Project Gutenberg for Indies

Project Gutenberg SPPYou may have heard of Project Gutenberg, the effort by the World Public Library Association to provide public-domain books online for free. What you may not know is that Project Gutenberg has a separate program for indie publishing.

It’s called the Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press. Since its inception in July 2012, the project has grown to include some 3,500 titles, all available for free viewing on their site. As a site member (which supposedly costs $8.95 a year, but I joined without hitting a paywall, so I’m not sure about that – maybe they’ll email me an invoice), you can save a title to your bookshelf or a reading list, save a copy to Google Drive or Dropbox, or email the file to yourself for reading offline. Continue reading “Project Gutenberg for Indies”

Tuesday Tutorial: That “Thing” – LibraryThing

What IS LibraryThing? From their website: LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.

So, yes, it’s like a Goodreads or a Shelfari, and the now-defunct BookArmy. You can do author give-aways, or chats, and more.

Welcome to LibraryThing!
Welcome to LibraryThing! (Figure 1.)

The first thing you need to do is sign up for a free account and then become a LibraryThing author. Currently there are just over 8400 authors on LibraryThing making it a worthwhile investment in your time – consider how many authors are on Amazon.com! Information about becoming a LibraryThing author can be found here. Once you’ve gotten your account established, sign in. From your home page, click on Profile in the bar of tabs across the top (Figure 1.). Continue reading “Tuesday Tutorial: That “Thing” – LibraryThing”