There's a real mill operating out there for authors in a hurry. It's what I call the Self-Publishing Industrial Complex. Companies with names like The Write Life offer products and services to make publishing So Very Quick. You can create a book in 90 days, or get it published by the end of the year. […]

Would you rather be promoting your book, instead of formatting it? Doing promotion is always the author's job, whether you have a book contract or you publish yourself. Here are your choices.

What makes a publisher traditional varies a lot. It comes down to editing, design, promotion, and business. A publisher that doesn't edit a book has a strikingly different idea of what traditional means.

Marketing and PR is a dark art. Authors can behave badly when they expect such work as part of a contract. But behaving badly isn't very accurate. Authors behave blindly. Many expect publishing pros to just do their jobs, somewhere out of the author's sight, thank you. Take an interest in marketing with these tips

Some authors like publishing. Others just like books. Some just like storytelling. The wide range of publishing paths is mapped in Jane Friedman’s annual report, Key Book Publishing Paths. The 2021 edition contains a new path: hybrid publishing. These are companies that package services authors need in one bundle. Friedman’s report only gets better with […]

We need to know if we'd like our books to become a part of a bigger world. Many like to call that publishing, but I consider that a business term. Getting a book into the world is all we can count upon. If you’re honest, you might find you’re not counting on it — and […]

If you like running a publishing business, then being a genre author could make some money. I like to tell authors who self publish it’s probably not going to deliver as much money as you want, for a while. You shorten the time to significant profits if you have money to invest, plus the nerve […]

What are distribution and wholesaling anyway? If you believe you only need to write your book to publish it, you're going to be disappointed at the sales once it's in the world. D&W are different in a significant way. Distributors do more selling on your behalf. Wholesalers take orders. In the broadest sense, Amazon is […]

So you've finished your book! Good news, if you've already invested in editing and purchased a pro cover. Now is the time to shoulder the wheel of marketing and distribution. Self-publishing is not real publishing until it includes self book marketing. My concise list gives you tasks to accomplish. You need to write sales copy. […]

Ah proofreading, the finish carpentry of editing. Many authors who create their own books think they can skip it, leaving the proofreading work to a copy editor. Pro publishers do not do it this way. These are the kinds of things I never thought I'd care about while I was traffic director at Graphics Express […]