Articles, how-to’s, opinion and tips and tricks in the self-publishing arena
There’s no doubt that her behavior is frustrating. She makes self-publishers look bad because people can point and say: Look, self-publishers write terrible books! They’re unhinged! Actually, this reaction doesn’t make much […]
Fast forward to 2011 and already the stories are hitting the news. Indie authors are on the bestsellers lists, indies are crossing over from self-published ebooks to mainstream deals. The digital war has been fought, the armistice signed, and we won.
But hang on. “We” won? Who’s we?
It’s my contention that what we have here is a classic semantic slippage, and it’s one we should have seen coming (no one […]
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 […]
What if my next page-turner doesn’t have any pages?
As I write this post I am up to my elbows in finalizing the formatting and interior lay-out for the print version of my new thriller Grave Undertakings (sequel to the acclaimed Asylum Lake). The entire frustrating process has me questioning the future of my titles in print. The far-less cumbersome e-book formatting has been done for some time and it begs the question: am I committing author suicide if my next page-turner doesn’t have any pages at all?
Don’t get me wrong, I love print books. I still haven’t invested […]
When I e-published my first novel, a high fantasy adventure called The Emperor’s Edge, I spent the first couple weeks posting about it everywhere. Message boards, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. etc. I even contemplated getting a custom CafePress t-shirt that I could wear at the gym (the natural place where high fantasy lovers hang out, of course). My efforts weren’t totally in vein, and I did sell a few copies this way, but I realized this was a tough way to make a dollar.
I decided to try a couple new tactics: advertising (which I’ve blogged about here before[…]
In my youth, I was surrounded by books and movies (I even worked in a dollar theater for a time that showed second-run movies.), so I guess you could say that “stories” are what helped me grow up. Even when I was in college at the U.S. Naval Academy, I was a history major, primarily because the classes were like sitting through advanced story-time, at least in my opinion. I wrote the requisite papers for school, but it wasn’t until my graduate work that I really caught the writing bug.
I wrote a paper on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps […]
[…]What the e-book thing and the self-publishing thing have shown us is that what’s commercial and marketable will still be what’s commercial and marketable whether it’s self-published or traditionally published. The people who are going to make money off self-publishing are those working in identifiable genres and telling stories that appeal to a broad audience. And I don’t say this with any bitterness or resentment at all, I wish these people all the success and happiness in the world. I’d only caution those budding writers out there who are thinking about self-publishing their
[…]Right now, Author Solutions is the biggest self-publishing/POD service company in the world. Over the last decade, they’ve bought up the most significant competitors, such as iUniverse, Xlibris, and Trafford. Their growth has been astronomical and reported on by outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Inc. magazine.
To keep growing their business, they’ve been soliciting and establishing partnerships with traditional publishers, to set up new self-publishing brands that they exclusively service, such as Harlequin’s Horizons and Thomas Nelson’s West Bow. They’ve also started an author education arm.