Category Archives: Self-publishing

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 →

Have you seriously considered audio books?

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You should check out audio books There are many reasons for this. A large part of it is that many of the youth [people under 40] have spent a huge amount of time with iPod (or the even earlier WalkMan) earphones stuck in their ears. In addition, many of them spend large amounts of time driving or riding to and fro. For example, the last job I had before I became a full-time writer-designer-publisher required an hour and a … Continue reading →

Perseverance furthers… applies to authors also

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Before I met the Lord, I was running my life using the I Ching. The phrase I remember from that experience is: Perseverance Furthers… In Christian terms, do a word study in the New Testament on overcomers, or long-suffering… Your writing and publishing career will grow dramatically over many years. Be patient. A dripping faucet can fill a bathtub in a day or so. It won’t take as long as you fear. And you’ll love the journey. Relax! … Continue reading →

Guest post: Being an Author: Hobby, Career, or Calling from David G. Johnson

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I am honored today to have an article by an online friend of mine. After an exciting and varied life in many areas, including an IT executive, David, his wife, and their daughter felt a strong call to go to China as missionaries. He writes partially to support himself, but mainly because he has stories to tell, and they are excellent. For him, writing is a calling and epic fantasy is the genre. The worlds he builds … Continue reading →

Pictures on Kindle remains a crap shoot

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I don’t do this as often as I should (read other people’s books on self-publishing). It’s not because I don’t think they have good things to offer. Mainly it’s the result of a reasoning and a fact. First, I don’t want to accidentally plagiarize someone while writing. So, I tend to keep others’ writing out of the memory banks. Second, most non-fiction on book publishing is far too expensive for my little budget. But I picked up a copy … Continue reading →

More on Kindle Problems…

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A continuation of the Kindle formatting issues On one of the Facebook groups I participate in, there’s been some general poo-pahing over my most recent posting on the problems with Kindle formatting. I can understand it because many in that group only upload very simple novels. But the problem may be worse than I thought. So, I thought I better give some samples. In the process I found that Kindle has indeed destroyed the Kindle version of this … Continue reading →

Is it time to bail on Kindle?

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Aaron Shephard is close to giving up in Kindle. [You may need to search as I could not find a post-specific link.] He’s found evidence that Amazon might, and probably will, destroy your formatting well after it has been published. As you can read below about the new KFX format, Amazon simply does that to your book. It’s out of our control and we have been given no tools to produce KFX files.   I suspected all of this, … Continue reading →

Curation: a main focus of your blog

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Book business has a good article today entitled: Are content curators becoming more important than content creators? In many ways they are, especially in niches for non-fiction. For example, on my companion blog, Reality Calling, it’s main purpose has become the curation of Christian speculative fiction. These books are hard to find because the major book sites like Amazon, Nook, iBooks, and Kobo have no way to effectively search for them. So, my constant book reviews provide a way for … Continue reading →

Returning to InDesign CC (2014)

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Some of you have wondered why there’s been no update to CC (2015) in the book. Basically nothing was changed, I thought. So, I found no reason to update though I was using the new version for my production. It works very well. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to temporarily go back to (2014) for InDesign. I’ve been working a very limited schedule lately due to other things I need to get done. … Continue reading →