self publishing
Apple gives book creators beautiful, golden handcuffs
Today Apple raised the bar on interactive textbook publishing, with the introduction of a revamped iBooks app for the iPad and a free textbook publishing app for the Mac. If you’ve got an iPad, a fairly new Mac, and a big pile o’ knowledge to share with the world, you can now create a really [...]
Learn write more better from book teachings without money
Oh man, I really should have read these free writing guides before I tried to craft my own headline. Now I just feel stupid. Actually, I feel like an SEO rebel, because from what I hear, writing a nonsensical headline is tantamount to Google search result suicide. Oh well! Someday I’ll learn write more better! [...]
Amazon launches “Kindle Indie Books” section on Kindle Store
Yesterday, author Brendan Gannon noticed that Amazon rolled out a new section called “Kindle Indie Books” on the Kindle Store. It’s not another publishing imprint (I guess they couldn’t use the term “indie” otherwise), but rather a human- and machine-curated selection of popular indie and self-published titles. To get on the list, you have to [...]
Amazon makes it easier for anyone to submit to the Kindle Singles program
The Kindle Singles program—which is not about individually wrapped cheese slices, but rather short ebooks consisting of novellas, short stories, essays and articles—has been running since the beginning of 2011, but Amazon hasn’t publicized the submissions process very much. The company just offered an email address and asked that only “serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business [...]
Librarian shares opinion of Espresso Book Machine after two years of using it
Here’s a librarian’s account of the Espresso Book Machine after two years of using it. It’s the best, most detailed real-world account I’ve come across—most things you’ll find online about this book-on-demand printing machine are either press releases or cursory reviews like my hands-on account last spring. The tl;dr summary: it’s only fast if it’s [...]
How Sidney Williams escaped midlist oblivion
In this interview, author Sidney Williams discusses retro computers, how to budget for ebooks, lost gems on Project Gutenberg, and why he’s chosen to publish his novels through Crossroad Press.
What you need to know about the ‘Spam on the Kindle’ story
The hot story the past few days is that spam ebooks are taking over the marketplace. Here are a few points you should consider while reading such articles and blog posts.
Red Lemonade launches, offers another take on the “social slush pile”
Richard Nash’s new reading and writing community is another entry in the growing “social slush pile” website category. Is it a valid way to find new quality writing?
Run-KindleGen workflow updated
Last October I posted about an Automator workflow for KindleGen. (Warning: Mac geek speak forthcoming.) I was pretty proud of it, but it had a bug, which is that it couldn’t handle spaces in the file’s path. For example, if your epub file is located in a folder named “Sparkly Vampire Novel,” which we both [...]
Read an Ebook Week means special deals and offers
When “Read an E-Book Week” was started in 2004, it made sense to try to expose more readers to the convenience of ebooks. The Kindle didn’t exist, the readers that did were expensive, and ebook editions were priced like hardcovers if they were made available at all. Now the marketplace is far more competitive, and [...]