Tag Archives: Amazon.com

Chain bookstores don’t have to die: see Waterstones

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In a fun article in Slate, Stephen Heyman tells a tale of hope. In an article entitled, Big-Box Bookstores Don’t Have to Die, he shares the story of how Waterstones, the largest bookstore chain in Britain, has turned things around. Hint: it’s the same way we have as indie authors. Eliminate publisher control And, give place to the needs of the actual users of a particular store. It’s surprising how badly traditional publishing is still hurting us. Their model … Continue reading →

Just because you can buy a buggy whip, cars have still completely replaced the horse and buggy

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There’s a good article in Book Business today called Why Ebooks will eventually replace books. Caleb makes some very good points. Many people don’t look at the situation and see what a radical thing an ebook is. Like I mentioned in the title, you can still buy a buggy whip—but it’ll be hard to find and very expensive. The same will be true of books before too long. Even now, a paperback is several times as expensive as … Continue reading →

Amazon is not the enemy, it’s the pathfinder

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Get off your lazy butt—it’s a jungle out there! The only way to beat the leader is to be better at what the leader does. I was reading yet another excellent article this morning from Mike Shatzkin about the current state of affairs in traditional publishing. He makes good points, which also apply to indies and self-publishers. We need to keep our head in the game. Amazon earned their place in publishing They are dominant in ebooks, not … Continue reading →

Writing and working in InDesign makes using it easy

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I was talking to a friend a couple days ago. He mentioned the primary trouble he has in using InDesign to format his books: when he gets into InDesign he can’t remember how to use it. Suddenly, it dawned on me that this is a primary reason why writing in InDesign is so effective. Not only is writing fully formatted in InDesign the best method of communicating clearly with your readers [outside of excellent content], the simple act … Continue reading →

Lightning Source: the pro’s choice for POD?

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The image is meaningless fill. I received this comment from Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books, Auburn, AL. I’ve been wanting a guest posting on this for a while, so I am appropriating his comments for that purpose. I’ve never dealt with LS. I never have the budget. But it is definitely the pros’ choice. Lightning Source is the print-on-demand supplier for the traditional publishers. Many authors find it very difficult to deal with, but Mike, like me, has … Continue reading →

One of the hopes for the local bookstore…

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Forbes has a fun article called:   The Man Who Took on Amazon and Saved a Bookstore It is this type of technology which will let the local bookstore compete against Amazon. The Expresso Book Machine can publish out-of-print titles and much more. Of course, Createspace can do this also. It will be interesting to see how Expresso develops. I’m checking it out to see if they will list my books. For those not familiar, the Expresso … Continue reading →

The changes to self-publishing are just beginning

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This has been a day for it. All my sources are talking about nothing else. Here’s an excellent article about where indie and self-publishing may go There’s some good stuff here. The real problem is two-fold: The transitional future of the dedicated ereader Getting book discovery out of the hands of Amazon The ereader is going Some of this may be wishful thinking on my part. But the sales stats are proving my assumptions to be true. … Continue reading →

Picking an appropriate size for your book

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Document size [page size] In traditional publishing, there were many more options. This is one reason why traditional publishing costs so much more. Virtually all traditional printing is custom work—to meet the needs of the individual designer & various paper and press sizes. We give up some of that freedom to control costs as we move into on-demand printing. For my purposes here, I am talking about Createspace and Lulu. For the on-demand print publisher, many costs … Continue reading →

Writing In InDesign means it’s ready to go when you finish!

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When you’re done writing and editing, it’s ready to print! This is probably the best part of the process. In the traditional scenario, design and formatting does not begin until the book is written and edited. If you are writing and editing in InDesign, when you are done writing, the book is ready to release. If you print on-demand, it can be available to your readers in a couple weeks or less (even today, depending on the … Continue reading →

My newest book: Writing in InDesign

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Check out my page on the book This book has been replaced by “Writing In InDesign Revised Edition 2.5” This first edition, first formatting of the new book is no longer available available on Amazon. It includes many of the recent postings on this blog, plus more help for authors writing in InDesign (version 7.5 especially). I’m convinced that InDesign is best place to write. Read and find out why that is true and how it can … Continue reading →