Beth Reekles penned an article at The Guardian about how indie publishing via online writing communities and ebooks can provide valuable feedback, and even set you on the path to mainstream success.
Category Archives: Writing
Focus, long term commitment and sheer hard work, every day, are what have enabled Joanna Penn, bestselling author, professional speaker, entrepreneur and UK ALLi advisor, to pack so much into the five years since she entered the sphere of self-publishing. The remarkable achievements of this authorpreneur have just earned her a place among The Guardian’s Top 100 Creative Professionals 2013, so it’s a timely occasion to ask her to share the secrets of her success.
ALLi Partner member Simon Avery, book designer at idobookcovers.com, explains the most important principles of cover design for books to be sold online.
From ALLi Self Publishing Advice:
The rise of online book retailers such as Amazon have changed the rules of book cover design. And authors who realise this stand to do much better in their sales.
I’m always surprised to see how many books’ covers are not optimised for online sales – which means authors who do so can grab a huge advantage. A cover designed with Amazon in mind can put you firmly above the competition, including books by trade publishers.
Yep. Since 2007, the self-publishing part of the ebook pie has been sizable. In just a few years, the self-published author has gone from zero to hero, owning 25% of the top 100 ebook market, as reported by Amazon. No matter how many reports traditional publishers put out – saying people are eschewing ebooks, that kids don’t like ebooks, and that ebooks are the bane and scourge of the publishing world – it appears that those bought-and-paid-for ‘statistics’ aren’t based on the cold hard numbers generated by their greatest imagined enemy: Amazon.
When it came to giving advice to writers, Kurt Vonnegut had some great stuff. He famously warned people away from the use of semicolons by describing them “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.”
Eight years before his passing, Vonnegut published a collection of short stories titled “Bagombo Snuff Box.” The book was made up of previously published short fiction from his early (and short) career from the 1950s writing for magazines. These works did not appear in Vonnegut’s previous collection, “Welcome to the Monkey House.”