So when will we start to see REAL ebooks appear on the market? You know the ebooks that take advantage of their digital environment. Ebooks that have been rendered to improve the reader’s ebook experience. As the number of ebook devices explodes into the book reader’s world, the readers are going to expect more. This [...]

The Paper Rats deconstruct some common writer stereotypes.

About:
Authors  R.J. Keller and Kristen J. Tsetsi like to make videos when they should be writing. Their show is called “Inside The Writers’ Studio.”
They are Paper Rats.

Over the past few weeks I have been concentrating on reading Kindle book files.  I say concentrating because the urge to take out a red pencil and slash all the grammar, spelling, punctuation and capitalization errors is overtaking my urge to read.  My eyes hurt.  The worst ones are, sadly, self-published books.  And I understand [...]

Maybe it’s great – but I’ll never know. Sounds great, in theory:
Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own [...]

Has self-publishing lost its way? The reason that I got interested in self-publishing was because of the traditional publishing industry’s obsession with marketing over the quality of books. It seems like the vibe around self-publishing these days is echoing trad publishing’s marketing obsession. I understand wanting to sell books. I’m desperate [...]

2011 was an essential year for self-publishing and it’s good to have all major events collected in one place.
I prepared a timeline, which works very well with a detailed report on top self-published Kindle ebooks of 2011 and will be a part of the infographic about self-publishing I’m going to post at Ebook Friendly by [...]

Andrew Sullivan posted an email from a reader – who we’ve reviewed and  interviewed in the past – about his leap from self-publishing to AmazonEncore (which I didn’t know had happened, so congrats Tim!).  He writes:
After finishing a first draft of the manuscript, I jumped through all the typical hoops: got an agent, wrote [...]

I’m very happy about Konrath’s success.  It’s encouraging to everybody.  If I make 1/10 of what he’s making, I’ll be ecstatic.  But there’s sometimes a problem with writers like Konrath or Cory Doctorow touting their success when they’re each in a very unique position.  Doctorow advocates giving away books for free permanently because it’s worked [...]

Yesterday, I was looking at my Kindle sales, which reliably sell the the same amount every day (which is not a huge amount, I’m no Konrath) and I was wondering why I couldn’t break through with more sales.  Am I getting the exact same traffic to my Amazon page every day?  How much of that [...]

Meghan Daum has a very interesting post in The Believer about what it’s like to be a columnist for the L.A. Times and the amount of invective that’s thrown her way:
These days, being attacked isn’t just the result of saying something badly, it’s the result of saying anything at all. I can testify to [...]