Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I don’t see Amazon as a threat to competition. Quite the opposite, in fact. Amazon have done more to foster competition that any other player in the industry. The convergence of four key trends – rise in online bookselling, the widespread adoption of e-readers, the rapidly increasing popularity of e...

John Locke barely blogs. Michael Wallace doesn't have much of an internet presence. David Dalglish blogs on rare occasions, and I've never seen him on Twitter. I could give 20 more examples, but these authors have no problem selling huge amounts of books without doing all the things that some people...

I've tried a little bit of everything at this point. After a couple of months, I looked at promotional activies closely to see which were time sinks, which weren't fun, and which weren't working. Stuff I don't do as much anymore: * Submit to book review blogs (I still send new releases to reviewers ...

Jonathan Franzen shared his disdain for e-books recently. Here's my response.

Franzen, E-books & Bathtubs

http://indiereader.com/2012/02/franzen- ... -bathtubs/

January was a good month - 2nd best so far. I sold around 300 books, and made around $800. UK sales are growing faster than anything else, which is interesting, because I've never done anything to push my books there. Which gets me thinking... why promote at all! I've sold well over 2,000 books now,...

The average self-publisher sells 100 books. Or is it 200? And is that in a year? Or is it over the lifetime of the book? The problem is, we have no idea at all, no way of measuring how we are doing. Steven Lewis has put together a comprehensive survey of self-publishers and I have a guest post from ...

And now for something completely different. Today, I interview a friend of mine - Niklas Leavy - a Swedish author who has just self-published his first book. What makes this so different? Well, for starters, he's a straight guy writing gay romance. A Straight Writer of Gay Romance? Interview With Sw...

My regular(ish) column for IndieReader is out. Today I express (extreme) skepticism about enhanced e-books - for adult fiction - and wonder where the push is coming from. Could it be that large publishers attempting to make digital publishing expensive (and killing off a horde of competitors in one ...

I'm a slow writer. One of my big goals this year is to change that. I think I can speed up (a lot) without quality suffering and I've been thinking about ways to change my approach. On Saturday, I stumbled across a February writing challenge: 60,000 words in 29 days. To make it even more challenging...

Today, I wrap up Self-Editing week with the second part of a post from author and editor (and IWUer) Karin Cox on the most common mistakes she sees from writers including shoddy dialogue, talking heads, clumsy exposition, and word mix-up flubs. This is good stuff, peeps! Self-Editing: Back to Basics...

As part of this week's focus on self-editing, I have a guest post from IWU's very own Karin Cox - an author and editor with considerable experience. Karin is also my editor. I have first-hand experience of her impressive pleonasm-hunting skills as well as her uncanny ability to turn my sopa de letra...

As some of you may know, indie author LC Evans lost her battle with cancer earlier this month. Simon Royle (of IndieView) is organizing a tribute today, part of which involves a big giveaway. In short: if you buy any book by LC Evans today, you get to choose another for free out of 40 different titl...

This week I'm running a series of guest posts from experienced editors who are also accomplished authors. Today, I have bestselling UK author Harry Bingham who also runs The Writers' Workshop - a UK-based editorial service. Harry points out that if writers learn how to self-edit effectively, they ca...

To enroll or not to enroll, that is the question on a lot of writers’ minds. I have had several posts on KDP Select, because it’s a complex issue, without one “right” answer that will fit all self-publishers. To wrap up my mini-series, I have a guest post from bestselling author Sarah Woodbury, who ...

Time for a confession: my new release isn't selling as well as I hoped. Today I address a common question - Why is my book not selling? - and use my own book as a case study. I also share some marketing tricks that turned the tide for me yesterday, resulting in the #1 Free Short Story on Amazon and ...