There’s definitely something to Mr. Konrath’s point that the Kindle world leads people to books they otherwise would never find. I’ve been having this experience myself, with the exception that nearly all of my books that are being downloaded through KDP are the free ones. Nevertheless, practically no one knows me or has ever heard [...]

Good for you Matt! The end results of my promotion were priceless. My five day free run shoved me into the #8 best seller in historical romance. I had over 6,200 copies downloaded. Since the five-day promotion, it has increased my sales on all levels. I’ve had increased hits on my website, increased positive reviews, [...]

I use a website called Grammarly.com. It’s great for not only grammar, but it highlights text that matches anything on the Internet or elsewhere. It also gives you the reference to add, if you need to give credit where credit is due. It’s somewhat helpful.

Well, I for one was very skeptic over the KDP select. However, out of a moment of madness I pulled one book off Smashwords distribution out of my three fiction novels and opted into the game. Today started my free five-day promotion on my historical romance novel. This morning alone my book has been download [...]

“Most independent authors will sell less than 100 copies of their ebooks.” I hate to say it, but I’m somewhat sick of this figure. It gets carried over from article to article off of someone’s quote over average self-published author sales totaled up and divided by how many use some vanity publishing house. Is that [...]

You can email them through Author Central too. They are pretty responsive about fixing any problem.

The whole argument that traditionally published books are better than self-published is bogus. The gatekeepers in the romance genre let so much trash through their doors to make a buck selling sex, six-pack abs, exposed boobs and thighs, it’s nauseating. Some of the very popular romance writers churn out so many books each year it [...]

When it comes to that kind validation, a lot of best-selling non-self-published authors have had the same problem with the high-brow literary set. No respect! Self-publishing has its King/Koontz/Clancy equivalents in Konrath/Hocking/Locke, but when are they going to get their Roth/DeLillo equivalents? It’s probably bound to happen, but it could take quite a while. The [...]

The title of this post was in the form of a question, and I think that question has been amply answered. As some have pointed out, I was interpreting the word ‘indie’ in an aesthetic sense, meaning ‘cutting edge’ or ‘unconventional’, whereas the more common interpretation is in the economic sense of ‘independent’, as it’s [...]

Emo is awesome and I’ve found lots and lots of other great self-published stuff over the past couple of years. I’m pretty sure the term ‘indie writer’ is going to stick for most people, but I think I’ll go with “self-published” for myself.

Lots of good and valid points. One thing is that “Indie” is a loaded word that comes with a definite set of connotations, and those are almost entirely about aesthetics, not economics. If you look it up in Urban Dictionary ( http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=indie ) you come across pages and pages of definitions, only a few of [...]

That’s certainly one valid definition, from the money-centric point of view, as opposed to the artistic one, which I think is the major impression associated with the word “indie” (as opposed to “independent” as in “small independent bookstore”), but maybe I’m wrong about that and your definition is the more resonant one. Even there, independence [...]

I got the same reactions about “Freak City” and when I went to check there were only seven fucks and three shits. BFD! But I do like Marc Horne’s idea – he put out a “Clean Version” of his “Automatic Assassin” (which I actually preferred, a matter of taste). Couple of points, though. If you [...]

great idea. i like it!

It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with all the Chicken Little scenarios swarming around us these days. Every week it seems someone is announcing the impending Death Of Blank! Self-publishing is destroying literature, free ebooks are destroying the “craft” of writing, Amazon is destroying the publishing industry, Liberals are destroying ‘the family’, the [...]

Having done exactly the same thing, I of course agree with your move. I was originally inspired by this famous line from Ecclesiastes: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days”. (according to my own interpretation at least). I saw no way to get my stories out into the [...]

I’ve been reading a lot of books aloud to my son on the Kindle over the past year or so – mainstream children’s and young adult books from ‘traditional publishers’, including such wonderful writers as Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket, Pseudonynmous Bosch and Trenton Lee Stewart. Each and every one of those books has contained typographical [...]

Linda, I have no plans to charge for my ebooks. Even though the free ones have generated a number of sales of some of my other titles on Amazon, those other titles are also free on Smashwords and Feedbooks and I feel a little guilty (a very little) when somebody pays 99 cents when they [...]