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.

Not a Lesson in Self-Publishing

This story is pretty amazing. A “publishing consultant” in Atlanta, GA ripped people off by taking their money and offering nothing in return. At the risk of blaming the victim, I am not 100% sympathetic. When you’re shelling out $10,000 to someone with 30 prior fraud complaints, perhaps you didn’t do your homework. Many of the complaints leveled against self-publishing companies often fall into this category. Of course, screw the scammers, and this guy should be arrested.

The Washington Post reports on the story in these terms: A Lesson in Self-Publishing

Self-publishing is fraught with terrors — first, you have

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Henry Baum2011-10-29T12:09:53+02:00October 29th, 2011|Categories: News|

SPR Pays for Reviews

As a sequel to SPR is Charging for Reviews, here ‘s the lowdown for reviewers, as I’m not sure how many people yet know about this yet. Reviewers are paid $40 per review, and the site is getting a steady stream of people looking for reviews so far. But as the idea is to find many different reviewers who have different genre preferences/experiences, there’s not always a match. So far, there have been a lot of science fiction submissions, and a limited number of sci-fi reviewers. For the system to work it needs to bring in all types of […]

Henry Baum2011-10-28T14:12:48+02:00October 28th, 2011|Categories: News|

Self-Published Translation Rights

Missed this post last month, and it’s an important one: Share The Wealth: A Radical Solution To Translation Costs

The main idea: get your book translated into different languages by promising the translator money on the back end after the book sells, rather than an upfront fee. Scott Nicholson writes on David Gaughran’s blog:

Amazon just opened its German store, and more digital and paper markets are going to open up for indie authors, and overseas readers will finally get an incredible range of choices. But it’s going to take a new kind of indie—the “indie translator.”

I currently have

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Henry Baum2011-10-27T13:05:33+02:00October 27th, 2011|Categories: Resources|

Indie Publishing’s Impact on Independent Publishing

First off, let me just say that I was a holdout for a long time for not calling self-publishing “indie publishing.” But that was back when self-publishing was desperate to be taken seriously. Now it is. And it’s become as vital a force in the publishing as “true” independent publishing. So indie publishing works now because all of independent publishing is changing.

JA Konrath talks about the “Publishing Death Spiral” in which traditional publishing is going to be assaulted by writers who can get much better terms on their own if they publish themselves. I’ll gladly dance on the grave […]

Henry Baum2011-10-26T18:40:18+02:00October 26th, 2011|Categories: Features|

An Interview with eBookIt CEO Bo Bennett

eBookit is one of the best new conversion services – and their site just had a major redesign, suggesting that the service is growing quickly along with the ebook market. I haven’t worked with eBookIt for any of my own books, but I walked my dad through the process and it was easy – and fast. It’s $149 to convert, which distributes to most of the same retailers as Smashwords (without having to deal with the meatgrinder).

Self-Publishing Review: So what’s Ebookit – when did it begin and how have things been going since you started up?

Bo Bennett: eBookIt.com […]

Henry Baum2020-02-21T03:48:22+02:00October 25th, 2011|Categories: Interviews|Tags: Book Formatting Tips|

The eBook Revolution: Readers Changing Habits

Thanks to Teleread, here’s an interesting infographic about changing reading habits (via Live Science).

It’s encouraging news for the e-revolution, as people with an ereader read more books – and more people are getting an ereader, so do the math – but what the infographic doesn’t cover is how people’s reading habits might change once the majority of reading is being done via ebooks. Even intellectuals like Sam Harris say that his personal reading habits are changing:

I love physical books as much as anyone. And when I really want to get a book into my brain,

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Henry Baum2011-10-25T11:09:45+02:00October 25th, 2011|Categories: Features, Lead Story|

Kindle Fire HTML 5 Specs

Kindle has released its specs for the Kindle Fire and beyond, which now support HTML 5.

We’re pleased to announce a wide range of new features and enhancements – including HTML5 support – coming in Kindle Format 8 (KF8). KF8 is the next generation file format for Kindle books – replacing Mobi 7. As showcased on Kindle Fire, KF8 enables publishers to create great-looking books in categories that require rich formatting and design such as children’s picture books, comics & graphic novels, technical & engineering books and cookbooks. Kindle Format 8 replaces the Mobi format and adds over 150

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Henry Baum2011-10-22T21:22:46+02:00October 22nd, 2011|Categories: Resources|

SPR is Now Charging for Reviews

Believe me, I struggled with this idea for a long time. In a world where self-publishers get ripped off by shady print on demand outfits, there’s a lot of sensitivity to charging self-publishers any money. The main purpose of charging for reviews is not to make me money as editor of this site, but to attract a bunch of reviewers web-wide who might be able to review a greater variety of books – cookbooks, kids, romance, whatever it may be. I want this site to be able to cover every wing of self-publishing.

A while back when I was debating […]

Henry Baum2011-10-22T20:27:56+02:00October 19th, 2011|Categories: Book Reviews, News|