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.

Ebooks are a Disaster

A confession: ebooks are totally mystifying to me. I may run this site and the future success of self-publishing rests on how much ebooks saturate the market, but I’m not a tech-head whatsoever. I don’t buy the latest gadgets or even follow the news that religiously – because a new gadget comes every third minute, and who can afford to shell out another $300 for the latest thing? I have a Sony ereader, but it’s not my first choice when it comes to reading. This may put me in a better position to talk about how incredibly and unnecessarily difficult […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T20:34:39+02:00November 4th, 2009|Categories: Features|

An Interview with Anne R. Dick – Philip K. Dick's 3rd Wife

Earlier in the year, Self-Publishing Review had an interview with Tessa Dick, last wife of Philip K. Dick, who has self-published a memoir about PKD called Remembering Firebright. Strangely enough, Philip K. Dick’s third wife, Anne Dick, has also self-published a memoir about her former husband, Search for Philip K. Dick. Why should someone close to one of the most beloved and well-known science fiction writers of all time be driven to self-publish? Anne Dick’s book is superlative, it’s one of the best biographies of PKD available – read SPR’s review. From an interview on io9[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T20:23:29+02:00October 14th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Search for Philip K. Dick by Anne Dick

There might be an impulse when seeing a book like this to think that it’s only for completists. I say this as a Philip K. Dick fanatic who would read a collection of his grocery lists. I’ve read a lot about and by Philip K. Dick so I’m fairly certain I can tell what belongs in his canon and what is less vital. Search for Philip K. Dick is one of the best books about Philip K. Dick I’ve ever read – yes, as good a window into his life as his late autobiographical Valis novels. It is a more-vivid […]

Henry Baum2012-09-21T20:29:08+02:00October 14th, 2009|Categories: Book Reviews|

Self-Publishing: The Movie

Check out these videos. I’ve never wanted to read someone’s book so much after visiting an author’s website than after watching this mini-movie. Seriously funny – some NSFW language. Watch the whole thing – each one is only a couple of minutes long.

Check out the origin of these at the author’s site, and the book:

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Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:46:55+02:00October 12th, 2009|Categories: Features|

Free Listings Offered by the Publetariat Vault

Currently there’s a promo for listing at the Publetariat Vault (discussed here on SPR).

Normally this service is $10 per 30 days, but if you sign up between now and October 25th, you’ll receive 4 free listing periods, 120 days total listing time, to try out the service. Just go to http://vault.publetariat.com and create an account, entering the promo code Oct120 in the registration sign-up form. Follow the directions provided on the site to create your listing(s). When you publish a listing you will be asked to provide your PayPal payment information, but no charges will be made to your

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Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:47:22+02:00October 7th, 2009|Categories: News|

The Stupid, Stupid FTC Guidelines

This is not self-publishing related…or maybe it is. Because it’s a case of the government meddling in the affairs of new media and getting it entirely wrong. Yesterday, the FTC revealed guidelines about how bloggers need to reveal how they’re paid for content. On the surface this makes sense because a product review blogger should reveal if he’s being paid by the manufacturer to write a review. The problem with the FTC guidelines is this applies to all types of reviewers, including book bloggers, not just unscrupulous make-money-online types.

From the Edrants interview with the FTC’s Richard Cleland:

In

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Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:47:39+02:00October 6th, 2009|Categories: Features|

Reviewing the Reviewers Part II

This is a continuation of Reviewing the Reviewers: A Dialogue about Book Reviewing with Steven Reynolds and Carol Buchanan, which led to a very lively discussion.

Self-Publishing Review: When a self-published novel is awful, do you think the reviewer has any responsibility to spare the writer’s feelings?

Steven Reynolds: A writer will always be somewhat hurt by a negative review. You have to assume they’re reasonably happy with the book they published, otherwise why would they bother? So to have some stranger publicly detail its apparent failings is going to hurt.

When confronted with a book that doesn’t […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:52:29+02:00September 30th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Smashwords Teams up with Sony

Big news from Smashwords with great implications for self-publishers. Earlier, we reported on the deal between Smashwords and Barnes & Noble, which means that books published via Smashwords will also be distributed to B&N and other B&N properties like Fictionwise and the ereader application. Now Smashwords expands its reach by teaming up with Sony to have Smashwords ebooks listed in the Sony ebook portal.

From Digital Beat:

Self-published authors can now visit the Sony Publisher Portal and click on Smashwords to sign up for a free publishing account. Then they can format a book in Smashwords’ style andchoose

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Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:53:03+02:00September 29th, 2009|Categories: News|