Resources

Free tools, tips and links from SPR on writing and selling your book

Designing a Book Cover with 99Designs


Visit 99designs.com
Though 99Designs has had mixed reviews of their logo design service, the book cover wing has a good track record. JC Leland was the e-Book Cover Design Award Winner for June 2012 in Fiction at the Book Designer blog using a 99Designs cover.

an end to the means leland

The author captions: ““I ran a design contest at 99designs.com to develop the cover art for my book. Highly recommend this process for authors!”

Here’s how it works: you submit info about your book to the pool of designers and pay money up front ($299 and up). This acts as the cash prize, and then designers […]

2014-01-20T14:56:09+02:00January 15th, 2014|Categories: Resources|Tags: |

Ingram Spark Challenges Createspace

IngramSpark-WebsiteLogoIngram has launched a new self-publishing option in addition to Lightning Source – handling both ebooks and print on demand. One of the complaints about Lightning Source is that it is not entirely user-friendly, so Ingram Spark can be considered a kind of Amazon-like version of Lightning Source. Ingram Spark still uses LSI as its print on demand service, so it’s not a wholly separate entity. From the site:

After 50 years in the industry, Ingram recognized the need to reduce the amount of time and effort publishers spend trying to manage the complexities of distributing a book around

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2018-10-22T12:34:18+02:00January 8th, 2014|Categories: Resources|

How-To Videos About Self-Publishing

Top Ten Things You Need To Know About Self-Publishing:

Self-Publishing A Children’s Book:

How To Sell A Ton Of Books:

Self-Publishing Is Easy And Lazy:

The Creative Penn Site:

Self-Publishing Roadmap:

Barnes & Noble PubIt:

Self-Publishing – A Googler’s Journey:
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2013-09-18T22:57:38+02:00September 18th, 2013|Categories: Resources|

WordPress Bookstore Plugin: MyBookTable

If you’re using WordPress (.org), this plugin is somewhat useful, but could be a lot more useful. It streamlines something that doesn’t necessarily need to be streamlined, but it is a useful organizational tool if you’ve got a lot of books to manage.

If you’re already using WordPress and made a blog page for a book, the system for adding a book’s details and bookstore links is pretty straight forward. Here’s how I’ve done it. Those buy links could perhaps be better organized. But the process of putting together that post is straight forward: add details and images. MyBookTable […]

2013-08-23T13:20:44+02:00August 23rd, 2013|Categories: Resources|

New Ebook Store: Libiro

A nice-looking ebook store open to self-publishers, still in beta. Put together by a self-publisher.

About:

Why do you only sell indie books?

The main reason is that indie authors are exciting. The good thing about publishing yourself is that you’re not tied down to market trends or a publisher’s business plan. Indie authors can write what they want, when they want. The result? A different breed of writing. A pedigree we’re proud to represent.

Here’s another reason for you: Indie authors can sometimes have trouble standing out on huge stores like Amazon, and constantly work hard to make

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2013-08-23T12:48:43+02:00August 23rd, 2013|Categories: Resources|

Smashwords Unveils Smashwords Interviews

Smashwords unveiled a cool new promotional tool where authors can interview themselves. Interviews can be ranked according to popularity.

Here’s how it works:

How to create, edit and publish your Interview:

  1. Your Smashwords Interview can have as many or as few questions as you like. Next to each “Q:” Write out your question, or select from one of our suggested questions.
  2. We have about a dozen suggested questions to get your creative juices flowing.  These questions are all optional.  Feel free to modify our questions or create your own!
  3. Each Answer can be up to 5,000 characters long (around 600
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2013-08-21T12:19:52+02:00August 21st, 2013|Categories: Resources|

What Sells a Book?

Book covers

I’ve often seen independent authors posting a series of cover images online and asking people to choose their favourite; or they might ask a handful of friends what cover they’d buy. Choosing a book cover with either method doesn’t make a lot of sense. I have been telling my family I’m going to paint my bedroom for the last 15 years, but there it is, the same ugly shade of pink it was in the late 1990s.

My point is that people don’t always do what they’ll say they’ll do. A better question to ask friends or people […]

2020-02-21T05:52:23+02:00June 16th, 2013|Categories: Resources|Tags: , |
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