Lead Story | Self-Publishing Review

The Espresso Book Machine: One Writer’s Story

A guest post by Judith D. Schwartz, a writer based in Southern Vermont and author, most recently, of The Therapist’s New Clothes, a memoir — and cautionary tale — about training as a psychotherapist. Her blog on using the Espresso Book Machine is: http://litadventuresinpod.blogspot.com.

As someone with a book manuscript making the rounds, I followed the growing acceptance of self-published work with great interest. It was reassuring to know that there were alternatives to letting the thing wither on my hard-drive. On the other hand, did I really want to do that? I mean, if I were a […]

Guest Post2011-10-08T19:50:15+02:00September 2nd, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

An Interview with Hugh McGuire of Book Oven on Cloud Publishing

When I read the blog entry about the launch of Book Oven, I saw this as a significant development in the changing landscape of publishing. As I tweeted then, “Sometimes I feel like I’m fooling myself that POD’s losing stigma, but things really are changing.” It was so refreshing to see a well-designed and maintained site talk about print on demand and other tools for publishers with no cynicism or apology. As the site says,

There has been a revolution bubbling in the book world, and digital has arrived: ebooks, print-on-demand, and online sales mean you don’t need

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:56:42+02:00August 10th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Ransom Stephens on The God Patent and the Future of Publishing

Ransom Stephens has written one of the best assessments of the future of publishing that you’re likely to read (found via Pod People). Called Booking the Future, it needs to be read – more than once. Here we talk about the ideas put forth in the article and the success of his digitally-published novel, The God Patent, which basically proves the thesis of his essay: the future of publishing is going to look very different than it does today. It will have many elements of self-publishing writ large. As he says, “Though the role of publishing has […]

Henry Baum2014-06-18T14:09:18+02:00July 28th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

A Kindle Success Story: How to Promote a Kindle Ebook

This week brings news of Boyd Morrison who got a book deal based on his Kindle book sales. This book deal did not happen in a vacuum: Morrison had a literary agent already in place – i.e. publishers didn’t just suddenly notice his level of sales and offer him a book deal. The story is that the book was sent out by his literary agent and it wasn’t picked up. After Morrison’s book, The Ark, started become a Kindle phenomenon, his agent thought about trying to sell the book again, and on the strength of his Kindle sales […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:59:46+02:00July 14th, 2009|Categories: Lead Story, Resources|

Do Self-Publishing Services Take Advantage of Writers?

One of the major criticisms of self-publishing is that self-publishing services take advantage of authors – promising them a quick route to success that is wholly unrealistic. I’ve argued that a lot of this falls on the authors themselves, not on the subsidy service. Authors have to do some research on costs and what can realistically be achieved through self-publishing. This came to light in a recent comment on SPR’s AuthorHouse review. A writer said he poured his limited savings into his AuthorHouse book and received little in return. The commenter – who goes by “Feeling Cheated” – said:[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T20:40:29+02:00July 2nd, 2009|Categories: Features, Lead Story|

Introducing the Publetariat Vault

April Hamilton, of Publetariat, has a new service for self-publishers called The Publetariat Vault. Unlike other listing services, the Vault will include sales data, as well as reader reviews. The idea is to make a searchable database for publishing pros to use in order to find authors that are a lower risk to publish. Indie Reader, another for-pay listing service, is aimed primarily at readers (hence the name).

As it says on the site,

The Publetariat Vault is a searchable database of independent literary works for which the authors own all rights free and clear and are interested

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:53:54+02:00June 23rd, 2009|Categories: Lead Story, Publisher Reviews|

Introducing: Backword Books

This will repeat some of the information mentioned in the inaugural post of Backword Books – an experiment in self-publishing. Backword Books is a compendium of self-publishers – a kind of hybrid of self-publishing and the traditional literary press. It’s not a press that uses POD technology because the difference is that each writer on Backword uses a different method to print books – iUniverse, Lulu, Lightning Source, and so on.

The idea of the site is to start small and grow from there – selecting a few strong, well-reviewed self-published writers and seeing where it takes us. Even though […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:01:10+02:00June 16th, 2009|Categories: Lead Story, Publisher Reviews|

An Interview with Jexbo.com Founder, Jill Exler

Self-Publishing Review: What is jexbo and why did you start it? Are you an author yourself?

Jill Exler: Formed in 2007, jexbo™ is a website at www.jexbo.com that gives self-published authors the ability to reach new customers online for less than $1.00 per month and sell their books (jexbo receives 5% of whatever the author sells).

Readers can buy books and find unique, self-published works in various categories. And self-published authors have the ability to control the sales process, communicate directly with customers and customize a Web page for marketing purposes at no additional cost.

I started jexbo because I […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:04:32+02:00June 9th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|