Authors who use PressBooks for the free ability to upload and format e-books now have a distribution option thanks to a deal made with BookBaby. In the past if you used PressBooks you would have to export your e-book and upload it to a distribution site. Now, thanks to a deal announced in April, you can sell your books directly from PressBooks. There is a fee for selling on BookBaby but the convenience might make it worth it for some users.
Author Deborah Plummer has been published in the traditional, old fashioned way and she has self published a book. In “10 Things I Wish I Knew About Being an Author That I Learned the Hard Way” she shares insights learned from going through the publishing process in two totally different ways. To learn what she has read the entire article here.
Have you ever used the Barnes & Noble Pubit self publishing system? In order to better compete with the Kindle self publishing platform B&N have changed the way self publishers submit their books. The new system, Nook Press, allows authors to write and edit within the system rather than uploading a Word document. Authors that used to use the Pubit system need to create a new account in Nook Press. To learn more visit Nook Press. Make sure you read their contract as it has some clauses in it that are new.
The Catherine, Caffeinated blog has a great guest post about hiring an editor by Robert Doran. Catherine is a great fan of self published authors hiring an editor and has pointed this out in many venues and at various times. She is hoping this post by Mr. Doran will get through to those stubborn self published authors who don’t believe in using an editor.
Midwest Book Review offers resources that will prove helpful to self-published authors, regional presses, specialty publishers, academic houses, and the small press publishing community.
Writing-World has compiled a great list of resources for self published authors. I really love the fact that they created a button to give you a version suitable for printing! You can see the list here.
Before Kindle and before Nook publishing a book yourself was considered the height of stupidity. Publishing houses did not believe that any self published book had value to anyone but the author. Thanks to electronic readers opening the doors to all kinds of self published works we now know that there are many more talented authors out there than previously thought. Apple is climbing on the self published bandwagon by bundling self published books together and highlighting them on the iBookstore main page. This is a great idea whose time has come and we give kudos for Apple finally realizing that everyone has a story to tell.
Guy Kawasaki has written twelve books in twenty-five years. He went the traditional publisher route and ended up self publishing later. During his self publishing venture he learned many things and he captured ten of them in his article “The Top Ten Mistakes Writers Make When Self-Publishing a Book”. You can read it here.
Simon & Schuster has been keeping an eye on the number of self published books hitting the best seller lists and decided they want a piece of the action. They have joined forces with Author Solutions to create a new self publishing house called Archway Publishing. They plan to offer premium services, at a premium price, to authors who want to self publish books. Can authors who go the self publishing route afford “premium services”? We don’t know but it will be interesting to see what happens.
Joel Friedlander of The Book Designer blog has an insightful and honest article that discusses the inherent flaws a self published book might have if an experienced editor was not used. Joel was a judge of the annual BAIPA Book Awards and shares some questions posed by an author who received some criticism of her book. You can read the answers Joel provided but I think the point of the post is that even a self published author needs an experienced editor who understands formatting and publishing conventions. If you want a book that gets read you need help and there are plenty of experienced independent editors who can help you.
