Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Today we've launched the first issue of Self-Publishing: The Carnival of the Indies. This is a once-a-month blog carnival specific to self-publishing. There are 20 articles linked within the Carnival, with three featured posts. We had great participation but I would love to have submissions from mor...

Andrew, that's a touching story and one of the most unique reasons I've ever heard for writing (let alone self-publishing) a book. The cover is lovely, although the bar code looks a bit funky. Good luck with the book!

Good idea, daringnovelist, but label them Advance Review Copy or Advance Readers Copy (not advanced). It's also good to put under that something like this: Not for resale. Uncorrected Page Proofs. Please check with Publisher before quoting from this book. Also, don't put an ISBN or barcode on the bo...

Deepsesh, You have a few options for covers. You can do it yourself in the same way you do the text, but this can be difficult with most word processing software. Or you can do it with a consumer-level graphics package like Microsoft Publisher or open source software like TeX. On Createspace they ha...

Tycoon, Justine, What you are trying to do should be pretty easy. If you do a private publication--no copies are for sale, there is no ISBN and no listing at any retailer--there won't be a record of the publication anyway. Lulu allows books without ISBN and Createspace may also. But you don't need t...

Maybe a little late, but here's some: http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/04/apple-ipad-first-look-the-future-has-arrived http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/03/ipad-ibookstore-ibooks-ianticipation http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/01/apple-ipad-e-book-reading-kindle-killing-business-saving-produc...

Marilyn, I just wanted to thank you for the terrific post detailing all the initiatives you've taken to grow your online presence. Having it all laid out is really helpful, and shows how the "giving mindset" can truly lead to great things. Thanks!

Registration is going on for the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA) Annual Get Published! Institute , being held this year at Dominican University in San Rafael, California, about 25 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. I went to this workshop last year and it ...

Nathan, Thanks for the link to the Scalzi post. Really terrific stuff, and a great twist in the ending. I have no doubt there will always be publishers, and editors, researchers, fact checkers, the edifice of publishing isn't going to go away. But even though I've spent a lifetime as a fan of the pr...

Interesting article, and god, I hope Mr. Jenkins is right, but I found his article, despite his thrice repeated "30 years experience" of ebooks, wrong on multiple counts, and offputtingly elitist. There doesn't seem to be any force propelling the printed book to its death in the next few m...

Beacon, the research I've seen is that articles of 400-700 words are preferred by many readers. But if you look at popular blogs, what stands out is the writing, not the length. There's also a lot of emphasis on breaking up your copy into digestible "chunks" by keeping paragraphs short, us...

Rose, I use Wordpress so I'm not familiar with the Blogger interface, but keep in mind the number one factor in optimizing your blog for search engines is the title of your blog posts. On Wordpress we can control the "title tag" separately from the actual title of the post. This allows me ...

Oh, one more easy idea. Hook your blog feed up to your Facebook profile. Every blog post you do will be automatically fed to everyone on your friend list. This works!

Beacon 22, just by asking this question, the people in this discussion know you have a blog, so you can see how finding places to interact with people who have similar interests is a really good way to get the word out. Make sure you let people know about your blog by putting it in your signature li...

Yes, I believe right now the date is 1923 (or thereabouts) because anything published before that date is in the public domain and can be reprinted by anyone who cares to do so. This has also led to multiple editions, from different publishers, of many of the same books. For instance, there are many...