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A recent guest post, by Melissa Foster, on Jane Friedman’s blog offered some interesting insights on agent-assisted self-publishing and Amazon’s White Glove Program:

With independent author success on the rise, the role of agents has taken a precarious turn for the unknown. Many agents are seeing fewer sales and lower advances (which equates to lower income), and are looking for ways to keep their heads above water. One path that some have taken is agent-assisted self-publishing.”Read more.

Agent-assisted means different things to different agents. Some agents help an author self-publish, literally. This means they format

I have, apparently, 539 friends. Facebook tells me so.

I have a fan page for my book, with over 1000 likes. My Twitter is a healthy 600 odd and I have over 50 mentions on Google for the title. But you see, I know that not everyone rushed over to Amazon and picked up their copy the day it went on sale. I know this because I sold 23 copies on the first day. That was it.

So how the heck do I get every single one of those people to buy a copy of my book? Glibly “liking” my […]

Someone recently asked me for a list of my favorite books on writing. I came up with a few and thought I’d share them here. This is a very idiosyncratic list—just a few I like and an attempt to tell you why I like them. These are not listed in any special order other than the order in which I pulled them off my shelf.

The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life Priscilla Long

I like this one for several reasons, but top of the list is that it addresses all types of writing: […]

A pretty brutal assessment of Author Solutions at Let’s Get Digital:

You see, Author Solutions’ modus operandi is pretty despicable, and they’ve been badgering, swindling and confusing writers out of money—and lots of it—for years.

The deceit starts with the web of brands they’ve established. With so many imprints, Author Solutions has tricked authors into thinking they have dozens of choices. In reality, however, the parent company is just slapping up half a dozen different logos, renaming packages, and selling the same grossly overpriced services to all of their customers no matter which brand ends up on the cover.

When I set out to write “The Bull and The Ban” I realized that there was going to be an issue. Although my book is the account of my journey through Spain and Catalonia to discover the controversy behind bullfighting and I am English, there were going to be Spanish speakers interested in the book as well, which is the book of interviews I filmed for the documentary I made, coming out this month.

It seemed logical and with over 300 fans on my social network looking forward to the release I also decided to look into the […]