Category Archives: Self Publishing

Questions and Answers

Question: What are some tips that can help me successfully publish a book through a major publishing house?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Question: What are some tips that can help me successfully publish a book through a major publishing house?

Answer:

Well, to start with: you don’t publish. You write. Once you’re done writing, you write query letters to agents to attract one. The agent will get your book to a publisher. The publisher will get your book into bookstores.

Now, as for tips:

    • Get used to failure. You’ll be rejected repeatedly. But if you persevere, you’ll get an agent.
    • Get used to zero response. When you get an agent, get used to no communication, no responses to email, no responses to phone calls. Your agent will, eventually get your book in at a publisher, if you’re lucky.

Continue reading →

eBook, Questions and Answers

Question: Can an amateur author make their book available online for download to the Kindle and the Nook?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Question: Can an amateur author make their book available online for download to the Kindle and the Nook?
Basically is there any way to digitally self publish?

Answer:

Well, of COURSE there is. But why would you limit yourself to Amazon and B&N?

The Holy Trinity of Self-Publishing is:

  • Kindle Direct Publishing
  • Smashwords
  • Createspace

Continue reading →

Success Stories, Writer Reference

Question: Why doesn’t self-publishing work?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Answer: Well, your question starts off with an incorrect assumption.

Self publishing does work.  It’s worked for hundreds and hundreds of years.  Poor Richard’s Almanack was certainly a success – it was printed starting in 1732.  William Blake was very successful self-publishing his work starting in 1783.  Jane Austen was pretty successful – although, to be accurate, she went vanity press before there was a vanity press.  Walt Whitman?  Successful.  Marcel Proust?  Another success.  Virginia Woolf?  Success.

More successes include: Alexandre Dumas, Amanda Hocking, Anais Nin, Barbara Freethy, Beatrix Potter, Carl Sandburg, D.H. Lawrence, David Chilton, Dean Wesley Smith, Deepak Chopra, e.e. cummings, E.L James, Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ezra Pound, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, H.M Ward, Henry Thoreau, Hugh Howey, Irma Rombauer, J.A. Konrath, Jack Canfield, James Redfield, John Grisham, John Locke, K.A Tucker, L. Ron Hubbard, Lisa Genova, Margaret Atwood, Mark Twain, Michael J. Sullivan, Richard Evans, Rudyard Kipling, Stephen Crane, Stephen King, T.S. Elliot, Thomas Paine, Tom Clancy, Upton Sinclair, William E.B. DuBois, and Zane Grey.

Continue reading →

Dead Tree Books, eBook, Success Stories, Writer Reference

Burying the Hachette

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Keith Cronin posted a great article about the ongoing Amazon/Hachette nonsense over at Writer Unboxed.  Personally, I firmly feel that Hachette is doing all of their authors a HUGE disservice by continuing this idiotic business war, and I feel that it’s making them look bad.  My favorite observation from this article:

“This is something that many people forget, or simply haven’t realized: Amazon is not a bookstore. It’s not Barnes & Noble on steroids. It’s much more like Costco, or Target, or Walmart: a powerful retailer meeting a wide span of consumer needs at discounted prices.”

Continue reading →

eBook

75% of authors misuse free ebook promotion

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

I just read a post that cites an imaginary statistic, and that is so absolutely flawed in it’s premise that I felt the need to put pixel to screen in the hopes of correcting this gross error.  From the post:

“…Now this is a very important mistake and 75% of the authors do that. They just make their book free to get high rankings on self publishing platforms. I have read about lot of authors who say that making their book free has done wonders for them and boosted their book sale. This high ranking and sale will be short term if you don’t know how to do it properly. You must always get other benefits and those benefits should be of long term if you are going for free…” – Jay D, Book Promotion & Marketing Guru

Continue reading →