Sometimes when you’re cruising the intertubes, something jumps out at you that makes you want to spit out your coffee. For me, it was a gem of advice in a Q&A on Quora.
The query, edited for length, was: “What do traditional publishers provide that self-publishing doesn’t?” The question drew the typical answers: a cover from a professional cover designer (which indies can also buy), great editing (ditto), marketing assistance (a little harder, but doable – and midlist authors at traditional houses often have to find help, too), and placement of your book at brick-and-mortar stores (okay, I’ll give them that one – although it’s not impossible for indies).
But it was this throwaway line at the end of one comment that caused my spit-take: “Don’t forget to do a POD print edition, even if its layout is pure template-driven and it’s not up to pro standards in production values. Ebooks with print editions sell better than ebooks without.”
There’s so much here to unpack. Continue reading “Must You Publish a Print Book?”
For the past few months I’ve been preparing for a couple of workshops I’m going to be giving on self-publishing. There’s a continuing education program that’s just starting in my little town, so I figured this was a great time to do one workshop on self-pubbing paperbacks and one on eBooks. Last fall, a few other local authors and I held a panel discussion on the various ways to self-publish, and we had a great turnout, so my more in-depth workshops seemed like a natural progression.
I’ve written a couple of articles for a local newspaper over the past few months. They have a large circulation, and they’re a cutting-edge newspaper, so it’s been very cool to see my name on their site. After attending a self-publishing fair recently I submitted an article to them. They passed, and so did one of their competitors. It might be the quality of the content or it might be the content itself. I’ll let you be the judge. Indies Unlimited stepped up and published it and I’m very thankful to them. Here it is in its entirety.