I almost, but then didn’t, start writing a novel this November. I’ve got way too much to do. But I did hire two writers to work on my book ideas for me, which is thrilling. And I want to do something fun to participate in the NaNoWrimo movement – which is a huge and supportive community of indie writers. …

Today on Facebook I saw a post about the Awesome Indies website, which just relaunched with a new design. I support indie authors and want them to succeed, and I like the idea of indie authors grouping together and doing cool things. The intention Awesome Indies is noble: lots of people are publishing crappy books. Awesome Indies will sort out …

I’ve done a handful of author websites but don’t do them often (since I prefer book covers). But your author website is a big piece of your sales funnel, so soon I’m going to be doing a case-study where I makeover 5 author’s WordPress websites – which range from ugly to mediocre – to see how much a new website …

Self-publishing is big business. And most self-published books don’t sell – for a variety of reasons, but mainly because: 1. There isn’t any market for them; they were written without considering the genre readership. 2. They are poorly designed. 3. The authors have no platform (blog, traffic, followers, email list, etc). And that’s why authors spend a lot of time …

In my books I urge against marketing your books on Twitter, or paying anybody else to do it for you. I’m annoyed by the hundreds of misguided tweets shouting and bouncing all over my Twitter feed like “Sexy, hot, 5star reviewer says ‘Must Read!!’ On sale now #99 #kindlebooks #amreading #bestseller” And recently I was also pretty critical of book …

A couple weeks ago I saw an article about Peter Mendelsund’s new book on book cover design; and I scoffed. Now I just saw another article on Wired, shared by Tim Ferriss. Peter is obviously doing the rounds (and quite well) to promote his new book. Kudos to him. Here’s the big problem: Peter’s had a luxurious career as a …

Cover design contests and “cover wars” are becoming a staple of indie book promotion and marketing. For awhile I’ve been quietly voicing concern but I thought it about time to take a stronger position. Here’s why: 1. The underlying assumption behind book cover contests and cover wars is that the best designed cover will win. This is rarely true. Instead, it’s a popularity …

Can someone explain Booktrope to me? I don’t get it. It looks like people can volunteer to be part of a creative time to produce the book, then earn a percentage of the sales revenue (and, apparently they only publish quality books that the community has supported, which means a better chance of revenue.) If I design the book cover …

I understand that not everybody wants to spend a lot of money on book cover design. So I design resources to help people make their own professional book cover designs easily, without spending a lot of money. I put a lot of those tools (including free guides, free templates, a list of best fonts per genre) up at www.diybookcovers.com. There’s even …