Category Archives: Writer Reference

eBook, Writer Reference

The Case of the Complaining Author

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

There are many reasons that authors fail.  The most glaringly obvious one is that they don’t treat their writing as a business.

Scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, I came across a post that seemed to indicate that an eBook listed on Amazon was showing the wrong content when a potential buyer clicked on the “look inside” feature.  The poster was “damning” the Look Inside feature.

So I asked a simple question: Did the original poster call and ask why the wrong content was showing?

The response showed that they had not done so.

Here’s the thing: YOU are the author. YOU are your business. YOUR BOOK is your product.  Take some damned responsibility for it! Act like a professional!

Further examination showed that the eBook in question – which I looked up, accessed the “look inside” feature and downloaded the sample for – had been first published on December 19, 2013.  By using the post date of the FB complaint, the date the interior file was updated can be extrapolated to March 27, 2015.

The eBook has no reviews.

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Dead Tree Books, eBook, Questions and Answers, Writer Reference

Indie Publishing: Best software for creating eBooks

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Question:

What Windows application can I use to create beautifully looking e-books, withe possibility to export in both PDF and Kindle?

Answer:

There are a few options.

But first: PDF isn’t an ebook format. Please don’t make the mistake that others have by trying to sell a PDF file. If you want to create an ebook, there are two formats: ePub and Amazon’s format.  That’s it.  PDF is for creating fixed-format documents; eBooks are reflowable files that allow a reader to read them in the most comfortable way possible; larger font, smaller font, font they like to read the most, landscape or portrait, etc.  PDF files don’t play well with eReaders or apps, and they’re – ultimately – a format for making a document look the same on screen as it does if it were printed; it’s a print format, not an ebook format.

To your answer:

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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.

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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.”

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Inspiration, Success Stories, Writer Reference

J.A. Konrath: Fisking Donald Maass

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Oh. My. Goodness.

My favorite author has just spanked the Emerald City Doorman hard enough that it’s going to leave a mark.  And Mr. Maass is going to have a severe limp for quite awhile!

It’s no secret that I am an indie-publishing heretic, posting often and everywhere about how every author should look into getting themselves published without getting ridden hard and put away wet by a legacy publishing dinosaur (that’ll give you a limp for sure!).  But no one – NO ONE – takes the publishing industry or their flan-boys to task better, cleaner, and more beautifully than Mr. Konrath.

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