Lead Story | Self-Publishing Review

Ransom Stephens on The God Patent and the Future of Publishing

Ransom Stephens has written one of the best assessments of the future of publishing that you’re likely to read (found via Pod People). Called Booking the Future, it needs to be read – more than once. Here we talk about the ideas put forth in the article and the success of his digitally-published novel, The God Patent, which basically proves the thesis of his essay: the future of publishing is going to look very different than it does today. It will have many elements of self-publishing writ large. As he says, “Though the role of publishing has […]

Henry Baum2014-06-18T14:09:18+02:00July 28th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

A Kindle Success Story: How to Promote a Kindle Ebook

This week brings news of Boyd Morrison who got a book deal based on his Kindle book sales. This book deal did not happen in a vacuum: Morrison had a literary agent already in place – i.e. publishers didn’t just suddenly notice his level of sales and offer him a book deal. The story is that the book was sent out by his literary agent and it wasn’t picked up. After Morrison’s book, The Ark, started become a Kindle phenomenon, his agent thought about trying to sell the book again, and on the strength of his Kindle sales […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T18:59:46+02:00July 14th, 2009|Categories: Lead Story, Resources|

Do Self-Publishing Services Take Advantage of Writers?

One of the major criticisms of self-publishing is that self-publishing services take advantage of authors – promising them a quick route to success that is wholly unrealistic. I’ve argued that a lot of this falls on the authors themselves, not on the subsidy service. Authors have to do some research on costs and what can realistically be achieved through self-publishing. This came to light in a recent comment on SPR’s AuthorHouse review. A writer said he poured his limited savings into his AuthorHouse book and received little in return. The commenter – who goes by “Feeling Cheated” – said:[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T20:40:29+02:00July 2nd, 2009|Categories: Features, Lead Story|

Introducing the Publetariat Vault

April Hamilton, of Publetariat, has a new service for self-publishers called The Publetariat Vault. Unlike other listing services, the Vault will include sales data, as well as reader reviews. The idea is to make a searchable database for publishing pros to use in order to find authors that are a lower risk to publish. Indie Reader, another for-pay listing service, is aimed primarily at readers (hence the name).

As it says on the site,

The Publetariat Vault is a searchable database of independent literary works for which the authors own all rights free and clear and are interested

[…]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:53:54+02:00June 23rd, 2009|Categories: Lead Story, Publisher Reviews|

Introducing: Backword Books

This will repeat some of the information mentioned in the inaugural post of Backword Books – an experiment in self-publishing. Backword Books is a compendium of self-publishers – a kind of hybrid of self-publishing and the traditional literary press. It’s not a press that uses POD technology because the difference is that each writer on Backword uses a different method to print books – iUniverse, Lulu, Lightning Source, and so on.

The idea of the site is to start small and grow from there – selecting a few strong, well-reviewed self-published writers and seeing where it takes us. Even though […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:01:10+02:00June 16th, 2009|Categories: Lead Story, Publisher Reviews|

An Interview with Jexbo.com Founder, Jill Exler

Self-Publishing Review: What is jexbo and why did you start it? Are you an author yourself?

Jill Exler: Formed in 2007, jexbo™ is a website at www.jexbo.com that gives self-published authors the ability to reach new customers online for less than $1.00 per month and sell their books (jexbo receives 5% of whatever the author sells).

Readers can buy books and find unique, self-published works in various categories. And self-published authors have the ability to control the sales process, communicate directly with customers and customize a Web page for marketing purposes at no additional cost.

I started jexbo because I […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:04:32+02:00June 9th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

An Interview with Matty Byloos, author of Don't Smell the Floss on Write Bloody Press

This is the first interview on the site about a book that has crossed the line from self-publishing to micro publishing: there is a difference. However, the founder of Write Bloody puts out his own books on the press/the press uses print on demand/writers are responsible for editing and submitting the ISBN/writers retain rights to their books/and the press lays the marketing on the writers. So there is an element of self-publishing to the press – and SPR’s definitely a supporter of this type of hybrid publishing.

Generally, I think there’s a little too much of an us vs. them […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:07:00+02:00June 1st, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

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 […]

Henry Baum2011-10-08T19:56:36+02:00May 26th, 2009|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|