October, 2011 | Self-Publishing Review

Storify Your Blog

Storify is the next big thing. Or maybe it’s already the big thing and I’m just hearing about it. Given that their Facebook page has around 4000 likes, word hasn’t gotten out in a huge way about the service. It should be of immediate use to writers, and offers a new way to promote a book.

So what’s Storify – the main way it’s used is creating an embeddable post of Twitter links. What makes these posts so useful is that there’s a retweet/reply button next to each tweet, plus the ability to embed the entire post on another blog. […]

Henry Baum2011-10-12T17:06:35+02:00October 7th, 2011|Categories: Resources|

Blurb Review

Blurb was founded by Eileen Gittens, a highly successful business woman with US global companies Kodak and Wall Data amongst others on her CV. She studied photography in her younger days and set up Blurb as on line self-publishing solutions company to serve the needs of both photographers and authors. In spite of all her success, she says Blurb is the most fun thing she has ever done. Fun is probably the best description of Blurb itself.

In 2007 Blurb produced 80,000 titles, with much of this output being a mixture of ‘coffee table’ photographic albums in book form ranging […]

Mick Rooney2017-02-12T05:34:05+02:00October 7th, 2011|Categories: Publisher Reviews|

Facebook is Doing Away with Gatekeepers

I suppose on the surface, it seems OK – Facebook is creating an environment where you get a real sense of the web. With the new Facebook changes, it is now becoming required to add apps to your timeline before you can access certain content. So when a friend links to a New York Time article, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t take you off-site and instead asks you to install the New York Times app. What this means is that not only will you be broadcasting on your wall that you read that article – but EVERthing you […]

Henry Baum2011-10-07T20:14:54+02:00October 6th, 2011|Categories: Features|

Smashwords iPad News & the Apple Revolution

This news from Smashwords comes at an appropriate time, given the death of Steve Jobs. The self-publishing revolution is entirely because of Apple. Entirely. You can point to the Kindle as being the change agent, but the Kindle more than likely wouldn’t exist without the success of the iPod. Though ereaders existed prior to the iPod, the iPod and iTunes changed how people access content. As always, Apple provided the model which other people then adopted into other platforms. The Kindle Fire is now mimicking the iPad.

Also worth noting that the Mac spurred the age of desktop publishing[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-06T10:04:55+02:00October 6th, 2011|Categories: News|

Ebook Away!

I finally published an ebook version of my first novel, “Between Boyfriends.” I finished this book 5 years ago and eagerly began sending it out to literary agents. I got a ton of responses, some form letters and a few criticisms. The personal feedback was very positive but suggested necessary changes. I spent maybe 1 year doing an major rewrite, then eagerly send the new version back out again. Nothing. After about 1 year of sitting on the book and trying to come up with some brilliant way to convince an agent or publisher to do the last thing they […]

Sarka-Jonae Miller2019-01-22T05:57:52+02:00October 5th, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Perseus Books Group Offers Self-Published Ebook Distribution

Interesting, via the Bookseller.

US independent publisher Perseus Books Group has launched a distribution and marketing service for authors wanting to self-publish their own e-books, offering a 70% royalty rate to the author.

Called Argo Navis Author Services, it will be offered to authors represented by agencies that have signed an agreement with Perseus, with Janklow & Nesbit Associates the first to have done so.

So this is a new hybrid model – where agents have a finger in the game of ebook self-publishing. One would have to imagine that the agent is taking some of the cut, so […]

Henry Baum2011-10-09T20:54:03+02:00October 3rd, 2011|Categories: News|

Site Update: Everything Works

Apologies for the lack of posting recently. For the last month or so, I’ve been chasing spam on the site, which has dampened some of my enthusiasm for creating new content – every time I came here I had to spend time deleting a bunch of accounts. It’s manual spam – people create an account and then manually add content. There’s no captcha to deal with this, as a real person is adding the spam. I am now more sick of Ugg boots than I’ve ever been.

I tried 5 different plugins and none of them worked. Lo and behold, […]

Henry Baum2011-10-02T11:43:32+02:00October 2nd, 2011|Categories: Member Blog|

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics for Authors

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 ask? Some strange computer virus?

No, nothing so scary. Let’s take a look at the basics.

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the art of making your site/blog seem particularly useful and important to Google, so it’ll list your pages higher than those of […]

Lindsay2011-10-02T10:03:47+02:00October 2nd, 2011|Categories: Member Blog, Resources|Tags: Author Blogging, Book Promotion|