indie
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Should You Put Your Book Up for Preorder? It Depends.
What is a preorder? A pre-order is when you make a book available for purchase before its official release date—typically a week to a year in advance. Traditionally, publishers have books available for preorder as early as six months to a year in advance. They do it because strong pre-sales tell retailers the book will… Continue reading
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Self-Publishing: Understanding Copyright and Distribution
Copyright First-time self-publishers often worry about copyright or that someone will steal their idea. This is typically the first sign of a novice self-publisher. However, new and established authors might worry about someone stealing their books now that AI is here. First, you should know that you own the copyright to your book at the… Continue reading
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Dear Self-Published Author, You Have Options!
While Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing is excellent, there are other options for print-on-demand publishing that self-published authors can explore. Draft2Digital Draft2Digital is a gem. D2D is an aggregator that distributes your books to major retailers online, from Barnes and Noble to Apple iBooks to Baker & Taylor. They have merged with Smashwords and now also… Continue reading
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Dear Self-Publishers, Don’t Limit Your Potential
The Martian started as a self-published book. Its author, Andy Weir, said he didn’t think the book had mainstream appeal and was surprised anyone was interested. It began as a series on Weir’s website, and when readers complained it was hard to read the stories sitting at their computer, Weir listened to his audience and… Continue reading
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Why You Shouldn’t Worry about Family Not Supporting Your Books
When the Power series was first hot, my cousin said to me: “You should write books like on Power! The way we grew up, I know you can put some stuff together.” That bothered me for two reasons: Self-Publishing is a lot of work, and not feeling supported by our family and friends can be… Continue reading
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Preparing Your Self-Published Book for Bookstores (Part 1)
Contrary to popular belief, self-published books can get into brick-and-mortar bookstores. Ask me how I know… Here Are Three Easy Ways to Prepare Your Self-Published / Indie Book for a Store: 1. Have a professionally designed cover with your name and title on the spine. Usually, I will tell you to ensure it’s edited first (do that,… Continue reading
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Do More with Your Self-Published Book
High achieving authors (Indie, Trad, or otherwise) tend to fall into a few categories: Today, I want to focus on that last one, although all these are important. No matter the route, book publishing is hard work, and most of the work happens after the book is written and published. Most of us find ourselves… Continue reading
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