Lead stories from SPR’s ever-growing independent book portal
Two of the publishers asked for five more chapters each. But between their asking and my finishing, the financial crisis hit, and it was pretty much crickets after that. In the meantime I […]
This post is designed to give you a concise, yet comprehensive preview of most important free tools you can pick up to publish and promote your e-books. I hope it will help you discover those which best fit your author profile and personal needs.
This list is planned to be a one-stop place with all what’s available for free and worth getting your attention. For info about updates of this post, please follow or add me to a list on Twitter.
The most obvious choices, like blogging platforms or social media networks, are not included. I wanted to focus […]
Today is my new novel’s publishing day, so I thought I’d write about the marketing it took to get here.
I won’t bullshit you. The publishing industry is changing fast, and what to do is confusing. Like a bar magnet, the industry has two strong poles: traditional publishing and self-publishing. If you’re antsy for what to do, skip over the following history. If you don’t know the history, it’s worth reading and understanding. A few months back, I wrote about marketing a literary book. This is more inclusive.
HISTORY
Traditional publishing is the way things have gone, more or less, […]
The opening day seminar debate last week at the London Book Fair asked the provocative question: ‘Will publishers in the digital age soon be irrelevant?’ It was always a debate destined to be a little heated. It isn’t just provocative but also suggests there is an alternative destiny for the book publishing industry to the one envisaged by many commercial publishing houses.
The debate was hosted by Susan Danziger, CEO of DailyLit and organizer of the Publishing Point, and moderated by Michael Healy, executive director of the Book Rights Registry. Richard Charkin, executive director of Bloomsbury Publishing and Andrew Franklin, […]
This is a story about book returns. It’s also a story about the bookstore system and what’s not working. You’ll also hear how success can crush the self-publisher.
It’s not my story. I didn’t go bankrupt—but I could have. What I aim to do here is tell you my experience of publishing well-reviewed books and what you might do in this ever-changing publishing world to get ahead.
Here I can’t get into is how to write a really great book. Let’s assume you know what you’re doing, and once you write the great book, you hire a professional editor and […]
Some of you already know that I founded Ebook Friendly – a special kind of e-bookstore addressed to those readers who are aware of distractions the web brings and want to avoid them at the stage of browsing for books. Because reading is all about being focused, opposite to Internet – which is all about being distracted.
Reader friendly interface is one part of the proposition.
As a self-publisher I also want to make this site a place where great books from self-published authors can be easily discovered. There is no better way to do it than help the […]
To have a chance at selling your book on amazon or online, you need reviews. Lots of them. And if you’re like me, you hate pushing all your friends and family to review your work (is it really fair to ask them?) and leave comments. So most authors do this:
1) Search online for book reviews, indie book reviewers, self-published book reviews, how to get book reviews, etc.
2) Email or contact those reviewers asking them to take a look at their books and comment.
Here’s why that doesn’t work. First of all – those few sites that offer […]
This week, Mark Coker posted a new entry to the Smashwords blog detailing the rise of self-publishing and discussing the broken model upon which big publishing is built. From the article:
[…]If authors – the beating heart powering Big Publishing – lose faith in Big Publishing, then big publishing as we know it will die. By “Big Publishing,” I’m referring to the old, pre-self-publishing system embodied by the Big 6 New York publishers, in which the publisher serves as the author’s judge, jury, gatekeeper and executioner.
If Big Publishing approves of your book, they acquire it. Post-acquisition, an author can