lulu | Self-Publishing Review

Review: The Sylvan Song by Phin Scardaw

In The Sylvan Song, Phin Scardaw has created a magical world of truth seekers and those who wish to keep the truth hidden. Symna lives in the township of Galn, in Naulemn. Naulemn is one of the Nine Realms of the Rión, which were created by and remain magically connected by the now-vanished Sylphs. All are part of the imperial Olymphin.

Symna marries Valcomn after a dream told her Valcomn’s brother, Jono, was not her future. Jono disappears even before Valcomn and Symna fall in love, and years later returns with a music box made by the Mystics, and […]

Elaine L. Orr2014-05-09T21:54:23+02:00September 10th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews|

A Conversation with Boyd Morrison – An Early Adapter of Self-Publishing Gone Mainstream

Boyd Morrison fits no easy stereotypes for a novelist. With a BS degree in mechanical engineering from Rice University, he first worked for Lockheed and NASA on a space station and other projects. He returned to grad school to earn a Ph.D. in industrial engineering at Virginia Tech. His specialty in ergonomics led him to work on electronic program guides for TVs and digital satellite systems at RCA. When his wife, in becoming a physician, secured her residency in Washington State, Morrison found a dream job working at Microsoft in the Xbox division, helping create games. Handsome with piercing blue […]

Christopher Meeks2012-08-16T11:30:11+02:00August 16th, 2012|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Book Sales Aren’t Everything

Has self-publishing lost its way? The reason that I got interested in self-publishing was because of the traditional publishing industry’s obsession with marketing over the quality of books. It seems like the vibe around self-publishing these days is echoing trad publishing’s marketing obsession. I understand wanting to sell books. I’m desperate to sell books as well and I check my KDP account more than is healthy. But: book sales are not the only reason to write, and it’s also not the only reason to market a book.

JA Konrath has a post about how publicity doesn’t lead to book sales[…]

Henry Baum2012-01-18T21:19:57+02:00January 18th, 2012|Categories: Features|

Timeline of Self-Publishing in 2011

2011 was an essential year for self-publishing and it’s good to have all major events collected in one place.

I prepared a timeline, which works very well with a detailed report on top self-published Kindle ebooks of 2011 and will be a part of the infographic about self-publishing I’m going to post at Ebook Friendly by the end of January.

If you don’t want to miss the infographic and new posts on self-publishing, please get free updates by either RSS or email.

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January

Amazon extends the 70% royalty option from their self-publishing platform, KDP, to include […]

Piotr Kowalczyk2012-01-26T14:00:56+02:00January 18th, 2012|Categories: Features|

Author vs. Publisher: It’s a Revolution

A couple of weeks ago, I was cornered by a publisher after an appearance. The point of her rant was how much she could do for me as a publisher. She made her point while poking me in the chest saying, “You should be writing. You shouldn’t be publishing. You should be writing.”

Well, that was what I started out wanting to do. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. From the beginning, I dreamed of making it to the point in my career where I could stay home all day in my writer’s studio and do nothing but think […]

Lauren Carr2020-02-21T03:55:49+02:00November 28th, 2011|Categories: Features|Tags: Author Branding|

Review: Unexpected Destiny by Ariana N. Dickey

First impressions are vital with self-published books, especially first novels with few user reviews. Unexpected Destiny has a fairly bland cover, rendered unfortunately dark and murky by Lulu’s printing process on the copy I received. The interior layout is mostly professional-looking, with a few odd formatting choices (most notably in the way non-human dialogue is set, which is not only strange, but inconsistent). Typos are mercifully few, and though I did notice a slight increase the farther I got into the book, I’ve seen much worse in mass-market paperbacks from top publishers.

But I don’t expect you really care that […]

Niko Silvester2014-06-19T18:07:38+02:00November 23rd, 2011|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews|

Self-Publishers are Dorky

Really interesting post in The Millions about self-publishing – which to me is kind of watershed compared to yet another post about self-publishing in the Washington Post or New York Times. The Millions is an established litblog on the high-brow edge – the kind of site that might have never given self-publishing a second look 5 years ago, but now is finally seeing self-publishing as increasingly necessary for an increasing number of writers.

It also falls in line with the discussion we’ve been having about “indie” credibility. Self-publishing has already cemented its commercial credibility, but it has yet to […]

Henry Baum2011-11-10T10:49:11+02:00November 9th, 2011|Categories: Features|

The Memory of Trees: An Interview with Mick Rooney

Mick Rooney is an author, editor and publishing consultant from the Republic of Ireland. He has published nine books since 1990, through his own imprint, using author solutions services, and he has also published through mainstream publishers. Several years ago he began researching the publishing industry, and in particular Independent, POD (print-on-demand) and subsidy/self-publishers. Many of the findings of his research can be found at his site, The Independent Publishing Magazine together with his own experiences in the world of writing and publishing. He is the author of To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish? A Seriously Useful Author’s Guide. […]

Henry Baum2011-11-07T13:45:08+02:00November 7th, 2011|Categories: Interviews, Lead Story|

Blurb Review

Blurb was founded by Eileen Gittens, a highly successful business woman with US global companies Kodak and Wall Data amongst others on her CV. She studied photography in her younger days and set up Blurb as on line self-publishing solutions company to serve the needs of both photographers and authors. In spite of all her success, she says Blurb is the most fun thing she has ever done. Fun is probably the best description of Blurb itself.

In 2007 Blurb produced 80,000 titles, with much of this output being a mixture of ‘coffee table’ photographic albums in book form ranging […]

Mick Rooney2017-02-12T05:34:05+02:00October 7th, 2011|Categories: Publisher Reviews|

CreateSpace Review

CreateSpace is the publishing engine of global online retailer and publisher Amazon. Createspace began life in 2002 as CustomFlix Labs (DVD), originally intended to make widespread distribution easier for independent filmmakers by providing on-demand DVD production. In 2000, a small group of writers pooled resources to form Booksurge with the intention of creating opportunities for authors to self-publish their books and retain content rights and sales profits. Both companies quickly flourished and in 2005, Amazon acquired them, with CustomFlix Labs changing its name to CreateSpace in 2007. By late 2009, Amazon took the logical step and merged CreateSpace and […]