self-publishing

Self-publishing, the Slush Pile, and Print Books

by Sabrina Self-Publishing

Self-publishing may be the new slush pile. In the past, the slush pile has been the pile of unsolicited manuscripts sent by aspiring authors in hopes of being picked up by a publisher. Now, some publishers are looking to pick up books that have already proven to be successful. They offer authors bigger advances and [...]

Marketing Indie Books

by Sabrina Marketing

Marketing can be a tricky aspect of self-publishing. On the one hand, there’s really no limit to the amount of money you can spend doing it, but there are a lot of ways to be ineffective. Below are a few guidelines I’ve learned from experience and heard about from other writers on creating effective marketing [...]

6 Tips to Successfully Crowdfund a Project

by Sabrina Funding

Crowdfunding is hard. To do it successfully, and to be like the high profile projects on Kickstarter, Indie Go Go and other platforms and raise thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars means treating the crowdfunding process like a full-time job. Here are some tips I’ve learned the last couple years, both from experimenting with crowdfunding [...]

What Self-Publishing and Internet Marketing Have in Common

by Sabrina Information

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For those of you who don’t know, ClickBank is an affiliate marketing website. People can sign up to either sell their information products, or to promote products and receive a cut of the sale. Recently I was looking through ClickBank’s site, and I stumbled across their tips for Internet marketers. Many of their tips can also be [...]

What Do Authors Want?

by Sabrina Future

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Digital Book World hosted a webinar a while back, called “What Authors Want.” The webinar was meant to promote DBW’s survey of 5,000 authors. The survey was submitted to the Writer’s Digest community (whose writers tend to be female and over 35, and write fiction), as well as SFWA (mostly male fiction writers), Romance Writers of America (mostly female writers), and [...]

Book Discoveries and Recommendations

by Sabrina Information

Thumbnail image for Book Discoveries and Recommendations

For self-publishers, after writing a book, the next biggest step is making people aware that it exists and is worth reading. But in such a saturated market, it can be hard to get your book discovered. Here are three book recommendation tools. Word of mouth is still the most effective way to make a book [...]

More Resources for Digital Publishing

by Sabrina Information

I’ve extended my blog to include a large, hopefully helpful, list of resources that cover all aspects of digital publishing: agents, analytics, apps, associations, blogging, coding, contests/awards, design, distribution, ebooks, editing, entrepreneurial, funding, internships, jobs, legal, magazines, marketing, metadata, news, reading, reviews, self-publishing, startups, trends, video, webinars, and writing. (If I’ve missed anything, please let me [...]

Treasures of The Morgan Library & Museum

by Sabrina Publishing

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Last weekend, I finally visited The Morgan Library & Museum, which houses J.P. Morgan’s collection of art and books. The special exhibit currently on display celebrates the 100th anniversary of Du côté de chez Swann by Marcel Proust. Interestingly, Proust self-published his book in 1913 (with the help of a backer).

Polishing a Self-Published Book

by Sabrina Design

I read a couple really helpful articles on Digital Book World that can help indie authors. The first gives some tips on how to design a cover optimized for Amazon, and all the other retailers where readers only see a thumbnail image. The second article gives a list of front matter and other tips on [...]

Promoting a Self-Published Novel

by Sabrina Self-Publishing

I recently decided to be more active on Quora, and today I stumbled across a really great question by a self-published author. The question was, “What are some ways I can promote my self-published novel?” There were some really great responses. One answerer recommended YouTube book trailers, Facebook pages, and Twitter handles. The Facebook page [...]

Smashwords: An upgrade to help indie authors sell better ebooks

by Sabrina EBook Conversion

On the last day of 2012, Smashwords made an exciting announcement: authors can now directly upload epubs to the site. This might not sound like a big deal, but it kind of is. According to the Smashwords blog, as of December 31, 2012, Smashwords became “the world’s largest distributor of ebooks from self-published authors and [...]

Featured: Write or Read

by Sabrina Information

My startup Write or Read, which will help self-publishers become more successful by giving them insights into who reads their books and why they like them, is featured on FounderDating! Click here to read it. Also we’re launching the alpha soon, so stay tuned for updates!

An Interview With Kate Policani

by Sabrina Marketing

A while back, I had a great opportunity to interview Kate Policani, author of Don’t Judge a Book By Its Magic. She shared some valuable experiences and gave advice on how to be successful at self-publishing.

Trends in Publishing (Part 3)

by Sabrina EBooks

Book publishing trends 3

Part 3 of 3 of my Trends in Publishing post, which covers trends in metadata and collecting publishing data. From the original post: “While researching my thesis project for my M.S. in publishing at NYU, I came across several interesting trends that I think will affect publishing. In fact, I’ve already seen some of these [...]

Trends in Publishing (Part 2)

by Sabrina EBooks

Book publishing trends 2

Part 2 of 3 of my Trends in Publishing post, which covers subscription websites and gamification trends. From the original post: “While researching my thesis project for my M.S. in publishing at NYU, I came across several interesting trends that I think will affect publishing. In fact, I’ve already seen some of these at work [...]

Trends in Publishing

by Sabrina EBooks

Book publishing trends

While researching my thesis project for my M.S. in publishing at NYU, I came across several interesting trends that I think will affect publishing. In fact, I’ve already seen some of these at work in the three months since I wrote the report, and I plan on using this information for my own startup, Write [...]

Other Self-Publishing Tips

by Sabrina Editing

Self-publishing can be a challenge. To do it successfully, you basically run the business of you. Below are some additional things, aside from the writing, editing, marketing, and conversion, to keep in mind.

New Vanity Publishing Services

by Sabrina Information

There’s a new demand for self-publishing services, particularly for e-books. Vanity publishing used to have a stigma, but that is slowly going away as new high-end services pop up. Below are four such services self-published writers can use. If you know of any more, please list them in the comments! Automated Ebooks BookTango Writers & [...]

Getting Funding for Self-Publishing

by Sabrina Funding

Self-publishing can get expensive (especially if you do it right). Costs add up: editing, copy-editing, marketing, packaging, designing, etc. But with the rise of crowd-funding, it’s possible to raise enough money to cover all your costs.

Finding Your Readers

by Sabrina Information

I recently received an email about the next steps after self-publishing a book. Unfortunately I average about 200 emails a day so I can’t remember who sent it, but it contained some interesting tidbits. Self-publishing is great, but it’s also important to make sure you reach your readers.

Self-publishing: Marketing and Publicity

by Sabrina Information

marketing landscape

Image from Business Insider Marketing can seem like a huge task. However, it’s also a very necessary part of self-publishing.

Marketing Tips for Self-published Authors

by Sabrina Information

As a publisher, I send our authors a checklist of things they can do to help promote their book. I think it’s important to get our authors as involved as possible, partly because the more people helping out, the more people will be reached, and the more books we can potentially sell. Many of our [...]

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