Category Archives: On-Demand Publishing

A prominent voice nows says Lightning Source is no longer recommended

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  Aaron Shepherd has stopped recommending Lightning Source as necessary for self-publishers. This is a major reversal for a big name in self-publishing. His position is that the days of easy sales are over. New self-publishers really need to watch their costs, because their royalties will be lean unless the Lord or the world blesses [depending on your spiritual position in creation]. I’ll post more in coming days.  

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The state of publishing is becoming a bit more predictable

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        Shatzin has an excellent post today. He still sees the development of larger and larger publishers resulting in a global dominance of someone. Online book sales are inevitably going to increase their percentage. There will be a larger separation between books of text and books with graphics. Much more: you should read the article.  

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Mark Coker nails it again: we’re tired of the whining, just let us publish everywhere

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The Indie author furor! Big publishing isn’t dead, but it may be preparing to shoot itself in the other foot. 2014 will be quite a year. Mark’s article is real good—from Publisher’s Weekly.

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Book Production speed becomes more important…

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Mark Coker makes the following prediction for 2014: Production takes on increased importance in 2014 – One of the most important secrets to ebook publishing success is to write more books. As a writer, your writing is your unique creation. It’s your product. Authors who write great books (and produce more of them), are the authors who build sales and platform the fastest, because each new book represents an opportunity to please existing fans and hook new … Continue reading →

New Release: Writing In InDesign CC Producing Books

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Released, January 15, 2014 for InDesign CC9.2 By now many of the sites have listed the book. As usual, we are still waiting for iBooks approval. But it’s up at Amazon in print and Kindle. Kobo has it listed. The rest are all in process. The best option for ebooks is the link below where you can get an archive with a downlaodable PDF plus a DRM-free ePUB with fonts embedded. This will enable you to load … Continue reading →

Why does list quality matter in your ePUB?

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Yea, I know, here goes David off on another of his “professional quality” rants again…. But this one’s important! Lists are #3 in reading importance The studies I’ve seen [and please prove me wrong if you know better] show that, after picture captions and headlines, lists are third in reader importance. Many readers look for lists as they start skimming when they get bored. They assume that a list will give them a synopsis and let them … Continue reading →

InDesign CC ePUBs now handle floating graphics fairly well

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There are always going to be complaints. But I can do everything I want to do with anchored graphics right now. With one major exception: It’s hard to predict what will happen with a graphic crossing a page break. If it’s floating, it may just not render. I can understand that. I really don’t have any idea how to handle that. But I can simply change my graphic so it doesn’t float and the page break will … Continue reading →

ePUB production just took a major leap upward with InDesign CC9.2

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The new InDesign CC9.2, released this week, gives us much to be happy about as book publishers Most of the changes affect book production. The long-promised TypeKit integration is now available with over 700 Adobe TypeKit fonts freely usable and licensed for print, Web, and ebook as part of Creative Cloud. It runs much faster. There has been a major reworking of the hyperlinks panel to simplify its use. There’s a full featured QR code generator. There is … Continue reading →

Book Production Charges are often ridiculous!

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I received this post today from GoodReads purporting to give reasonable figures for editing and page layout for books. The table is from the original blog posting. While these may be common charges for freelancers living in large cities, they only serve to show how far out of touch the bi-coastal publishing industry has gotten. Let me give you some idea of what we are talking about here. I just finished a non-fiction book today with 124,000 … Continue reading →

Author beware! You are responsible to make good choices

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Dave Bricker posted a long article today about the dangers of publishing without knowing the expenses and requirements of book production. You need to read the article if you are ignorant of the scams perpetrated on authors. Most publishers you run across with a quick Google search as you start your hunt for help will be vanity houses seeking to scam the author. There are countless people lusting after your production money This is where you need … Continue reading →