Henry Baum’s remarkably useful Self-Publishing Review covers the field of self-publishing thoroughly. News, reviews of self-published books, reviews of publisher-services companies, interviews and more make it a great destination for anyone interested in the field. I find myself there once a day, just to check on what’s new. Self-Publishing Review has started a “Guest Post” […]
Independent Bookstores Opening to Self-Published Books?
A lot of the trepidation authors feel when thinking about self-publishing their book seems to come from the retail bookselling community. Trying to pitch your book—from your one-book publishing company—to a chain bookstore buyer is an exercise in futility. And that’s assuming you can actually get to talk to a buyer, which is no easy […]
Self Publishing Basics: How to Create Your ARC Cover
Years ago I used to buy books at a famous bookstore in downtown New York City, in the old book selling district. This bookstore was famous for the range of subjects it carried, its steady inflow of new books, and the lively and sometimes erudite people you could meet browsing the narrow aisles looking for […]
Project Focus: 2-color Cover Design for Self-Publishers
Before the advent of digital printing and print-on-demand production, publishers had no choice but to print on offset presses, and most books today continue to be printed by offset. Book presses are large, noisy, oily pieces of heavy machinery. There are separate parts of the press for each color that will be printed, with separate […]
Self-Publishing Basics: 5 Layout Mistakes that Make You Look Unprofessional
Years ago my wife and I went to a wedding at a very prestigious “club” here in San Francisco. My wife looked gorgeous as always, and I wore a very nice light gray English wool suit that seemed suitably low-key. When we walked in the door I realized that I “hadn’t received the memo” because […]
Mick Rooney’s Reviews of Publishing Services Companies
If you are intending to use a “Publishing Services” company to publish your book (and I’m not suggesting that you should) you owe it to yourself to surf on over to Mick Rooney’s POD, Self Publishing and Independent Publishing blog. The Most Detailed Reviews in the Business Mick doesn’t just grab some copy from a […]
5 Good Reasons to Self-Publish Your Book
Amid all the discussion about self-publishing we can forget that each decision to publish is a specific, unique, and very personal calculation. Hey, there are as many “reasons” to publish a book as there are people to publish them, but some authors are ideally placed to make use of the self-publishing tools available these days. […]
The One Book Every Self-Publisher Should Own
Today we had our monthly meeting of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA). Attendance was good, discussion was lively, and our guest speaker gave an excellent presentation. What struck me today, however, was the one-hour Question and Answer session that occupies the first part of our meetings. “What should be in a press kit […]
Self Publishing Basics: How to Read an ISBN
Some years ago, I published a book that landed on the front page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review, which was quite a thrill for my wife and me, as we were running our publishing company from a spare bedroom in our house. Soon enough, the phone started to ring, and one call […]
A Long Slog through the OCR Swamp
This post is the third in a series about the creation of a new book. To see all the articles in the series, click “The Journey of a Book” tab at the top of the page. While contemplating the hours it was going to take to make all the corrections to the files produced by […]