Several months ago I was asked by CreateSpace to develop an article on book marketing for a new resource center they were introducing. It’s called Marketing Central, and it’s a great site for self-publishers. In Marketing Central, (a top-level…

Mornings seem to be cooling off, and the path to fall looks quite short from here. This week we’ve got e-book cover design considerations, the opening of the gates, marketing, creating e-books, and more new technology to help sell those…

by Gary Turchin Today I’m happy to introduce you to poet, performer and educator Gary Turchin. I met Gary at the meetings of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA). We met and talked about the book he wanted to…

It wasn’t hard to predict that ePub would start to become a common output option on more and more consumer-level software programs. As it is, there are word processors and layout programs that convert your documents to ePub books, complete…

In my day job, I help authors bring their books to completion and get them ready to go to press, whether it’s through a digital print on-demand service, an offset print run, or going straight to e-Books. One thing that’s…

Saturday was the monthly meeting of the Bay Area Independent Publisher’s Association (BAIPA) and the featured speaker was Sallie Goetsch. She was accompanied by author and laywer Sandy Shepard, who expanded the presentation. Together they used the process of turning…

Welcome to the first edition of the e-Book Cover Design Awards. This edition is for submissions during August, 2011. Here’s what we received: 36 covers in the Fiction category 4 covers in the Nonfiction category 1 cover rejected because it…

The year is starting to turn toward fall, with everything that brings. Over here the pace is heating up, and from this week’s articles you can see the seriousness with which authors are approaching their new roles as publishers and…

For some years now many small publishers and self-publishers have been using a very effective strategy for distributing their books. This strategy has been widely written about and imitated. It was pioneered, as far as I know, by Aaron Shepard…

I read an interesting article today by novelist and blogger Cory Doctorow in the Perspectives series at Locus Magazine online, a hangout for science fiction and fantasy fans. Here’s an excerpt: I firmly believe that there are writers out there…

Since announcing the new monthly e-book cover design awards last week, we’ve been working behind the scenes to get ready for the first issue, coming sooner than you think. And it’s a lesson for all you author bloggers, too. It’s…

I was asked by Letizia Sechi (@letiziasechi) of 40kbooks.com, an epublisher that specializes in short works, to contribute to their interview series with publishing insiders. This is quite good fun. There are 5 keywords, and you are free to write…

Recently I was contacted by an author who had just won several awards for a book he had self-published. Ed Morler, a psychologist, is the author of a number of award-winning books, a real contribution to his field. The…

Finding and publishing these links every week is an interesting discipline. Some weeks, I have to search far and wide to find five articles that feel right. Some weeks, like this one, there’s so much good writing on books, e-books,…

Author blogs are an intrinsic part of your author platform. You can get more readers for your blog. You may have read many of these ideas before, but let me ask you: How many have you done in the last…

One of the most consistent and easily corrected mistakes I see with book covers that are designed by authors is weak or inappropriate typography. Given that a book cover usually has very few words on it, and those words (title,…

It’s summer, and despite the hurricane warnings elsewhere, a sunny Sunday is likely to draw us out to enjoy the season and do some constructive ambling. We headed over to Berkeley, a short trip across the San Francisco Bay and…

Welcome to this issue of the Carnival of the Indies blog carnival. This issue is for August, 2011. We welcome your submissions on topics related to writing, self-publishing, book design or marketing books. A collection of outstanding articles recently posted…

I knew that the idea of an e-Book Cover Design Award was a good one when people started to submit their covers in the comments of the article, even though I said I was just thinking about it! So I…

by Thomas Burchfield (@Thomburchfield) I’m glad to welcome back novelist Thomas Burchfield, who also contributed The Power of Persistence in Indie Publishing. Here’s his tale of evolving along with the whole self-publishing scene. Since I entered independent publishing in…

Book award shows abound in the publishing world, and every year in the fall you can expect to see lots of email, flyers, mailings and solicitations to enter your books into one contest or another. This subject needs a fuller…

One of the reasons I like blogs as a foundation for social media book marketing is that they offer many levels of engagement for visitors, from web surfers to dedicated readers. Engagement is the degree to which blog readers feel…

This week we’re looking at articles about new innovations in e-distribution, making the self-publish decision, pricing and policies in the Kindle store, and a cautionary copyright tale. Just right for deep in the summer. Have fun. Henry Baum on Self-Publishing …

by David Bergsland I’m very pleased to present you today with a guest article by author, teacher and graphic designer David Bergsland. David has a unique method for writing and designing his books and a passionate reason for it…

When you are publishing a book, there inevitably comes a moment of truth. This is a moment that you’ve been anticipating, waiting for, excited about. This is a moment of truth for you as both an author and a publisher.…

It’s amazing how often this happens: I visit an author blog and, finding something interesting, I go looking for the “About” page. And when I get there, it’s a total disappointment. Typically there will be a couple of paragraphs of…

I seem to be getting more and more of my emails bouncing back with vacation autoresponder messages, are you? It’s a sure sign August is here and it’s time to make the most of summer holidays. But on the way…

By Austin Briggs Although I’ve never had occasion to use it, I’ve been hearing writers rave about Scrivener for some time. Intrigued, I’ve been asking around for someone to write up a review of this fascinating software for writers, and…

Have you seen the television show Restaurant Impossible (Food Network)? The star is chef and restauranteur Robert Irvine, a British ex-military type who rescues failing restaurants in a most improbable way. A typical scenario involves an older restaurant, a couple…

Ed: This post was originally written for and published by the Book Buzzr Book Marketing Technologies Center My roots in publishing are firmly planted in the print world. Paper made from trees, books bound in boards covered with cloth, signatures…

Sometimes you think you’re deep in the doldroms of August and exactly nothing is going to happen because everyone as at the shore or wherever people go in August. Then you turn around and people are publishing terrific, helpful and…