Like many self publishing authors, when I was getting my first book ready to birth into the world, I realized that I had no platform, no support and very little marketing ability. How could I get people to find my book, like it and buy it? What tools could I use to self-publish – should
I like Jeff Goins. Although he only came into my radar recently and I don’t know much about him, he makes me feel like I’m taking a calm stroll through the woods, next to a stream. I can hear acoustic guitar playing in the background. Unlike bloggers who stand out for being edgy, tough, or
I just got my first “Cease and Desist” order, in an email claiming to be from a lawyer defending the rights of Angry Birds. It happened just after I sent the following sketch to some painting companies in Dafen China, in a project aiming to explore whether fine art can be outsourced. Obviously, somebody turned
Quick Answer Chris Guillebeau’s $100 Startup is one of the best books on building a micro-business with minimal capital — here’s what still holds up. I’m thrilled to see a new book out by Chris Guillebeau called “The $100 Dollar Startup.” I’ve followed Chris with a lot of interest, being a fellow...
Book sales may seem like a mysterious void of uncertainty, but the truth is most authors fail for very predictable reasons. Luckily, if you’re doing these things wrong, they’re (mostly) easy to fix. 1) You have no reviews. Are you driving people to buy from an amazon page with no reviews on it? Good luck
What if I told you I could help you sell %500 more books in less than a month; that I had personal media ties; that I could get you top exposure everywhere and keep the momentum going to sell thousands of books for years to come? Obviously, such an opportunity wouldn’t come cheap. If I
I just saw an interesting sales letter for a program that generates a cheesy social media chatroom box. The idea is actually pretty awesome, and I’ve seen these around: instead of a big colorful ad that says “LOOK!!! CHEAP!!! AWESOME!!!” the ad seems to “reveal” a private conversation about some secret, insider...
I thought I’d take a break from graphic design and watch a scary movie. Danielle Radcliffe’s “The Woman in Black” (very good, very scary, by the way, had me jumping like a little girl). The first 10 minutes or so was a little rough and obvious – working the background story in deliberately and without
For a long time I’ve known I need to learn how to make and edit ebooks for kindle (.prc/mobi) and B&N (epub), but have been stuck by the steep learning curve. There are lots of different softwares to use, none of them seem to work well together, and converting word files into various ebook formats
Quick Answer Pick a pen name that’s short, memorable, easy to spell, and available as a .com — here’s how. (Updated May 2026.) Updated May 2026. Update: this is an older post that still gets a lot of traffic, so I made a video on some critically important pen name tips that will help you
Millions of people are dusting off manuscripts and cranking out self-published novels for the kindle and ipad market; and some indie authors are making hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are experiencing something of a “gold rush” of indie publishing, and everybody is desperate to sell more books. If you’re familiar with...
Creativindie is a good idea that I plan to explode into an enormous helpful blog for indie authors and writers; hence I’m looking for a wordpress theme that will make it user-friendly and have that “professional blogger” look that earns nearly instant credibility. If you know what I’m talking about – the clean...
