Originally published February 18, 2019; most recently updated November 22, 2021. To keep things simple for first-time authors, I often suggest they stick with Amazon’s ecosystem, using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for both ebooks and print books. However, there is another major player in the print-on-demand (POD) space: IngramSpark (IS), which is the POD service from […]
Position Your Book for Top Billing on th...
This two-part series looks at how to position your book for top billing online. In Part 1, we looked at front-of-house elements that make your book appealing to your audience: cover design, title, description. In Part 2, we cover the behind-the-scenes elements that make your book findable: metadata. You’re at a Broadway show. In the […]
The Amazon Ecosystem for Authors: A Fiel...
Originally published August 16, 2018; most recently updated December 16, 2022. With an estimated half of the US print book market and three-quarters of the ebook market, Amazon is the behemoth in the indie book space. There are other self-publishing companies of course, but I so frequently get questions about Amazon that I thought it […]
Trouble Getting That First Draft on the ...
First published February 6, 2018; last updated January 17, 2023. When new acquaintances learn that I help business professionals write books, they often remark, “I have so many good ideas, but when I sit down to write, they just don’t come out the way I want them to!” After asking a few questions, I often […]
The Automatic Table of Contents: Your Se...
You start with a writing plan—maybe it’s a mind map, maybe a detailed point-by-point outline, maybe just five key points and a few jotted subpoints. It’s your choice, depending on whether you’re a pantser or a plotter, whether you’re doing self-contained or emergent writing. Now you start writing. As the pages grow (because you are super-committed […]
Considering Scrivener? Here’s My (Cautio
Originally published November 20, 2017; most recent update January 17, 2023. If you’re working on a book, at some point you will curse the clunkiness of Word (too many clicks!) or the inadequacy of Google Docs (not enough functionality!). As your manuscript grows and morphs into sections and chapters, you will think, “There’s got to […]
Three Great Things about Print-on-Demand...
Originally published May 6, 2016; updated March 1, 2022. Print-on-demand (POD) technology is one of the wonders of the modern world (along with crunchy Cheetos and Netflix). Rather than having to print thousands of copies of a book to achieve any efficiency of scale, POD allows authors and publishers to use digital technology to print […]