What Henry describes is called restraint of trade. I’m no lawyer, but I believe this behavior can have serious implications if it occurs across state lines. If it becomes a big enough issue, and Amazon itself pisses the Feds off on enough other issues, it could become something Amazon regrets. There is also a principle [...]

First off, thanks for the Kindle Nation tip, Henry, and for bravely taking the shot. It seems like a good idea. As to the Kobo-Kindle price flap, I have thought from the start that there is huge room for mischief if the competition between ebook sellers holds you hostage to–and passive victim of–the discounting decisions [...]

I have been an acquisitions editor for my own company and a military history trade publisher. The dirty little secret is that, with a little experience, it takes no more than about ten minutes of nosing around a manuscript to figure out it’s shit. Gradations of books that aren’t shit take longer to assess as [...]

Nothing going on in Big Publishing today is not a rice-bowl issue and thus a matter of survival at an epic level. So maybe the Titanic stays afloat a few minutes longer, but where is the end altered even if extended?

When I was a cub, PW embraced me. I never got less than a stellar review. But as soon as I brought out my first SP title (because of legal issues), I was scrubbed from their consideration. So, yeah, the irony is personal and deep.

It takes a year because: the book, as it develops, spends roughly eleven months gathering mold on the desks of the non-functioning members of the publishing “team”. The author gets 18 minutes to accept or rejects edits and another three minutes to proof the book. It also takes a year for the marketing staff to [...]

Agreed, Henry, but I see a possible solution. Amazon, for example, is filled with intelligent reviewers I suppose we could contact in the hope that they’d enjoy doing for a small fee or at least a free book what they’re already doing for free. We could also ask established authors–not to say famous authors–to maybe [...]

Here’s a better alternative. I found my way to this site because the name implies a platform for reviewing self-published books–an idea that hasn’t really taken hold on the web. So how about some of us working on a very public adjunct to this site–with Henry’s permission–that reviews self-published books by qualified reviewers along the [...]

I’m going to pass on this golden opportunity. Here’s why: PW is aimed at the trade, which is to say trade publishing employees and retailers. Publishers don’t care about my self-published books, even as a curiosity. And, as things stand now, retailers will not touch most PODs (how =we= do business) because price distortions built [...]

I’m sure there are no big problems beyond the usual U.S.-Canada stuff–shipping, dollar conversion, pricing issues. A snoop around the front page at http://wwww.lightningsource.com will probably show the way to a help link you can write to and ask. If not, write to me privately and I’ll give you my rep’s email address so you [...]

I’m busy too, Vicki, but I consider learning curve to be an investment I can exploit over and over. I made what turned out to be a fairly small investment in time to learn the LSI ropes, I’ve absorbed numerous little changes for the better over a dozen years, and it now takes me an [...]

I forgot to mention earlier that, in addition to U.S. hardcopy sales, access to Apple iPad sales, and access to Espresso Book Machine sales, LSI offers distribution of hardcopy books in the U.K., which extends into the EU, for which sales you are paid in U.S. dollars. Having come up with LSI, almost from its [...]

“You can also submit fresh pages run off your laser printer if you can’t output a pdf file to LSI’s specs.” The text portion of the book I sent to LSI today, by mail, to be scanned, consisted of the first 14 pages of frontmatter submitted as 14 loose pages generated from my newly created [...]

My strong advice here is to avoid designing yourself or allowing yourself to be designed into a minefield. There are =infinite= non-problematic choices you can utilize. The minefields are clearly marked. If dark is a problem, that’s the sign you’re going to have to read and heed.

I have a designer who (a) designs a hell of a lot better than I can and (b) has more patience with process. He downloads a template based on page count, stock selection, and trim size, then seems to knock out the finished cover in a few hours. He sends me the pdf and I [...]

Since LSI collects money for you and then disburses money to you for books it sells, it needs to be able to report to IRS via a 1099. LSI couldn’t care less if you use an ITIN or SSN if you’re an individual, just as long as it can fulfill and document its reporting obligation. [...]

It’s worth noting that cover and book block are handled in two operations and joined at the final production stage. The 4-color cover is produced on a web press and the book block is made on a giant Xerox printer that leads to an all-in-one bindery that prints, gathers, trims, and glues the pages in [...]

All of the above. I read this immediately after submitting my two-dozenth title to Lightning Source since 1998. If I had read this back then–when it was actually much harder to submit–I’d still be a slave to traditional publishers. But I got through it back then and it seems easy now. While LSI considers itself [...]

Here is a must-see video for SPRers. (Snoop the entire site!) http://www.ondemandbooks.com/video2.htm You cannot really appreciate the revolution in progress until you see an Espresso Book Machine do its thing or understand how really inexpensive it is to turn the key and go. Until EBM had its major debut in the past eighteen months, the [...]

It’s not clear to me if you’re talking about a stream of unrelated short pieces–short stories and novellas–or serially released portions of a larger work, perhaps parts of a work that never ends (like a really long TV saga). I suppose you could rope readers into the latter, but it would take some serious explaining [...]