Whether you’re self-publishing or you went the traditional route, you’ve likely been told that you need to have a blog and a website. But, if you’re like a lot of authors, independent and otherwise, you don’t get many visitors to your site. Leaning a little about search engine optimization or SEO can help. SE-what, you [...]

Does advising self-publishers to write for the fringe markets they can reasonably hope to thrive in mark the average self-published work as something it isn’t: writing that the ‘average’ person wouldn’t want to read?

Recently I read a great article by Patricia Fry called ‘50 Reasons Why You Should Write That Book’. It is a FREE 24-page Booklet filled with great ideas and information for self-publishing authors. I was struck by the similarity between the problems eBook authors have when they get started and baseball players starting off on [...]

Some of you already know that I founded Ebook Friendly – a special kind of e-bookstore addressed to those readers who are aware of distractions the web brings and want to avoid them at the stage of browsing for books. Because reading is all about being focused, opposite to Internet – which is all about [...]

Although Tim Ferriss (4 Hour Work Week, 4 Hour Body) isn’t self published, his success is due entirely to his own promotion and marketing tactics. Pretty much single handedly he’s created a book promotion campaign strategy that is keeping both his books high on the best-seller lists, for years. A couple days ago he announced [...]

Two nights ago I became addicted to the website www.fiverr.com. If you haven’t heard of fiverr, it’s a website that allows people to offer to do a variety of things for five bucks. There are hundreds of different kinds of things people are willing to do – and at $5 per job, many of them [...]

I came across Foozago Books: Indies while searching for indie book stores for my self-published non-fiction book. Then I came across them again on the discussion of Joel Friedlander’s (The Book Designer) post indie bookstores vs. indie publishers. Basically they are a little amazon, but you have to print and send them your books. They’ll [...]

Book trailers have become a staple in the publishing industry. Unfortunately they can costs hundreds or even thousands of dollars (for only 1 minute of video!). Do you really need a book trailer to promote your book? Where can you find high quality, low cost video production? What do you do with a book trailer [...]

To have a chance at selling your book on amazon or online, you need reviews. Lots of them. And if you’re like me, you hate pushing all your friends and family to review your work (is it really fair to ask them?) and leave comments. So most authors do this: 1) Search online for book [...]

For the past few months I’ve been trying just about everything to get people to read and comment on my indie non-fiction. I’m giving it away for free on my website. I sent out massive email campaigns to related bloggers, basically begging them to take a look at get the free copy. Response has been [...]