ASK RON: “Why should I let SelfPublishing.com help me publish my book?” – Part 2
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Affordable book cover design and text layout by qualified, experienced designers. I’ve written on this subject from time to time over the years and always end up with a small amount of heated emails from high priced designers but literally hundreds of emails, thanking me for removing the cloud that often surrounds this subject. Full Story |
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It’s Not the End of the World
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The fortune cookie read, “you will find success this year.” Where will success by found? When will I find it? Will I find this “success” before the predicted end of the world next December? I don’t buy it. Any success worth finding is worth earning. This goes for all of us here at selfpublishing.com and it goes for all of the author/publishers that we’ll serve this year … and the next … and the next. Full Story |
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Creating a Manuscript that is “Designer/Layout Friendly”
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As a book designer, when estimating an interior the first thing I do is look to see if the manuscript has been created with “style”. Not if it is fashionable, but if “style sheets” or “styles” were used for various kinds of text. When using a word processing program such as MS Word or Pages for Mac the default style is Normal. You can see this on your toolbar or in the format menu. If you manually highlight type and change the size, boldness, font, etc. the style will still be Normal but you will have overridden the typical normal formatting manually. A better and much more “designer friendly” way to get consistent, heading, text and other formats throughout your manuscript is to use “styles”. Full Story |
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Sometimes The Big Guys Get It Wrong
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Just last week I had a customer email me regarding a job I had recently done which was rejected when he tried uploading it to iTunes. Not two days later I had another customer who had her job rejected from BookBaby. BookBaby actually takes files submitted to them and uploads them to other stores such as iTunes and B&N. This latter job had been done quite some time ago so I was a bit puzzled why it had been rejected since she had already uploaded her file to other sites without having any issues. Full Story |
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The Best Advice I’ve Learned On Mastering a Concept Worthy of a Story
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Five words that will change your entire outlook (or freshen it up, even for seasoned authors) on crafting a novel or screenplay: "Story Engineering by Larry Brooks." I’m focusing on “Concept” today. And I’m lucky this was the first section in Story Engineering. Really. It seems so simple, right? A love story. Except that’s not a concept. It’s an idea. And this explanation is exactly what saved my story. Full Story |
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Look Beyond the Bookstore to Sell More Books
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“Total unit sales of print books sold through the outlets whose sales are captured by Nielsen BookScan dropped 10.2% in the six month period ended July 3, 2011…” (PWDaily, July 8, 2011). This is a trend that will continue, according to publishing experts. Combine that with the demise of Borders and the outlook for trade sales of print books is not brilliant. The good news is that there are two areas in which you can generate sustained growth in your sales and profits: ebooks and non-bookstore marketing. Full Story |
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The Down-and-Dirty on Publishing’s Over-Promoted Technology
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In a recent year, Xlibris, one of the big names in POD (Print-on-Demand), celebrated paying out their one-millionth dollar in royalties. The prior year, they helped authors publish more than 7,000 titles and sell over 300,000 books. Impressive, huh? Well, let’s do the math. $1 million for 7000 titles comes out to an average royalty of $149 each. Not exactly worth bragging about… Full Story |
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 Publishing Basics
 Purchase Single ISBN
 Editorial Analysis
 Manuscript Editing
 Text Layout
 Book Cover Design
 Printing Pricing
 Storage and Fulfillment
 Distribution
 Publishing Basics EBook
 Instant Book Printing Quote
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Recent Comments
"Nice article! You have a knack for communicating important information very well."
— Michael Heath On January, 18th - 2012 - View Story
"Ron: Hope this finds you well in this new year! You helped me publish my first book in 2007 and I am working on a second book--about special education! I am so grateful to self publishing.com for their help and support!
I also am glad that you continue to encourage people to write real books not just E books. I actually wrote an E book and sold less than 10 copies while my real book is above 400. Keep up the encouragement because we need it!"
— JoAnn Collins On January, 18th - 2012 - View Story
"Well, it's the same that happens in the blogging world full of low level blogs just put up in the search for easy money. Those spammers and quick money searchers move where there is food for them, just like locusts and with the same effect. I still remember when I bought an ebook on improving memory and it was just a copy of a public domain book of William Walter Atkinson.
Also let's not forget that many of those have websites in countries where internet legislation is lacking and where you can live well with a couple of hundred dollars per month so it is always worth it.
No easy solution, unfortunately."
— hypnodude On January, 18th - 2012 - View Story
"Self-publishers who care about the quality of their books work very hard at not looking self-published. That means that books of dreadful quality that are obviously self-published have come to define self-publishing.
Readers who have been reading ebooks for awhile, including the free and cheap ones, know enough to download a sample to check for quality. They can view the same sample online. Readers also mention both the quality of the writing and the quality of the formatting in their reviews. Thousands of ebook review sites and blogs are helping readers find independently published books that are well done.
The upside of the new open marketplace is that we are hearing stories that we would never have heard when "legitimate" publishers determined what got published. Yes, there is a tsunami of crap, but there are gems in that pile, and people are getting better at finding them and telling others about them.
The world is full of scams and shoddy goods. Somehow we learn to navigate our way through the minefield. We will with self-published books too.
Catherine M Wilson
Shield Maiden Press"
— Catherine M Wilson On January, 17th - 2012 - View Story |
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