Monthly Archives: October 2011

From the Wall Street Journal article: Secret of Self-Publishing: Success

Self-publishing these days is increasingly a tale of two cities.

There are established authors, like Nyree Belleville, who says she’s earned half a million dollars in the past 18 months selling direct rather than through a publisher..

Then there are new authors, like Eve Yohalem. More than a month after self-publishing, she has grossed about $100 in sales— after incurring costs of $3,400. She said she’s in no rush, though.

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Mark Coker writes at Smashwords:

Last month I provided a brief update about the ScrollMotion relationship (September 19 Site Updates update below) where I linked to an interview I did at The Savvy Book Marketer. In that interview, I commented about the delays ScrollMotion faced in distributing Smashwords ebooks as apps. Despite the fact they completed thousands of apps, last week we ended the project. The app world has changed dramatically in the last few months and it no longer makes sense for either of us to continue pursuing it. They originally planned to distribute the apps to the

This story is pretty amazing.  A “publishing consultant” in Atlanta, GA ripped people off by taking their money and offering nothing in return.  At the risk of blaming the victim, I am not 100% sympathetic.  When you’re shelling out $10,000 to someone with 30 prior fraud complaints, perhaps you didn’t do your homework.  Many of the complaints leveled against self-publishing companies often fall into this category.  Of course, screw the scammers, and this guy should be arrested.

The Washington Post reports on the story in these terms: A Lesson in Self-Publishing

Self-publishing is fraught with terrors — first, you have

As a sequel to SPR is Charging for Reviews, here ‘s the lowdown for reviewers, as I’m not sure how many people yet know about this yet.  Reviewers are paid $40 per review, and the site is getting a steady stream of people looking for reviews so far. But as the idea is to find many different reviewers who have different genre preferences/experiences, there’s not always a match.  So far, there have been a lot of science fiction submissions, and a limited number of sci-fi reviewers.   For the system to work it needs to bring in all types of […]