lulu | Self-Publishing Review

Interview: Christopher Meeks, author of The Brightest Moon of the Century

Christopher Meeks has published three books via Lulu: The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea, Months and Seasons, and a play, Who Lives? His first novel, The Brightest Moon of the Century, was just released to stellar reviews, including one from the Self-Publishing Review.

Self-Publishing Review: The Brightest Moon of the Century has its origin in a story in Months and Seasons. Why was this the character you chose to write a longer work of fiction about?

Christopher Meeks: I’d already written a few drafts of The Brightest Moon of the Century by the point I […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:26:34+02:00March 4th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Sunken Treasure by Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton publishing a book via Lulu is one of the better developments in self-publishing. It further helps to legitimize self-publishing for those who don’t have such quick name recognition, and could spark new interest in self-publishing among people who do. Most celebrities wait out for their huge advance and write one major book, usually with another writer. Given the huge interest in everything celebrities do, you could imagine well-known people releasing compilations of their writing periodically. Publishing could become the new blogging – in which private thoughts are packaged for people to read. That’s a possibility, at least.

But […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:27:24+02:00March 2nd, 2009|Categories: Book Reviews|

AuthorHouse Review

AuthorHouse is one of the best known, and most widely-used, print on demand self-publishers, but it did not begin so auspiciously. It was started in 1997 as 1st Books by an author who was fed up with rejections. Unfortunately, 1st Books was met with a barrage of complaints about the service – including print quality and being overly-charged at an hourly rate for services. In 2001, 1st Books got a facelift and changed its name to AuthorHouse. Since that point, it has grown steadily and hasn’t been targeted with the same type of complaints as 1st Books – which some […]

Henry Baum2014-01-08T20:51:39+02:00February 25th, 2009|Categories: Publisher Reviews|

Mr. Bukowski's Wild Ride by Rodger Jacobs

You might think that writing a book with Charles Bukowski is redundant. Bukowski’s own fiction is basically autobiography, in which his alter-ego Henry Chinaski works at the post office, sleeps with groupies, makes a movie, has a childhood, and so on. You might think that, but you’d be wrong about Mr. Bukowski’s Wild Ride because of two things:

1. It’s written in the third person, not the first person.
2. This is like no book Bukowski ever wrote.

The book puts Bukowski in touch with people from his lifetime, both fictional and not, and how he’d […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:29:16+02:00February 23rd, 2009|Categories: Book Reviews|

Interview: Rudy Rucker on the Present and Future of Self-Publishing

On the heels of the interview with Tessa Dick, last wife of Philip K. Dick, comes an interview with Rudy Rucker, often called the heir apparent to Philip K. Dick. Winner of two Philip K. Dick Awards, Rudy Rucker is the author of the novels Frek and the Elixer, Spaceland, and many others. He also has a interest in self-publishing: putting out a book of paintings through Lulu, allowing a free download of his novel Postsingular, and publishing ebooks with e-reads. Here the visionary writer talks about mixing traditional publishing with the new publishing technology.[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T20:05:28+02:00February 19th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Notes on Self-Publishing from the Tools of Change Conference

I haven’t yet written about the Tools of Change Conference (because I wasn’t there), but there is a lot of great information being posted online by people who did attend. The basic mood you see online is that self-publishing is gaining increasing legitimacy. Obviously, the conference is devoted to publishing innovation, but the way that people talk of self-publishing these days is that it is integral to the future of publishing.

For instance, the Publishing Trends blog has a great piece on how some of the participants view self-publishing:

All the participants argued for greater interplay between author, reader, and

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T20:05:51+02:00February 18th, 2009|Categories: News|

Stratagem by Jacques Vallee

I have a deep interest in UFO’s. Gearing up to write the book I’m currently working on (which I’m going to self-publish) I read a lot about the UFO phenomenon. It amazed me that something with such profound implications is not taken seriously. “What if” is enough of a reason to pay attention to the phenomenon, regardless of the amount of physical evidence. And there are a lot of credible witnesses – many more than are given mainstream attention.

In a way, the UFO phenomenon is similar to self-publishing. Because there is such a drastic amount of less-than-credible material being […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T20:06:25+02:00February 18th, 2009|Categories: Book Reviews|

York Publishing Services Review

I came across York Publishing Services in the ‘Writers & Artists Yearbook 2009’ which I got a hold of in January. No matter how much research you do in this business, week by week, you are always uncovering something or someone you never came across before. YPS is one of the most established companies in the UK, operating for more than 30 years in the print and publishing service industry. YPS provide everything from design, editing, fulfilment, warehousing and distribution of books from the large publisher right down to authors with a just single title. I have talked a lot […]

Mick Rooney2017-02-12T09:10:46+02:00February 16th, 2009|Categories: Publisher Reviews|Tags: Subsidy Publishing Articles|

Bad Self-Published Books

Obviously, I’m a self-publishing advocate, but I can acknowledge that there are some hilariously bad self-published books out there. Thankfully, they haven’t come my way in the form of submissions. Maybe my reviews have been too critical, but it’s my experience it’s the people who write the better books who are the most obsessed with marketing – see Kristen Tsetsi and Frank Daniels. So maybe the people who write more-ridiculous titles don’t send their books out that often.

Thankfully there are sites like Selfpublishedbooks.info, which is a kind of anti-Self-Publishing Review, as it only lives to mock self-published […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T20:43:50+02:00February 14th, 2009|Categories: Features|

Self-Publishing Standards Part One

The author who embarks on the journey into self-publishing takes on a great many tasks. If they choose to fulfil all the tasks themselves, they have, in effect, taken on the running of a small business and everything that goes with it. They may decide to run their small publishing business by registering it a sole proprietor company, with the intention of publishing more than just one book. They not only become authors of their book, but editor, designer and illustrator. They will have to go about preparing their book as a digital file for the printers, using a program […]

Mick Rooney2011-10-15T12:26:43+02:00February 12th, 2009|Categories: Resources|