Our client was nervous. With a big book launch event coming up, she was stuck in limbo on the self-publishing platform, waiting for “account approval.” Until then, she was unable to set up her book and order copies of it. After a week of waiting, and with negligible customer support available, “nervous” would soon turn […]
Is the Traditional or Self-Publishing Pa...
One of the first questions I ask potential book clients is which publishing path they want to take: traditional publishing or self-publishing? Many people have no idea which is the better fit for their project—and some aren’t even clear what the difference is. So today’s article is a nice long explainer. Traditional publishing When we […]
Two Easy, Free Book Marketing Tools
This month I have two cool book marketing tools I want to share. They are easy to use and—bonus—free! To be honest, marketing is not usually my favorite thing, but these make it practically enjoyable. Fun even… (Thanks to Tina Larsson of The Folson Group for letting me show off these tools with her newly […]
Three Smart Strategies for Your Nonficti...
Three Smart Strategies for Your Nonfiction Book Series Writing a book is like running a marathon. Some of us finish the first one and immediately want to run another to clock a better time. Then there are those of us who say, “Checked THAT off my bucket list—never again!” And then there are the folks […]
Summary of Recent POD Publishing Platfor...
There have been some recent changes with the two major print-on-demand (POD) platforms, KDP and IngramSpark, and I’ve been updating my articles related to them. Here I give a summary of changes and then links to the articles. Publishing platform changes to be aware of Here are some of the major changes you might want […]
New Author, 700-page Book: How to Set th...
The logistics of self-publishing can be overwhelming at first, and I get questions regularly via email. Here’s a recent one about a challenging book price: My self-published print book is very big at 700+ pages. On KDP I was able to set my price at $20 and make a small royalty. On IngramSpark I have […]
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 […]
3 Ways to Create Bulk Book Sales
I frequently counsel clients not to worry excessively about book sales. For coaches, consultants, and speakers, the ROI on a nonfiction book often comes from gaining additional clients and/or raising professional fees more than it does from individual book sales. This is especially true if they have not yet achieved a broad base of potential […]