This week saw the second annual Self-Publishing Book Expo, and we have a report from the show, along with ways to use CreateSpace and Lightning Source at the same time, a look at self-published authors on Kindle, how to create a successful ebook, and a great rundown on print on demand suppliers. Enjoy!
Michael N. Marcus on Book Making
Impressions of Self-Publishing Book Expo
“A lot of education is needed in self-publishing, which is good news for the Expo, and for people like me who want to sell books about self-publishing. I expect that the show will be successful for years to come as self-publishing becomes more and more important, and more and more acceptable.”
Christy Pinheiro on The Publishing Maven
Using LightningSource and CreateSpace at the Same Time
“One of the benefits of being your own (self) publisher is that you can distribute any way you wish. I was using CreateSpace exclusively, and now I plan to expand and use LightningSource as well.”
J.A. Konrath on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
You Aren’t J.A. Konrath
“I perused the entire Top 100 Bestsellers on that list, and counted how many were self-published books. I found that 29 out of a 100 were self-pubbed. Hmm. Seems like almost one third of that list is from indie authors. That sort of spits right in the face of doubters and critics, doesn’t it?”
Mark Coker on Smashwords
The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success
“Start building your marketing platform before you finish your book, and then invest time every day to build that platform. Implement a solid social media strategy. Participate in social networks, and more importantly, contribute to your social networks.”
(Editor’s Note: The following blog post appeared in August. Due to an oversight, I completely missed it, but it’s so useful there’s no need for you to pay for my error. So late or not, here it is.)
Mark Barrett on Ditchwalk
The Ditchwalk Print-On-Demand Roadmap
“To be clear, I don’t care who solves my POD problem for me. I have no feel-good criteria or expectations of loyalty, brotherhood, changing the world or any other emotional baggage. What matters is product, performance and price.”
And In Other News . . .
This week we launched our new blog carnival, Self-Publishing: The Carnival of the Indies. This once-a-month roundup of the best blogs on self-publishing has already started receiving submissions. Please take a minute to look over the announcement post and see if you would like to participate. It promises to be good for the bloggers and good for the readers. Here’s the link:
Welcome to Self-Publishing: The Carnival of the Indies
Self-Publishing: Carnival of the Indies will appear on the last Sunday of the month, replacing This Week in the Blogs. Watch for it!
Image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, original work copyright by gruntzooki, https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/
Hi Joel; thanks for the shout-out– I think I picked up another follower because of your post. I still haven’t gotten the proof from LSI. I don’t know how long the title set-up process takes, but I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had the chance to call them and ask. I’ll admit that I didn’t read through all the “how to” guides, wither, so I’ll do that before I call them. Drat.
Sure, Chris. Usually it only takes 4-5 days for LSI to get their proof out, so if it’s been longer you might inquire. I read through all the guides when I first started, but I really don’t know how much use they are. If they accepted the proof, and you haven’t had a message that there’s something wrong with the files, it may just be the ups and downs of production, but it pays to check.
Sounds Interesting