Henry Baum | Self-Publishing Review

About Henry Baum

Author of three self-published novels and one traditionally published (Soft Skull Press, Canongate, and Hachette Littératures). Recipient of Best Fiction at the DIY Book Festival, the Gold IPPY Award for Visionary Fiction, and the Hollywood Book Festival Grand Prize. He lives with his wife Cate Baum in Spain. He's the founder of SPR.

Toronto International Book Fair Launches Self-Publishing Award

Via the Toronto Star:

Canada’s first awards for self-published books will be presented at Inspire! Toronto International Book Fair, an exhibition for print and digital books that launches in November.

The Creation of Stories: Canada’s Self-Publishing Awards are open to all Canadians who have produced a book between July 1, 2013, and September 1, 2014, using any self-publishing platform. For information, visit torontobookfair.ca/awards.

The award is sponsored by Blurb. More info via the submission page:

“The Creation of Stories: Canada’s Self-Publishing Awards” is the largest self-publishing award in Canada celebrating creativity and excellence in self-publishing. With

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Henry Baum2014-07-29T12:27:11+02:00July 29th, 2014|Categories: News|

Amazon Releases Kindle Unlimited with One Major Problem

There’s been a lot of fanfare about Amazon’s new Kindle Unlimited program – a service where you can read any book for $9.99 a month.

Well, not any book.

Indie authors hoping to be a part of this program face one obstacle: you need to be in the Kindle Select program, meaning it requires exclusivity to Amazon. Mark Coker laments:

Exclusivity is great for Amazon, but it’s not necessarily great for authors and readers. Exclusivity starves competing retailers of books readers want to read, which motivates readers to move their reading to the Kindle platform. This is why

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Henry Baum2020-02-21T06:01:56+02:00July 21st, 2014|Categories: News|Tags: Amazon|

Self-Publishing for Academics

An interesting exposé (that takes some digs at self-publishing) covers the new crop of academics going the self-publishing route for many of the same reasons as other authors.

Many scholars – particularly supporters of the open-access movement, which argues that scholarly research should be available for free online — have grown increasingly frustrated with academic publishers in recent years, Weller said.

“Mostly publishers are making an economic decision (will this book sell?) rather than an academic one (does it add to the field?),” the educational technologist said in an email.

While fiction writers want to eschew the gatekeeping process and […]

Henry Baum2014-07-22T15:43:55+02:00July 17th, 2014|Categories: Features|

Smashwords Releases 2014 Indie Author Survey

Via the Smashwords blog comes the 2014 Indie Author Survey. Some key findings:

Readers prefer longer ebooks – We observed this in the prior surveys. Longer books sell better, and when you view the data through the prism of the power curve, it becomes clear why longer books give authors such a huge sales advantage.

Pricing – The highest earning indie authors are utilizing lower average prices than the authors who earn less, but this doesn’t mean that ultra-low prices such as $.99 are the path to riches. $2.99 and $3.99 are the sweet spots for most of the

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Henry Baum2014-07-13T09:45:46+02:00July 13th, 2014|Categories: News|Tags: Smashwords|

Red Room Shutting Down – Bought by Wattpad

RedRoom.com, a popular destination for authors looking to network, is shutting down on July 8 and being absorbed into Wattpad. The announcement doesn’t exactly make clear how this will work, as Wattpad and RedRoom provide entirely different functions. Wattpad is a place for narrative work, while RedRoom is more of a blogging platform.

Here’s the announcement:

Dear Red Roomer,I have big news. Red Room is becoming part of Wattpad! If you haven’t heard of Wattpad yet, it is the world’s largest community of readers and writers. Red Room Authors like Margaret Atwood–and authors we wish were on

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Henry Baum2018-10-29T12:20:23+02:00July 3rd, 2014|Categories: News|

Shelf Unbound Opens Up Book Competition for Self-Publishers

Shelf Unbound and Bowker have a new book competition for self-publishers.

Shelf Unbound book review magazine announces the Shelf Unbound Writing Competition for Best Independently Published Book, sponsored by Bowker. Any independently published book in any genre is eligible for entry. Entry fee is $40 per book. The winning entry will be selected by the editors of Shelf Unbound magazine.

“Independently Published” books include self-published books and e-books (such as those published through CreateSpace, Lulu.com, iUniverse, etc.) and/or books and e-books published through small presses releasing less than five titles per year. Books entered in last year’s competition are

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Henry Baum2017-03-24T07:35:38+02:00June 14th, 2014|Categories: News|Tags: Competitions|

Self-Publishing Boosts Sales 79% in the U.K.

Via the Guardian and Neilsen:

Self-published books’ share of the UK market grew by 79% in 2013, with 18m self-published books bought by UK readers last year, according to new statistics.

With print sales falling by 10% last year, and book purchasing as a whole down 4%, ebook sales continue to grow, according to Nielsen’s comprehensive tracking of book purchases, up 20% in the UK in 2013, with 80m ebooks bought by UK consumers, to a value of £300m. But it is the DIY market which is showing the most eye-watering growth, up 79% to 18m self-published titles purchased,

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Henry Baum2014-06-13T12:12:53+02:00June 13th, 2014|Categories: News|

Smashwords Adds Daily Reporting for Book Sales

One of the more cumbersome interfaces on Smashwords is its reporting of book sales. Unlike KDP, which has a very obvious interface, it’s possible to miss Smashwords reporting page entirely. Given that it has been updated intermittently, it wasn’t always necessary to access the page even if you know it was there. Smashwords has now solved that. Via the Smashwords blog:

Smashwords today added daily sales reporting and interactive charting for sales at iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, OverDrive and the Smashwords store.

The reports include daily and total order accumulation numbers for iBooks preorders.

The reports provide authors

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