Interviews

Interviews with indie authors, publishers and book service providers in the self-publishing realm

From Self-Published to Simon and Schuster: An Interview with Lori Culwell, Author of Hollywood Car Wash

Lori Culwell is the author of the novel Hollywood Car Wash, a novel that won first prize in Project Publish:

Via Project Publish, Touchstone Books was the first major publisher to put our market-based method for evaluating media content to the test…a team of editors, including Touchstone publisher Mark Gompertz, evaluated the 50 top scoring book proposals on Media Predict. They selected five book proposals as Project Publish finalists, and eventually one grand prize winner.

The novel – originally published through iUniverse – was put out by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in May 2009. Publisher’s […]

2011-10-08T19:56:36+02:00May 26th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

An Interview with Brad Grochowski of Authors Bookshop

On the heels of the story about Indie Reader, which led to some controversy, here’s an interview with Brad Grochowski, the man behind the site Authors Bookshop – a site that allows authors to list and sell books.  Authors Bookshop is one of the best indie-friendly places online.  Check out the site and visit Brad’s blog, Indie Bookman.

Self-Publishing Review: What is AuthorsBookshop and why did you start it up?

Brad Grochowski: AuthorsBookshop is an online bookstore that specializes in independently published books.  It is also a community of authors and publishers who have chosen the indie […]

2011-10-08T19:07:39+02:00May 18th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

An Author Creates a Website for Consumers: IndieReader

IndieReader—which will go live in June—promotes, markets, and sells self-published/POD books. Authors set the retail price for their books and receive 75% of the transaction. IndieReader also provides authors with their own Web page with their own URL (no unintelligible code!). What Sundance has done for indie films—making what’s outside the mainstream “cool”—IR will do for indie books and authors.  Amy Edelman, who started the site, has published with Crown and Simon & Schuster.  Her interview at Editor Unleashed goes into further detail about the site.

Where did the idea for IndieReader come from?  It was primarily my […]

2011-10-08T19:10:44+02:00May 13th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Interview: Keith Harmeyer on Writing Commercials and Promoting Commercial Break

Keith Harmeyer is the author of the immensely entertaining novel Commercial Break.  He has the unique perspective of being a self-published writer who has also worked in book marketing.  He shares his experiences with marketing his novel and other people’s books.

Self-Publishing Review: Adam Glassman is a frustrated novelist working in the ad game.  You’re a person who worked in advertising who wrote a novel.  Is this a novel you thought for years about writing while you were in the business?

Keith Harmeyer: It is. I’m not sure exactly when the concept first came to me; but at some […]

2011-10-08T19:14:34+02:00April 27th, 2009|Categories: Interviews|

LJN Dawson on the Great Agent Debate

LJN Dawson runs Authorweb, offering services for self-publishers, such as marketing and technical consulting.  Check out her blog and free newsletter, The Big Picture, “Covering trends in digital content delivery – to both retail and library markets – The Big Picture provides insight, news, analysis, and community in a fast-moving sector.”

Recently, in a post on her blog Militant Writer, Mary Waters very effectively laid the blame for “the great unpublished” at the feet of literary agents, who “do not, in fact, have any interest in literature. They are only interested in jackpots.”

Mary makes some great […]

2011-10-08T19:16:07+02:00April 20th, 2009|Categories: Interviews|

A Few (Thousand) Words with Carol Buchanan

Introduction: Carol Buchanan is the author of the self-published novel God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, winner of the 2009 Spur Award for Best First Novel. I met Carol Buchanan online, when we were both posting to the boards of the Amazon Shorts program. Both of us were frustrated by the barriers currently erected by the mainstream publishing industry to new fiction, and both of us decided to do it ourselves. She gave my book a great review and I read hers and was honestly able to reciprocate. When her book won the 2009 Spur Award, given by […]

2011-10-08T19:16:23+02:00April 20th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Chionophobia and Other Sticky Problems: The Darryl Sloan Interview

Guest interview by Michael Reed. Originally commissioned by Strange Horizons, but it was not posted on that site.  Strange Horizons replied, “Although some sections, notably on the author’s local inspirations and self-publishing, stand out as offering a fresh perspective, it’s a problem for our purposes that the interviewee doesn’t seem to be particularly active in new fiction projects right now.”

Read Self-Publishing Review’s review of Darryl Sloan’s Chion.

Chionophobia n. A fear of snow

Chion is Northern Ireland based Darryl Sloan’s second self-published novel. As he did with his first novel, the 2002 release Ulterior, Darryl has […]

2011-10-08T19:59:58+02:00April 10th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Poddy Mouth Speaks! An Interview with the Original POD Reviewer

Poddy Mouth was an anonymous author who began reviewing print on demand books in 2005, back when self-publishing was more frowned upon than it is today.  She still remains the most prominent and successful POD reviewer – in part because she came from the world of traditional publishing.  As she says on her blog:

I am an author and instructor, in that order (for now.) My debut novel (which debuted in the midlist) was released by Penguin Putnam in 2004 and my second novel was released early 2006. As for this blog, it has been profiled in many online magazines,

[…]
2011-10-08T20:29:00+02:00April 3rd, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|
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