Features

Articles, how-to’s, opinion and tips and tricks in the self-publishing arena

Book Promotion Services: What Works for Immediate Sales?

Promotion for eBooks on emailersA lot of the advice you’ll find about book marketing is frustratingly vague. You’ll find a lot of blog posts touting “Top Ten Book Promotion Strategies” with advice like:

  1. Be Active on Social Media
  2. Blog Regularly
  3. Build an Email List of Readers

While these things may help build a readership, they won’t sell books in the short term…or even the long term. A lot of social media is tweeting into the wind, and blogging can sometimes gain a following of five loyal followers, three of whom live in your house. The same goes for email lists: you can only run […]

2019-03-01T13:40:21+02:00March 1st, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: |

Self-Publishing Review’s Author Manifesto for 2019

We asked authors what they want this year. It’s a really simple list: Personal customer service, something to help set up on Amazon, flexible pricing, tons of shares on social media, to sell books, Amazon Customer Reviews, free advice, leave disinformation behind, and have the freedom to publish without shame. How will we deliver this in 2019?

Personal customer service

To be a service provider to single-person businesses, i.e. authors, is a specialist concern in any industry. Dealing with highly fragile confidence and high impact delivery – i.e. big fail or big win – should be the overreaching priority. One […]

2019-02-22T07:52:48+02:00February 22nd, 2019|Categories: Features|

Self-Publishing Review is Ten Years Old! An Interview with Founder Henry Baum

Today, SPR is ten years old!  Founder Henry Baum is a Manhattan-born Los Angeles musician and writer who currently lives near London, UK. He has been traditionally published in three countries, and has written several indie books, of which one has been made into a short film by Ruben Fleischer (director of “Zombieland” and “Venom”) starring Kevin Corrigan. He founded SPR in 2008 as a blog for authors to connect and share tips. Since then, the company has become a major startup in the the self-publishing industry, and employs several staff in the UK and USA.

What made you think […]

2018-12-19T13:54:42+02:00December 19th, 2018|Categories: Features, Interviews|

3 Essential Apps for Self-Publishers

Author Apps
I’m a big believer that the vast majority of apps ‘talk the talk’ more than they are able to ‘walk the walk.’

This is understandable. Have you ever been let down by a major company? Anyone who ever purchased a Microsoft Zune can tell you how that feels. If even the major companies such as Microsoft fail to deliver on your expectations, you start to expect that even the smaller organizations will similarly disappoint.

Thankfully, there are many apps out there that buck the trend. Apps that over deliver on your expectations and truly make a positive difference to your […]

2020-02-08T15:59:13+02:00December 17th, 2018|Categories: Features, Member Blog|Tags: |

Why Do So Many Publishing Services Fail?

Why do so many publishing services fail?Traditional publishing professionals think they can jump on the indie bandwagon and make a mint from applying the same techniques they learned in that industry to self-published authors. This is the big error. The world of publishing and assisted publishing are two different beasts entirely.

And here’s why:

1.  In assisted publishing, the author is the client. 

This is confounding to many new services because in trad (traditional) publishing, the publisher holds the puppet strings. New services who don’t take the time to spell out deals and what the author will get on their service descriptions and websites feel like […]

2018-11-18T10:02:25+02:00November 18th, 2018|Categories: Features|

Five Tips to Write Your Book in Hard Times

Five Tips to Write Your Book in Hard Times

How Am I Supposed To Write With All This Going On?

This isn’t just October Surprise, this is something so depressing that I feel unable to write. How do we get to writing with all this sadness and violence going on? Here’s what I’m doing.

1. Turn off the TV. And the internet.

It’s the constant stream of gloomy, negative news into a household that will be getting in your head, even if you aren’t really listening to it. If you’re going to write, get away from the TV and listen to music instead. Here’s an app that stops […]

2018-10-27T16:36:58+02:00October 27th, 2018|Categories: Features|

Six Reasons Why Amazon is Not Banning Indie Authors

Five Reasons Amazon is Not Banning Indie AuthorsThere has been a lot of panic recently with horror stories about Amazon banning indie authors en masse for promoting their books. Here’s why that’s fake news.

1. Amazon is a business that wants to make money.

There are millions of books on Kindle, something like 7 million. Around 10% of Amazon’s total book stock. There’s no way Amazon wants to ban indie authors from Amazon, who must account for at least a quarter of those books, just by pure common sense.

2. Getting reviews and promotion for your book is not going to get you banned.

If you do […]

2020-02-20T13:31:33+02:00October 18th, 2018|Categories: Features|Tags: , , |
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