I want to tell you about something that happened to me a couple of months ago. After spending most of 2012 working on the edits of my second novel and putting off multiple opportunities to visit family in the process, the prospect of killing two birds with one stone—visiting family and promoting the book—seemed like [...]

It seems to me that self-published writers are looked down on – that they’re just using up space in the market; that if their work was good enough to get a proper publishing deal it would have done; that they’re putting out any kind of rubbish just because technology allows them to. All of this [...]

One of the first questions a new indie author must ask is what audience will buy my book? The second question is how will I market to this audience? Both questions should be asked way before you get to the publishing stage of your book. In the old days, there was a very standard set [...]

In this roundup: As recently discussed here at SPR, we are inching closer to the day when self-published eBooks will be stocked by libraries. Consider using your author platform to promote your local library’s eBook lending policy and make friends with your local library ahead of time. Also, is landing a publishing deal for your [...]

In this round-up: the Smashwords July sale for either hemisphere, GalleyCat’s weekly lists of eBook sales ranks, new legal ruling in Europe on eBook resale, a lengthy opinion piece deconstructing why The Authors Guild among other things attempts to invoke sympathy for PublishAmerica, and a save-the-libraries campaign from The Bookseller. Enroll Your Books in the [...]

Yes, a book’s foreword, preface, and introduction are different. And each has a different purpose. But each has the same goal: To . . .
1. Make an emotional connection with the reader, which will . . .
2. Build credibility for the book’s author and the book, which will . . .
3. Sell more books. Period.
This is the mantra that we self-publishers must always keep in mind for everything we create. Everything, without exception.

Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware has a warning for self-published authors about a couple of promotion “opportunities,” part of her series of posts on the topic. The first of the “suite of services,” the Hollywood Book-to-Movie Treatment, costs a cool $3,299. For that, you get a 7-10 page “creative adaptation” of your book written by [...]

Amazon’s entry into public libraries and their own lending process through the Prime program has just quadrupled the activity in ebook lending. With this rapid growth of the ebook lending process comes some inherent problems as [...]

There are good arguments for both sides of the issue on eBook pricing. A lower price may devalue your work, but it may also drive sales. There’s also the option of giving it away for free. Henry’s recent experiment with giving his novel away for free got me thinking about doing the same with mine. [...]

At the start of the year, I had an idea for a project. I wanted to write a serialized fiction story in pieces small enough to fit inside a single Tweet. One tiny chunk of narrative prose every day, slowly building an ongoing, real-time story for the audience to piece together. Then every so often, [...]