Digital Pubbing

Exploring the ins and outs of the publishing industry

self-publishing

Kindle, Kindle, Kindle: Amazon’s Latest Publishing Tools

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In the last week, Amazon has made three big announcements, all of which I think have the potential to greatly help indie authors. Kindle Countdown Deals The first, and most exciting in my opinion, is the Kindle Countdown Deals. What this means is that authors who publish e-books on Amazon have an easy way of price pulsing/discounting their books, and then advertising it. The … [Read more...] about Kindle, Kindle, Kindle: Amazon’s Latest Publishing Tools

Freebie Strategies for Indie Authors

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UPDATE: Author David Gaughran has also kindly answered a few additional questions.  Using free as a tool can be very beneficial to authors. When Amazon first started their KDP Select program, many authors were able to take advantage of the five freebie days offered during every 90-day exclusivity period, and shoot to best-selling status. However, Amazon has since changed its … [Read more...] about Freebie Strategies for Indie Authors

Self Publishing Platform Updates

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In the last few months, a lot has changed with some of the major self-publishing channels, specifically Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Smashwords. Kindle Aside from Amazon launching Kindle Worlds, which changes the way fan fiction is written and published, it also recently started publishing Kindle Single Interviews. The second interview will be with Obama. Additionally, when you … [Read more...] about Self Publishing Platform Updates

Interview on Scribd: Getting the Word Out

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  Yesterday Scribd posted an interview with me on self-publishing tools and getting book reviews. It was a great experience and I want to thank Taylor for the interview. Below is an excerpt. You can read the full article here. It used to be that the success of a book was dictated by the reviews of newspaper columnists and the attention garnered by placement on … [Read more...] about Interview on Scribd: Getting the Word Out

Self-publishing, the Slush Pile, and Print Books

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Self-publishing may be the new slush pile. In the past, the slush pile has been the pile of unsolicited manuscripts sent by aspiring authors in hopes of being picked up by a publisher. Now, some publishers are looking to pick up books that have already proven to be successful. They offer authors bigger advances and they take on less risk in doing so. One example is … [Read more...] about Self-publishing, the Slush Pile, and Print Books

Marketing Indie Books

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Marketing can be a tricky aspect of self-publishing. On the one hand, there's really no limit to the amount of money you can spend doing it, but there are a lot of ways to be ineffective. Below are a few guidelines I've learned from experience and heard about from other writers on creating effective marketing campaigns. Create Videos. Videos give people excuses to send … [Read more...] about Marketing Indie Books

6 Tips to Successfully Crowdfund a Project

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Crowdfunding is hard. To do it successfully, and to be like the high profile projects on Kickstarter, Indie Go Go and other platforms and raise thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars means treating the crowdfunding process like a full-time job. Here are some tips I've learned the last couple years, both from experimenting with crowdfunding myself and … [Read more...] about 6 Tips to Successfully Crowdfund a Project

What Self-Publishing and Internet Marketing Have in Common

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For those of you who don't know, ClickBank is an affiliate marketing website. People can sign up to either sell their information products, or to promote products and receive a cut of the sale. Recently I was looking through ClickBank's site, and I stumbled across their tips for Internet marketers. Many of their tips can also be directly applied to self-published authors, or … [Read more...] about What Self-Publishing and Internet Marketing Have in Common

What Do Authors Want?

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Digital Book World hosted a webinar a while back, called "What Authors Want." The webinar was meant to promote DBW's survey of 5,000 authors. The survey was submitted to the Writer's Digest community (whose writers tend to be female and over 35, and write fiction), as well as SFWA (mostly male fiction writers), Romance Writers of America (mostly female writers), and perhaps a … [Read more...] about What Do Authors Want?

Book Discoveries and Recommendations

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For self-publishers, after writing a book, the next biggest step is making people aware that it exists and is worth reading. But in such a saturated market, it can be hard to get your book discovered. Here are three book recommendation tools. Word of mouth is still the most effective way to make a book go viral, and many people recommend books via email (this may be because … [Read more...] about Book Discoveries and Recommendations

More Resources for Digital Publishing

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I've extended my blog to include a large, hopefully helpful, list of resources that cover all aspects of digital publishing: agents, analytics, apps, associations, blogging, coding, contests/awards, design, distribution, ebooks, editing, entrepreneurial, funding, internships, jobs, legal, magazines, marketing, metadata, news, reading, reviews, self-publishing, startups, trends, … [Read more...] about More Resources for Digital Publishing