This past month I’ve been thinking big and buying up online platforms related to publishing and book design. My little blog gets some traffic, and my book cover design business is doing fine – I just want to be a bigger player. A couple weeks ago I found a little blog network for indie authors
For years I’ve been dancing around the idea of offering author websites. I’m a WordPress pro PLUS a graphic designer, so I’ve got the skills – and WordPress author websites are in huge demand and average around $1000 to build. Why I don’t do it? I don’t want to become the author’s life-long tech person...
A lot of indie publishing gurus talk about being an Authorpreneur or Entreprenauthor – basically referring to the importance of treating your writing and publishing as a business. But something real entrepreneurs are very familiar with is the guy going through the motions of business without actually doing anything. Trying to act like a...
I’ve been sitting on this post awhile. It’s opinionated. I’m rankled. Which means my judgment may be clouded, and I don’t want to pass my cloudy judgment on to you. On the other hand, I’m getting pretty damn good at helping authors publish books and just about every aspect of self-publishing. I can take a
I’ve just started watching “Saving Mr. Banks” – the story of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) acquired the book rights of Mary Poppins from the author P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson). At the beginning of the story, P. L. Travers is a control freak, absolutely paranoid that her creation will be modified, changed, ruined. Disney...
Something interesting I thought I would bring up, because I encounter it often in my work with indie and self-publishing authors. If you do a search for “best cover designs”, you’ll routinely see covers that designers love – like on this page. And they are very clever, very clean and simple, usually “flat” or...
I’m writing a book on book marketing. It’s not exactly revolutionary, but after reading everything else available, I’ve realized a lot of advice for indie authors is outdated, disorganized or just plain wrong. Which is why most indie authors are terrible at promoting their own books. Since I’ve worked with hundreds of...
I have a suspicion, or maybe more like a prejudice, that all the best writers and artists are introverts. We are proud and independent, we like to spend time on our own with our own ideas, we excel at keeping ourselves entertained with the creative production of our own worlds. I distrust extroverted writers and
I’ve been designing covers for a few years, and I often have to confront cover design myths perpetuated by indie-publishing gurus and thought leaders. There’s a lot of advice out there for indie authors, and some of it is contradictory, which has the unfortunate effect of allowing indie authors to accept the advice they like
Most authors don’t know enough about business. While some savvy non-fiction authors succeed through grit, willpower and constant bullhorning, the majority of authors are making a mess of their book marketing and promotion, using decade-old techniques and advice, which will move few books off shelves and even worse, can be detrimental to...
I stayed up late to watch the Alliance of Independent Authors’s Self-Publishing Advice Event with Mark Coker (founder of Smashwords). His advice for ebook publishing success resonated with me, because so little of it was about marketing your book. Indie authors perversely focus on marketing, social media, and “getting the word...
Recently a lot of people have been telling me I’m an excellent entrepreneur. It’s not a compliment. They usually say it when they’re disagreeing with my advice. I work with artists and authors, and I tell them what they need to do to be more successful, to sell more books or paintings, to gain more
