To me, this is whole new approach to getting your book reviewed on Amazon. Evidently there are superstar Amazon reviewers, and some of them don’t mind being contacted and asked to review your book. Hall of Fame Amazon Reviewer Dr. Bojan Tunguz tells you all about it: As a top 50 Amazon reviewer (currently #17) and a Hall of Fame … Read More
Joel Friedlander Launches New MS Word Templates for Self-Publishers
Pro designer Joel Friedlander has just launched new templates for formatting self-published books using MS Word: Well, the day is finally here. After two years planning and five months of development, I’m please to announce the grand opening of BookDesignTemplates.com. As I’ve been saying all week, this is the result of accepting the reality that many authors choose to create … Read More
Twitter Etiquette
Jeff Bullas offers some excellent rules of Tweeting. I found the following two particularly useful: Rule #2 Please, please don’t use more than 3 hashtags in a tweet. If you do use three hashtags, do it sparingly. It’s just annoying. Rule #3 This rule is going to go against what most “tweeps” believe! Don’t strive for followers. Strive for engagement. … Read More
Inkling Habitat Enables Teams to Collaborate on Rich-Media Non-fiction eBooks
If you are involved in non-fiction books, Inkling Habitat is a major innovation that can change the way you work. It enables teams to collaborate to produce eBooks that contain text, video, images, etc. When the book is complete, it can be output to epub and epub3 for use on all major e-reading platforms (Kindle, iPad, etc.) Pages resize the … Read More
Hilarious Reasons Publishers Rejected Harry Potter and Other Classic Best-Sellers
via Cracked.com. And did you know this? Author J.K. Rowling might have approximately all of the money now, but things didn’t start out that way. Once upon a time, Rowling was living off of government assistance, retyping complete copies of the manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to send out to publishers because she was too broke to … Read More
Nolan Bushnell, Founder of Atari, Chooses to Self-Publish His New Book on Steve Jobs
via Nolan Bushnell could easily have gone with a Big 6 publisher, but he preferred to self-publish. Here’s why: But when he tried to find an outlet for the book, How to Find the Next Steve Jobs, Bushnell got frustrated with the traditional publishing houses. It would take up to four years to edit it and publish it, they said. … Read More
Why Amazon’s Patent to Sell Used eBooks May be Totally Cool
What would happen to writers if their books are sold without any potential for them to make a living from it? I was originally very concerned when I heard reports stating that Amazon had a new plan to enable people to sell their “used” ebooks. The reports make no mention of the original author being involved in the transaction. It’s hard … Read More
Apple Launches Special Section for Self-Published iBooks
Via The Verge. One major benefit of ebooks doesn’t necessarily apply directly to readers — digital reading has made it a good deal simpler for aspiring authors to self-publish books and sell them through huge storefronts like Amazon’s Kindle Store or Apple’s iBookstore. Now, Apple is making an effort to do more promotion for those indie authors by means of … Read More
Want to Sell Your Own e-Books Directly From Your Own Site? Try Sellfy
It’s backed by a Skype co-founder:. To date, CEO and co-founder Maris Dagis tells me that Sellfy is seeing the most traction in the eBooks segment with many authors preferring to sell via Sellfy rather than Amazon because of much lower transaction fees — Sellfy takes a highly competitive cut of just 5% of each transaction, compared to Amazon’s Kindle … Read More
Amazon to Launch Its Own Currency?
Are we going to start buying e-books with Amazon e-bucks? Amazon is launching its own private currency:. Amazon has just announced a new virtual currency for Kindle Fire owners to use on in-app purchases, app purchases, etc. in the Amazon Appstore. The service will launch in May, at which point Amazon will be giving away tens of millions of dollars worth … Read More