Lead Story | Self-Publishing Review

SPR interviews Mark Coker of Smashwords

Smashwords is a service for helping small and self-publishers format ebooks in diverse formats (for example: kindle, epub, PDF, Palm) and distribute them through diverse retail channels (for example Amazon, Apple, BN, Kobo, and Smashwords itself). A few weeks ago I sent Smashwords founder Mark Coker a note asking if I could interview him for my site Wetmachine & SelfPublishing Review. He said yes; I sent him some questions about the current & future state of book publishing, and he answered. His replies appear below the fold (cross-posted on Wetmachine yesterday).

I found his answers interesting and direct, and I […]

John Sundman2011-10-08T18:00:59+02:00August 5th, 2010|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|Tags: Smashwords Tips and Articles|

Web Presence Checklist

You’ve spent months, perhaps years, writing your book. Did you do so for it to die in obscurity? Why then does its web presence not reach beyond the Lulu Marketplace? Why then doesn’t it even show up upon typing its title on Google? Why then does its Amazon’s sales rank sag below the 4 millionth mark? If that sounds anything like you, keep reading, for I’m about to list all those opportunities to broadcast your title and reach your target audience that you’re missing out on. To the extent that they’re inexpensive, easy, and of course applicable to your book, […]

Muriel Lede2011-10-08T17:26:53+02:00July 14th, 2010|Categories: Lead Story, Resources|

Kickstarting My Book: Why I Chose to Crowdsource

The Story

I had a problem. After several months of work, I was finally ready to publish the second edition of my novel, A Life Transparent. The details were in place, the cover design tweaked, the revisions made. All of this was set up for a re-release in anticipation of the book’s sequel early next year.

I picked CreateSpace as my printer and publisher. I’d read good things. Their integration with Amazon was tantalizing, and the free ISBN was a perk. There was low cost involved, and I wanted very badly to get away from Lulu, whose rates spiked […]

Todd Keisling2020-02-21T07:53:48+02:00June 15th, 2010|Categories: Lead Story, Resources|Tags: Social Media|

Feedbooks: A Primer

Amid all of the discussion about the multiple ‘walled gardens’ being set up to push DRM-ed ebooks to devices, a Paris-based team have been steadily building a system to push books anywhere and shipping more books than Apple in the process.

Of course, the books are free so the comparison is dodgy, but let’s put the figures out there: in the first 28 days of iBooks, Apple distributed 1.5 million ebooks while Feedbooks distributed out 2.6 million ebooks to iPads, iPhones, PCs and Android devices.

They describe themselves as “a cloud service for digital publishing/distribution” and if you are interested […]

mrchrn2011-10-08T18:35:31+02:00May 26th, 2010|Categories: Lead Story, Resources|

A New Indie Distribution Model

An interesting development out of Boulder, Colorado that is both a good and bad sign. Self-published writers can now pay for being stocked on the shelves or more:

The store charges its consignment authors according to a tiered fee structure: $25 simply to stock a book (five copies at a time, replenished as needed by the author for no additional fee); $75 to feature a book for at least two weeks in the “Recommended” section; and $125 to, in addition to everything else, mention the book in the store’s email newsletter, feature it on the Local Favorites page of

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:17:10+02:00May 18th, 2010|Categories: Lead Story, Resources|

SPR is For Sale and/or Needs a Co-Editor

I can’t do this alone anymore. Big site, needs a lot of content. With self-publishing growing as it is, this site could become a major magazine…if it had a staff able to take on the amazing number of books being released. And I’m talking about good books, not just a way to review as many books as possible. As time goes on, the quality of self-published books is going to get better and better, meaning there has to be a staff on hand to review the growing number of books. But alas, I’m in no place to actually pay anyone […]

Henry Baum2010-05-26T09:45:18+02:00May 14th, 2010|Categories: Lead Story, News|

Get it Together, Lulu

Lulu’s been exhibiting quite a few problems lately. Here are two posts on Lulu’s mishandling of ebooks and their clients. The first is reprinted from Mike Cane’s iPad Test blog, titled Lulu And The iBookstore: Say NO!

Get Your eBook in the Apple iBookstore

Don’t do it.

Here’s why.

Lulu says:

ISBNs. Apple requires ISBNs on eBooks. Lulu can assign one for free.

And who will own that ISBN? If you’re getting it for free, I doubt that’s going to be you. See why ISBN ownership matters.

Lulu says:

Validation. Apple has a strict file validation process. All files

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:27:50+02:00May 10th, 2010|Categories: Lead Story, Publisher Reviews|

Adventures in Self-Publishing

(click for complete version)

I’ve been self-publishing novels for a little more than ten years. I’ve had some successes–for example, I’ve won the Writer’s Digest National Self-Published Book competition and I’ve sold more than 6,000 copies of my books. But I’m not a self-publishing rock star and I still dream of doing much better.

Here’s an essay on some things I’ve learned in ten years of doing this. Other versions of this essay appear elsewhere on the net, most recently on my site wetmachine.com, from whence you can download versions of my books for free if you feel like […]

John Sundman2011-10-08T19:38:08+02:00March 24th, 2010|Categories: Features, Lead Story, Resources|