is the norm. This is something to seriously consider for a book ad if you’ve got some money to spend.

From Slate:

Here’s Google’s how-to:

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Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:37:53+02:00March 24th, 2010|Categories: Resources|

The Pain of Promotion

When promoting your own book, the pain of promotion isn’t necessarily the amount of time it takes, but how it actually feels to be the salesman of your own work. It’s what makes writing a query letter so hard – not just condensing a book into a few words, but trying to be an advocate without sounding like a used car salesman. One of the problems you’ll see in self-published books is hyperbole on the back cover copy. It’s important to realize that self-published books and traditionally published books aren’t equal in this regard. So if a writer calls his/her […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:38:28+02:00March 24th, 2010|Categories: Features|

Tuesday Tells it Slant by Holly Christine

The structure of this novel might make a writer sit up and say, “Why didn’t I think of this?” The book follows Tuesday Morning (her real name) throughout her life in a series of diary entries and real life events. The book will switch from 2009 to 1990 to 1998 and back again. It’s a great way to illustrate the timelessness of life – how old events are with us, almost as if they’re always happening in real time. Tuesday decides to reimagine her diary as a way of reimagining her life – as if she can rewrite her real […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:40:24+02:00March 16th, 2010|Categories: Book Reviews|

American Apocalypse by Nova

The apocalypse no doubt is a huge subject right now in movies and literature, but for the most part apocalypse narratives are the result of war, environmental catastrophe, or disease. American Apocalypse takes a different, and unique, approach – the financial crisis, where the crisis turns into all-out catastrophe.

The novel is similar to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in the sense that there is no detailed explanation about how the crisis occurred – it is centered mostly around how people survive the crisis. One of the haunting things about The Road is not understanding just why the apocalypse has […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:37:00+02:00March 10th, 2010|Categories: Book Reviews|

Happy Read an E-Book Week

Read an E-book Week is here. Some info:

History – Read an E-Book Week was first registered with Chase’s Calendar of Events in 2004. Chase’s is a day by day directory of special days, weeks and months used by event planners or anyone looking for a reason to celebrate. By having the week officially recognized, e-book authors and publishers acquired a certain extra “legitimacy” during that week to promote the new technology of e-books. The public and media were initially wary of e-books and many doors were closed to promotion. With the week officially recognized by Chase’s, authors reported they

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Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:37:32+02:00March 8th, 2010|Categories: News|

A Literary Author Self-Publishes

It’s always been my contention that for self-publishing really to enter the mainstream and be taken seriously as an avenue for all writers, it would have to gain popularity as a medium for literary fiction. That would lend it instant respect and credibility. After all, The Shack has sold two million copies and Still Alice has spent many weeks on the NY Times bestseller list – but still there are some of the same old arguments about self-publishing being a good or bad outlet.