Category Archives: eBook

Dead Tree Books, eBook, Writer Reference

Vivalogue Announces New Self-Publishing Forum for Independent Authors

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

New Westminster, B.C. (PRWEB) November 29, 2013 – Vivalogue, an author services company based in New Westminster, BC, has strengthened its commitment to independent authors by launching a new networking cooperative for self-published authors and writers considering self-publishing.

The network “Raindance for Independent Authors” grew out of the Raindance Book Festival for Independent Authors held November 9, 2013 in Richmond, B.C. Believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, the festival included a book fair, workshops, editors’ ‘blue pencil’ sessions and a book drive supporting Frontier College. The festival was organized using a collaborative model which encouraged authors to contribute their collective time and talents. Authors identified this collaborative aspect of the festival as a key benefit of participation and expressed interest in continuing these relationships.

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eBook, Success Stories

USA Today: Companies book profits from self-publishing

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Jeremy Greenfield (Special for USA Today) has posted a new article on the USA Today website about how new firms have sprung up to help writers get their ebooks published:

In the spring of 2010, Amanda Hocking, a social worker from Rochester, Minn., uploaded several books she had been working on to Amazon.com. In the first weeks, she sold a few dozen copies — success for someone who just wanted to have her work read.

In the next few months, she published several more manuscripts, and soon, the sales started piling up. By the end of the summer, Hocking had made enough money to quit her job, and in January 2011, she sold “an insane amount of books,” she said, estimating the total at 100,000.

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eBook, Success Stories

‘Tired Of Waiting’ Teenager Self-Publishes Novels

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Mary Isokariari has posted on Young Voices about Lloyd Harry-Davis, 16, who “juggles studies with writing works of fantasy fiction.” She writes:

AN ENTERPRISING teenage author has self-published a series of urban fantasy novels.

Lloyd Harry-Davis, a 16-year-old first year sixth-form student at St Dominic’s Sixth Form College in Harrow, northwest London, wrote his first book Preternatural at the age of 12 and completed the second a year later.

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eBook

Penguin teams up with Readmill on booksharing app

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

The Guardian UK is reporting that Penguin UK has teamed up with the Berlin-based ebook app developer Readmill to bolster direct ebook sales.  From the article:

The app allows readers to share ebook highlights and to talk to each other while they’re reading, “liking” one anothers’ updates and discussing the books.

The deal includes more than 5,000 digital titles – Penguin UK owns digital rights to works by authors such as Zadie Smith, Hari Kunzru, and John Updike, as well as Morrissey’s Autobiography. People who buy ebooks from Penguin.co.uk will have the option to “send to Readmill”. The arrangement sidesteps Amazon’s Kindle and means that Penguin can retain more data on customers.

The free app, designed for iPhone, iPad or Android phones, lets readers share highlights, and supports digital conversations about books by linking reading to social media. Readers can use the app to update Facebook and Twitter when they begin reading a book, if they want to highlight passages or when they finish a book.

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Dead Tree Books, eBook, Writer Reference

Writing: Should The Self-published Author Use A Pen-Name (Pseudonym)?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Alli the Self-Publishing Advice Blog has posted an editorial on their site:

Trade publishers are notoriously wary of using the same author name across different genres, or of using a name that they feel is inappropriate for a particular book  – hence the morphing of Joanne Rowling into the more masculine J K Rowling, even though she doesn’t have a middle name. While self-published writers have the freedom to choose their own pen-name, the decision isn’t always easy or obvious. A group of self-published authors discussed the options on ALLi’s lively private Facebook forum earlier this week. Here are some of their conclusions:

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