Category Archives: publishing

How to Get Started in Self Publishing…

Getting Started in Self-Publishing Your Books There’s a great deal being said about this area. My own books on Lulu – http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/robertworstell(shameful self-promotion, yes I know) gives me some years of experience in this area. And for so long, it’s been … Continue reading

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Building a successful story you can publish

Building a story you can successfully self-publish Writing and self-publishing a story isn’t for the faint of heart, it has as much to do with persistence as it has to do with know-how and talent. In these days of plentiful … Continue reading

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So You’d Like to Sell a Million Books…

How to Sell A Million Books Step by step lessons from CJ Lyons on how to get your million books sold.Just wanted to get this into one place so everyone can find this.Try it for yourself – suspend disbelief, and … Continue reading

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Why Self-Publishing on Kobo’s Writing Life Makes Sense

Just discovered this site recently and was very impressed. If you already have a epub file, it’s simpler than anything else to get it uploaded and on offer internationally. They are already known for global sales, this lets you in … Continue reading

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Getting success with your self-published ebooks on Kobo

Self-publishing ebooks on Kobo – Success! One of the fastest and easiest way you can publish your ebooks is on Kobo – better than any other one I’ve found. Here’s some of the reasons why: eReader eReaderx 4 years ago … Continue reading

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The Odd Fascination with Literary Agents by Self-Publishing Authors

Self-Publishers Need a Book Agent? Really? What is it exactly that “literary agents” do again? Oh, they take a percentage of your income to make sure you are represented by book publishers. Come again? Highgate Cemetery, East (15) Tony Worrall … Continue reading

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Successfully Self-Publish Your Story – Starting Today!

Building a story you can successfully self-publish The story begins with your friends, family, and devoted readers – it’s what resides in their heart, that you have to coax out, which will tell you the steps you need to take … Continue reading

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Wattpad Launching Author Books Through Self Publishing?

Can Wattpad Launch Self-Published Authors? Still doing my research on Wattpad. The reports say this is a big underground hit – way below the mainstream, but key to new authors (and older ones) to get feedback and critique on their … Continue reading

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4 Simple Ways to Help Readers Find, Read, and Buy Your Self-Published Book

3 Reader-Driven Sites to Follow 4 Ways by Authors What any author wants is readers. And the wildly successful authors have a fan base they nurture. So it’s logical to simply utilize existing reader-driven community sites to build your fan … Continue reading

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Audience (or lack of it) is Driving Traditional Publishing Authors to DIY.

How Money Changes Hands in Self-Publishing Ok, so we are on the cusp of some severe paradigm shifts (means hold on, things are changing real quick these days…) What’s the vital points to hold onto now? hand money stayupcowboy 4 … Continue reading

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How to Blog Your Book – or How to Self-Publish Your Book and Blog It.

How and Why to Blog First, Then Self-Publish Your Book Quite simple, really: you are already (or should be) blogging as a natural extension of your writing (at least posting to Wattpad…) So why not simply take your posts and … Continue reading

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Social Media and Promoting Your Indie Book – How To’s

How to Tweet Your Booksales Up, or Like or Plus them there. Social Media is touted by many as the way Indie Authors can get fast recognition and booksales. They’re part-right, only. Social media is just tool out of your … Continue reading

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How Indie Authors Find (More) Readers: Goodreads

Goodreads: Probably the best place for Indie Authors to mingle and find new readers Of all the social sites which service the reading public, none seems more potent than Goodreads to do an author good. It’s not without it’s tricks, … Continue reading

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Beginning of a New Book Series

How to Write, Publish, and Sell Your Books Online That’s the general area we’ll be covering. Research is pretty much wrapped up now, and it just has to be laid out and edited. Best way to do this is by … Continue reading

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Book III Outline – “How to Sell a Book Online”

(Just to make a note of things. Yes, I also have some outlines for Book I and II, but this came together today, so I thought to make a record of it. Feel free to ask me questions about this … Continue reading

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How Amazon “Review-Addiction” is Wasting Your Time

photocredit: “bastique” from Flickr Getting a grip on Amazon’s multiplying sock-puppet problem. I’ve been doing some research today on Amazon’s review scene. This is because it’s become clear that the conventional wisdom  is “if you want to make a decent … Continue reading

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J’APE – the parody of self-publishing – first draft

Well, you’re either going to be amused or offended.I didn’t originally plan for the book to come out this way – it was going to be a “serious” piece. But here’s the first draft. The parody part has to be … Continue reading

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2nd Draft Arrived today. New title, new cover.

–>Well, it’s a new approach to this, but the content is proofed based on the first. One suggestion ( +Rob Gol ) pointed out the parody error. So I lost it. Did the keyword research I needed and came up with … Continue reading

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Closing Chapter just arrived…

Chapter 5 – Your Book As I mentioned in the beginning, there is probably a book in you, working to get out. Most of us have a story there. One report has this at 70% – which would include you. … Continue reading

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Author Vs. Publisher – Creating Your Stable of Books

Stigma Be Damned – Creating a Steady Income by Publishing One of the funniest “stigmas” I ran into in researching for “Just Publish! Ebook Creation for Indie Authors” was that there was some emotional baggage with publishing your own books. … Continue reading

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The first year’s fiction bestsellers study list is released!

Writers’ Club Homework Assignment List Relax – I didn’t mean to give you a flashback to college days (well, maybe just a little…) I was compiling the most popular classic fiction from Goodreads, Feedbooks, and Gutenberg.org – and came up … Continue reading

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How to Promote Your New Book via SEO

casebook-sherlock-holmes (Photo credit: midwestjournal) SEO isn’t really all that different than content-marketing your book – it’s attention to detail. What people call SEO is a constantly moving target. Used to be meta-tags, then it was domain names, then it moved … Continue reading

Posted in Backlink, blogging, Content marketing, Duplicate content, google, HubPages, iTunes, Meta element, Onlywire, Pinterest, publishing, Search engine optimization, SEO, Squidoo, Storify, synnd | Leave a comment

The only Constant is Change – ebook publishing continues to shift.

(photocredit: Nikki L.) Of course, I owe you an update on “Just Publish: Ebook Creation for Indie Authors” – because there have been so many changes going and coming around. If I haven’t already let you know otherwise, I’ve got … Continue reading

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How to Build a Public Domain (Self) Publishing Assembly Line

Publishing public domain books means volume and repetitive tasks – an assembly line. (art credit:Tobias Mikkelson) A one-person publishing “empire” is possible these days. Regular passive income can be made from re-publishing public domain as long as you: 1) Add … Continue reading

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How to Publish Your eBook Bundle on BitTorrent

(photo: blog.bittorrent.com) You can publish your own BitTorrent eBook bundles and here’s how… There are numerous benefits to getting bundles up and online. In most cases, authors are only seeing bundles as additional profit-makers. Tim Ferris was one of the … Continue reading

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The “News” in Self-Publishing is all DIY, not “done-for-you”.

Self-Publishing is the new model which is far more profitable than traditional-publishing lock-step hobbles. (photo: eXtensionHorses) Hobbles are used on animals to keep them from wandering. They’re usually put on the (front) feet and are uncomfortable. The model for traditional … Continue reading

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Update: The Distributors Discriminate (against your profits.)

In any book sales, it’s bulk vs. originality. There’s room for both. (Photo Credit: Phil Roeder) Viable book sales depend on volume of books first, quality second, originality third.  But this isn’t how the distributors see it. No reason for … Continue reading

Posted in Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, International Standard Book Number, iTunes, Kobo Inc., LibreOffice, lulu, Nook, public domain, publishing | Leave a comment

Why Aren’t Authors Happy Publishing Their Book?

Most authors don’t make a lot of money from publishing… (Photo: Diana Brown) …and what they don’t know is killing them. I’ve done my own study of DBW’s author survey. In addition to their earlier year’s surveys, this also adds … Continue reading

Posted in Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, E-book, Ebook Publishing, iTunes, Kobo Inc., lulu, OverDrive, public domain, publishing | Leave a comment

How to Throw Away Perfectly Good Marketing and Make No Sales

What to Do When You Have Legacy Brand Mojo (Artwork: Wacky stuff) Public Domain publishing is profitable if 1) you take advantage of the brand awareness that already exists, and 2) you don’t do something stupid to make it undiscoverable. … Continue reading

Posted in Amazon.com, Assembly line, E-book, Google Play, International Standard Book Number, iTunes, OverDrive, Private label rights, public domain, publishing | Leave a comment

Cracking the Lulu ebook Reject Problem

A faster way to clear up those cryptic Lulu ebook rejects. Just a note in passing… I was working away converting and uploading when I stumbled on a faster and surer way to get your book through that meatgrinder that … Continue reading

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Market Research Starts With Amazon?!?

Indie SOHO Publishing needs market research to succeed. Start with Amazon. (graphic: Chris Piascik) Why? Because they will tell you if your book as even a fighting change of breaking into the big time. While Amazon has been consistently shrinking … Continue reading

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How to Publish Public Domain Books and Profit Nearly Forever – Part 2

(continued from Part 1) The How-To Tips of Publishing PD and PLR to Profit From Here On Out (Photo: Simon Cunningham) Sorry I didn’t give you exact steps last time. (Of course, you can get this from my books, “Just … Continue reading

Posted in Amanda Hocking, Amazon.com, Google Play, iTunes, LibreOffice, lulu, public domain, publishing, Stephen King | 1 Comment

Staring an Indie SOHO Publishing Career and Making Income Immediately

You Can Publish Your Friend’s, Neighbor’s, and Strangers’ Books From Your SOHO Publishing Business… (photo:epSos .de) …with no more than the tools you already use to publish your own books. It’s long been said that there is more money selling … Continue reading

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How to Keep the IRS From Nickel and Diming Your Book Income

A Little-Known Way to Get the IRS Off your Self-Publishing Back (Graphic: DonkeyHotkey) Just a (hopefully) short note about author earnings on Lulu. Stumbled on this while researching my recent posts and thought you’d want to know. Disclaimer: this isn’t … Continue reading

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Publishing 30 books in 5 hours on Amazon

It is possible to publish over 2 dozen ebooks to Amazon in an afternoon. (photo: Alan Hudson) Of course, there’s a great deal of work to get to that point. Over 2 months of preps. And you should see how … Continue reading

Posted in bestseller, book, book sales, E-book, Ebook Publishing, Free content, kindle, Lowest common denominator, Print on demand, publishing | Leave a comment

The Numbers Racket and Amazon’s Public Domain Problems.

Amazon’s problem with public domain books are overcome by sheer numbers. (Photo: Conor Lawless) You beat Amazon at public domain publishing by having a lot of dogs hunting for you. Recently was in the middle of a test which had … Continue reading

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Why It’s Great to Be An Indie Publisher Now – Profit Forever

Why I Love Indie Publishing – Perpetual Passive Income Makes My Day. Oh, that’s right – I already wrote about this… I was reminded when I was looking to see if anyone else had been writing about publishing public domain … Continue reading

Posted in Amanda Hocking, Amazon Kindle, google, iTunes, Private label rights, public domain, publishing, Search engine optimization | 1 Comment

Rambling Prose and Lack of Focus Explain Why Tradition Publishing Fails

Traditional publishing Won’t Use the Tools That Make Indie Self-Publishing Work – They Can’t Afford Them. (art: Tobias Mikkelson) Found a great piece with gold nuggets in it.  His rambling prose is off-putting (how’s that for a typified descriptive phrase?) … Continue reading

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Getting Booksales on Amazon – and Everywhere Else

There are two distinct venues for selling books – Amazon and Everywhere Else. (photo: Nicholas Eckhart) This separation was made clear to me when I worked to publish a large handful of books to Amazon that I’d already published elsewhere. … Continue reading

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Getting Your Book Discovered, Finding More Sales, Having More Fun

Writing and publishing Your Book isn’t even half your job – the rest is getting it discovered so it sells and pays you back. (photo: Jayp0d) The third leg of the stool every author sits on is Discovery. (The first … Continue reading

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The Espresso Network – the 7th Book Distributor.

Found a new place for Indie Authors to Publish their books – the Espresso Network. (Photo: Illinois.edu) This was an interesting find – and wound up with another way for you to self-publish books. Yes, of course it’s free. The … Continue reading

Posted in Amazon Kindle, Assembly line, author, E-book, ebook, Ebook Publishing, LeanPub, LibreOffice, lulu, Portable Document Format, publishing, smashwords | Leave a comment

A New Test of Successful Book Publishing and Marketing – From Scratch

Starting a new and successful book from scratch and marketing it – all as a test and lesson (Photo: Thomas Leuthard) We’re starting a new book, with a supporting book series, and are going to show you from start to … Continue reading

Posted in Dorothea Brande, Golden Rule, Google Play, iTunes, napoleon hill, public domain, publishers, publishing, self-publishing, SEO, think and grow rich | Leave a comment

How to Edit a Book Into Shape and Stay Sane

The Route to Producing a Book Requires You Organize to Maintain Your Sanity. (Photo: Matt Elwood) This is always the rub. Editing is what most writers hire out. It’s also known as proofing. But it’s a craft on it’s own, … Continue reading

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How to Really Profit from Self-Publishing – Follow the Disney Route to Success

Use public domain to inspire your own works – that’s their greatest, and most profitable use. The real reason for works returning to the public domain is to inspire the next generation. The long-dead authors no longer need to profit … Continue reading

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When to Cave Over a Fake Copyright Claim

When they have a lawyer and you can’t afford one. (Jurisdictionary – lousy packaging, great course.) Hopefully, you don’t have a lot invested in that book. Might be a crying shame, but get over it. The two questions you have … Continue reading

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Is there any Real Money in public domain (self-)publishing?

Why you can make a financially free lifestyle with public domain (self-)publishing, but getting rich (quickly) is elusive. (Photo: Jeneraly) For several years, I’ve been evolving the business plan of re-publishing public domain books as an off-shoot of self-publishing, Recent … Continue reading

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The Great Amazon Suck – Why Other eBook Distributors Don’t

How to Blow-Off Any Chance at a Fan Base. (Cover: Seattle Weekly) [Rant Alert] For all the hype about Amazon, you will seldom see any fan clubs for Amazon or its execs. (Just lots of those “smiley” boxes.) That became … Continue reading

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Perfecting Passive Income Publishing for Profit

How to Make More Than Just a Living With Profitable Passive Income Publishing. (Image: WishIKnew…) It all started out by wanting to learn how to get books I’d written published and making enough to allow me to quit my day … Continue reading

Posted in author, book launch, epub, iTunes, Kobo Inc., LibreOffice, lulu, Market Samurai, public domain, publishing | Leave a comment

“Edward’s First Book” – A Children’s Story About Self-Publishing.

(Just a first draft. Illustrations to follow.)  – – – – Edward would wake up at night because of the voices in his head. They weren’t unpleasant voices, but they did want something. They wanted to be heard. Not just … Continue reading

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How to Create or Approve Your Book Cover

Creating or Approving a Book Cover – DIY All books need covers. Actually, this is the biggest introduction to any book these days – people really do “judge a book by its cover.” And if this has enough emotional impact … Continue reading

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