Henry Baum

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.

Google Play Setting Books to Free

trappedAn important warning about Google Play. From the Kindle Boards:

I discovered this morning that Google had listed my best earning historical romance for FREE. Yes free. They were paying me based on my list price of $5.18 but they have it free. Obviously, to me this wasn’t about the money I was earning from those free sales but the ramifications this might have, especially if Amazon got ahold of that price.

The book came out in 2012 and it wasn’t making me a ton a money, but it’s still my bestselling historical novel right now. I emailed them

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2017-03-24T06:16:12+02:00June 11th, 2014|Categories: Features|

Writer Beware: Independent Contractor Scams

Screen shot 2014-06-04 at 4.03.32 PMWriter Beware has a good post, and a warning, about scams being done by independent editors. With all the talk about big corporate publishing firms ripping people off, there are scams happening on the micro level as well. In this scenario, an editor contacts a writer and tells him/her about all the errors in the book – which the editor likely hasn’t read – only to then offer to fix the book for a fee. It’s sort of like in-person spamming. The editor does this enough times and eventually one person will take the bait.

This is at

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2014-06-04T16:03:53+02:00June 4th, 2014|Categories: Features|

Apple’s iOS 8 Will Come Pre-Loaded with eBooks

ibookssoloVia Smashwords, which calls this a “Game Changer for eBook Retailing,” Apple’s new mobile operating system is going to come pre-loaded with the iBooks store app. What this means is that people who maybe weren’t so ebook friendly are going to have ebooks as part of the billion iPhones and iPads currently floating around.

Buried in a slide during the live demo event referenced as “iOS 8 features we didn’t have time to talk about” was an ebook retailing bombshell:  iBooks will come pre-installed on iOS 8.

The iBooks app is Apple’s ebook store.  Inside that app is

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2014-06-03T16:00:39+02:00June 3rd, 2014|Categories: News|Tags: |

Writers Share the Burden for Vanity Publishing

authorsolutionsprhDavid Gaughran has it in for Author Solutions. With good reason – Author Solutions rips people off. They offer marketing packages with huge markups that will likely have very little effect on sales. Recently, I attended the L.A. Times Book Festival and the Author Solutions booth was hocking a book about racial purity. Incredibly disgusting, but all’s well and good for AS because they got their fee.

That said, I think much of the onus with Author Solutions problems is laid at the foot of the writer. Author Solutions may be predatory, but it is not enough to say […]

2014-06-03T18:27:18+02:00June 3rd, 2014|Categories: Features|

Publisher’s Weekly Releases Booklife for Indie Authors

Screen shot 2014-05-30 at 2.24.35 PM Interesting development, via Galleycat, Publisher’s Weekly has created a self-publishing portal called Booklife.

About

BookLife is a website from Publishers Weekly dedicated to indie authors. The site provides a free and easy way to submit self-published books to Publishers Weekly for review, and offers editorial content — success stories, interviews, author profiles, how-to pieces, news, and features — geared toward aid indie authors achieve their goals. Whether an author is focused on writing and editing, art and design, or marketing and distribution, BookLife has valuable resources that can help along the way.

Mission

BookLife goals is to help

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2017-03-24T07:33:38+02:00May 30th, 2014|Categories: News|

Publishing is the New Blogging

I recently discovered something that is pretty eye-opening about the state of media today, and into the future. Perhaps I’m late to the game, but I’ve found it pretty amazing. Basically, it’s possible to watch any movie you want for free. I’m not going to link to it because it’s illegal, or at least ethically dubious, but sites like this look like this:

Screen shot 2014-05-28 at 4.17.41 PM

I found it via Twitter. Netflix was trending one day and someone tweeted, “Why is everyone using Netflix when you can just use _____.” The answer is: I don’t know. If you’ve ever dealt with Netflix or […]

2014-06-18T06:37:36+02:00May 30th, 2014|Categories: Features|

Review: Straight Lines by Gregory Sacchet

92a35148e90e21b9e8f3831752413ca8ee5e69ffAddiction memoirs are an interesting genre, because really they’re all variations on the same basic story. A person gets involved in their drug of choice, hits rock bottom in a myriad of ways, and then climbs their way back up. The very fact that there’s a book implies that the addict has pulled his or her life together to a degree, so by design the book is uplifting, even when telling tales of degradation. Given that there isn’t a lot of difference between the nuts and bolts of an addiction memoir, it really needs to have a unique spin in […]

2014-05-27T17:20:26+02:00May 27th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |

Self-E Connects Libraries and Self-Publishers

Selfe_Logo_final-color-550

A new, yet-to-be-launched service will (finally) get self-publishers’ books in the hands of librarians. Via Library Journal:

SELF-e is an innovative collaboration between Library Journal and BiblioBoard that enables authors and libraries to work together to expose notable self-published ebooks to voracious readers looking to discover something new.

If selected via Library Journal’s SELF-e curation process, the author’s ebooks will become part of a unique discovery platform for participating public libraries across the United States that enables patrons to read ebooks on any device, at any time. This free service is available to all self-published authors, no matter

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2014-05-20T13:18:21+02:00May 20th, 2014|Categories: News|
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