Category Archives: Self-publishing

Amazon is not the enemy, it’s the pathfinder

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Get off your lazy butt—it’s a jungle out there! The only way to beat the leader is to be better at what the leader does. I was reading yet another excellent article this morning from Mike Shatzkin about the current state of affairs in traditional publishing. He makes good points, which also apply to indies and self-publishers. We need to keep our head in the game. Amazon earned their place in publishing They are dominant in ebooks, not … Continue reading →

Podcasts? Video? or not…

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As most of you know, I do not listen to or produce podcasts. The same is not quite true with videos, but I’m just starting there. But I found this link today and thought some of you might be interested. Like this infographic? Get proven online marketing advice from Copyblogger Media that will give you an unfair business advantage.

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Writing a book title that works

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To the left, you see the cover of a book I wrote which includes some of this information. Marketing your book seems too difficult. One of the major problems is the book title. Many things go into writing a book title that works. But it is an issue I’ve been pondering recently. The basic questions are: Who are you & what is your book? If you are like the rest of us, you’ve discovered (or soon will) that your … Continue reading →

Marketing tips for fiction and non-fiction: it takes time

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Joel rarely writes for his blog any more, but it is a treat when he does. Today’s article is an excellent example of why his blog is so good: clean, concise, and useful. We can boil down the advice to the following: Fiction authors are unknown Fiction is marketed to a much wider audience who is initially unknown by the author. The new author  needs to work very hard on becoming known. Giving away books is essential as … Continue reading →

Printing quality: Lightning Source, Lulu, or Createspace

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This has been an interesting question for the past decade. There are several things which enter into the equation. The two most important are defects and general quality. Aaron Shephard falls on the side of Createspace in a radical change this morning. He’s always taught that Lightning Source is necessary for quality. Defects are a normal aspect of printing Printing is an amazingly complex manufacturing process. Most people tend to think that on-demand digital printers are much better … Continue reading →

Review: The Self-Publishers Ultimate Resource Guide from The Book Designer team

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It’s hard not to be really disappointed. Joel has been a superb source of data and knowledge for many years. But there is no information here. This book is just a list of resources There is nothing here except a list of people I’ve never heard of. Of course, I live life in a relatively small niche. None of the people I know as resources in these categories are listed. I have no reason to think any of … Continue reading →

Guest post: The future of ebooks by Michael W. Perry at inklingbooks.com

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Michael’s comments are worth reading I didn’t ask his permission this time, but this is an excellent comment by Michael in reply to my posting about the probable need to go back to using Amazon’s Kindle Export plug-in in InDesign CS6. Michael’s comments are again right on target as far as I can tell. My only hope is that someone at Amazon reads them. Many thanks for such a detailed explanation. My main take-way is that Amazon … Continue reading →

Kindle books still require InDesign CS6 and the Amazon plug-in

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I sent my new book (see the cover to the left) to Kindle KDP. I exported it as ePUB2 with embedded fonts and so on. I converted it with Kindle Previewer.My first reader complained that all the graphics were destroyed. (A graphic 600 px wide by 35 px tall was displaying 600 px wide by 500 px tall.) Plus, the embedded fonts were gone. Plus, nested styles were gone. The custom dingbat bullets were gone from the lists. … Continue reading →

What desktop publishing did to graphic designers, self-publishing is doing to authors

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OK! I’m a little punch-drunk I’ve been through this before. In fact, I’ve been through it five times now. it’s been pretty much non-stop since 1991. My life and career [yours too, probably unless you’re a kid born after 1980—especially after 1990] has been radically transformed on a continual basis since 1990 with five major paradigm shifts. Hand-drawn art and metal type to photo-production [Offset Lithography]—the 1960s & seventies:  I started in the midst of this change. My … Continue reading →

New release: Designing ePUBs With InDesign by David Bergsland

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Ebooks have been a mess until now. Actually, they still are in many ways. However, InDesign CC 2014 has truly solved most of the problems. It always did export the best PDFs. Now it exports very good ePUB FXL (fixed layout), reflowable ePUBs, and because Kindle will upload the reflowables converting easily, the Kindle problem is solved also. Wonderful that all our problems are solved, right? Well, you know better than that. Each format requires a redesign … Continue reading →