Category Archives: Recent Posts

Apple treats authors much better than Amazon

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The Alliance of Independent Authors published an excellent article on February 5 by Giacomo Giammatteo which conclusively shows that Apple treats authors much better than Amazon. Their services, like coupons, promotions, and pricing, are much better. But the main advantage is that Apple always pays 70% and Amazon rarely does. But Amazon sells so much more This is still true for many, but Apple is solidly in control of the second spot according to Giacomo (and in my experience). In my stats, … Continue reading →

Marketing tips for fiction and non-fiction: it takes time

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Joel rarely writes for his blog any more, but it is a treat when he does. Today’s article is an excellent example of why his blog is so good: clean, concise, and useful. We can boil down the advice to the following: Fiction authors are unknown Fiction is marketed to a much wider audience who is initially unknown by the author. The new author  needs to work very hard on becoming known. Giving away books is essential as … Continue reading →

Make more with five book sets than 5 single books

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I was talking to my author friend, Guy Stanton III, today and he shared this with me. Many of you already know this, but it’s worth a mention anyway. You know what’s really ironic, David, about combining all the books into one boxed set? I will make more money on the sale of the boxed set than if I had sold the entire series individually, but what’s even cooler is that the customer is going to pay … Continue reading →

Printing quality: Lightning Source, Lulu, or Createspace

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This has been an interesting question for the past decade. There are several things which enter into the equation. The two most important are defects and general quality. Aaron Shephard falls on the side of Createspace in a radical change this morning. He’s always taught that Lightning Source is necessary for quality. Defects are a normal aspect of printing Printing is an amazingly complex manufacturing process. Most people tend to think that on-demand digital printers are much better … Continue reading →

Christian non-fiction reduced to $.99 per book

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The prices have been reduced on The Narrow Gate and Knowing Jesus As His Bride from the Advanced Discipleship series. Plus, the three verse by verse epistle studies are also at $.99 The Easily Understanding Scripture series $.99 each There are three books released in this series so far. Finding the Power to Believe: A study of Philippians Learning to walk in freedom: A study of Galatians  Godly Leadership & Power: A study of both Timothies The Advanced Discipleship … Continue reading →

My two best-selling books released in Kindle’s new fixed layout format

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Both of these books are now available free for Kindle Unlimited and Prime subscribers  Practical Font Design Textbook   Writing In InDesign CC 2014 Textbook Before you get too excited, Kindle’s new KDP format is a PDF wrapped in proprietary code for the Kindle. The books appear to read fine in a Fire or one of the Kindle apps. All I’ve seen is the previewer in the KDP upload page. Producing the book is very fast. Download the … Continue reading →

Newly digitized Doves Type font designer finds old lead type in the Thames

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Here’s a fun article from CreativePro about the process. Many people do not realize that a lot of the “free type” and a good deal of the professionally designed type is made from or started with digitized characters from printed works using old letterpress fonts outside of the copyright period (normally pre-1940, at this point, in most cases). Doves Press type is one of those   The link to the typespec.co.uk site gives more info on the  discovery. … Continue reading →

Ebooks have made a major leap in quality

Skilled Workman Posted on by

For example, I got this official word today: “Yes, Kobo now accepts FXL EPUBs exported from InDesign and they can be put on sale, they have confirmed the same. The FXL EPUB output from ID also renders correctly on a Kobo device.” Now that is certainly good news which is to be added with the existing iBooks acceptance of ePUB3 books. But the real change has happened more subtly. All distributors now accept ebooks with embedded fonts I … Continue reading →

Variable type for ebooks?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

There have been rumors around for several years now that multiple master fonts might not be gone completely, or that a new solution might be in the works. Nick Sherman wrote a long, but exciting article about the new possibilities on A List Apart. Superpolator (on the left) shows some exciting possibilities. My personal hope is for OpenType features in ePUBs. Variable type has some big guns behind it Recently, Adam Twardoch made a proposal along these same … Continue reading →

Printing has changed, but it’s certainly not dead…

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I read a good article this morning from My Print Resource talking about the slow slide of offset lithography to a minority process. However, it will still be the largest segment of printing. Many of the new self-publishers are not aware that printing is still a huge industry, and that on-demand printing (like we use) is only a small portion of the industry. It’s interesting that this article still sees the huge growth of inkjet as a … Continue reading →