4 Lessons for Independent Authors: A Recap of BookExpo America 2013

4 Lessons for Independent Authors: A Recap of BookExpo America 2013

by on June 4, 2013 in eBook Distribution, Self Publishing

Lessons from BookExpo America 2013

A handful of us from the BookBaby team spent last week in NYC for BookExpo America, uPublishU, and the International Digital Publishing Forum. As always, there was a lot of industry talk about “disruption” and “upheaval” — but the mood just keeps getting cheerier for small publishers and independent authors.

Here are four of the lessons we learned — or beliefs we reaffirmed — by talking with authors, publishers, and book retailers:

1. Don’t wait for an agent, acquisitions editor, or publisher

The publishing industry has had the benefit of watching and learning from the music industry’s previous decade of missteps. While they certainly have their clumsy moments when it comes to technology, rights management, and marketing, they really have shown a willingness — and an ability — to adapt.

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Web Tips for Authors: The May Roundup

Web Tips for Authors: The May Roundup

by on June 3, 2013 in Self Publishing

Web Tips for WritersBest-practices to smarten-up your online book marketing

Have you checked out The HostBaby Blog lately?

Every week, we’re posting new web and social media tips for authors, musicians, and artists. You’ll learn how to grow your email list, how to get readers to engage with your online content, how to draft newsletters that convert to sales, how to optimize your site for search, and more.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping tabs on the HostBaby Blog…

Here’s a recap of May’s HostBaby Blog articles:

1. Five Ways to Stay Motivated in Your Creative Career

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Practicing Flash Fiction: the Art of Compression and Surprise

Practicing Flash Fiction: the Art of Compression and Surprise

by on May 30, 2013 in Writing Tips

100 Word Stories: flash fiction and prose poemsYesterday I came across 100 Word Story, a website that publishes… 100-word stories!

Flash fiction. Short, short stories. Prose poems. Whatever you call it, the practice of writing within such a limitation is instructive for any author.

Here’s what 100 Word Story says about the form :

The whole is a part and the part is a whole. The 100-word format forces the writer to question each word, to reckon with Flaubert’s mot juste in a way that even most flash fiction doesn’t. At the same time the brevity of the form allows the writer “to keep a story free from explanation,” as Walter Benjamin wrote.

For life doesn’t lend itself so easily to our elucidations. “Incoherence is preferable to a distorting order,” said Roland Barthes.

None of us will ever know the whole story in other words.

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Take a FREE College Course in Contemporary American Poetry (with 30k other students)

Take a FREE College Course in Contemporary American Poetry (with 30k other students)

by on May 30, 2013 in Writing Tips

ModPo: Contemporary American PoetrySome of America’s best schools (Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc.) now offer FREE online classes called MOOCs, or “massive open online courses.”

If you’ve ever scratched your head while reading Gertrude Stein or William Carlos Williams, here’s a MOOC that might interest you: Al Filreis, of the University of Pennsylvania, teaches a class called ModPo — or “Modern & Contemporary American Poetry.”

Last semester, over 36,000 students were enrolled, including Dick Durbin (Senate Majority Whip).

[Imagining Dick Durbin reading poems by Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery brings a smile to my face.]

Here’s the description of the course from UPenn’s website:

ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, from Dickinson and Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.”

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Come Visit BookBaby at BEA

Come Visit BookBaby at BEA

by on May 29, 2013 in BookBaby News, Industry News

BookBaby at BookExpo AmericaBookExpo America, “the #1 event in North American publishing,” officially starts today at the Javits Center in NYC.

Want to discover the best new books, meet your favorite authors, learn more about current book industry trends, and network with other writers? BEA offers you plenty of opportunities to do all of that — and much more.

The event runs from Wednesday, May 29th through Saturday, June 1st.

If you’re attending, come by the BookBaby booth (DZ2256) and say hi. 

For more information, check out the BEA website.

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How to Pre-Test Your Book Before You Write or Print a Word

How to Pre-Test Your Book Before You Write or Print a Word

by on May 28, 2013 in eBook Distribution, Self Publishing

Risk-Free Niche Publishing Strategy[Editor's note: Gordon Burgett has had considerable success in the world of niche publishing, using the pre-testing strategies that are outlined below to publish books he KNOWS will sell.]

Risk-free publishing for a niche audience

Would you research, write, and publish a book that nobody wanted to buy? Why take the chance? Why not test the book before printing it to see if your targeted market likes your title, price, contents, purpose, and credentials?

(Incidentally, you can be the publisher here and hire other authors with exemplary qualifications.)

This method works best if your book is nonfiction, will be published in both bound and ebook versions, and, most important, is tightly niched.

Here are five critical steps to niche publishing success:

1. Find a specific niche group (with an accessible mailing list) that you want to help; then zero-in on a critical need its members…

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This Memorial Day, Share a Book or eBook with Troops Overseas

This Memorial Day, Share a Book or eBook with Troops Overseas

by on May 24, 2013 in eBook Distribution

Operation PaperbackWith Memorial Day just around the corner, the folks at GalleyCat compiled a list of ways you can give a book or eBook to US soldiers serving abroad.

Troops don’t get to bring much with them when they deploy; according to Army Sgt. Andre Corbin,  each soldier has only “1.5 cubic feet of space to pack personal items to last a year.” So not much room for books.

That is where you come in! Organizations like Books for Soldiers, Operation Paperback, and Books for Troops need your help sending books and eBooks to men and women serving overseas.

If you’d like to be involved in those efforts, check out more details HERE.

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How to Build a Stockpile of Good Writing Ideas

How to Build a Stockpile of Good Writing Ideas

by on May 24, 2013 in Writing Tips

How to Build a Stockpile of Good Writing IdeasReturning to old scraps of writing is one of the best ways to cure writer’s block

Not every idea that strikes is going to immediately turn into the beginnings of a novel, story, or poem; sometimes an idea is just a lonely little thing that lives underground for 17 years before… oh wait, that’s the cicada.

But not unlike those weird little bugs, ideas can take a long while to come of age.

You never know when something you thought up months or years ago will fit itself perfectly — almost accidentally — into your latest work-in-progress, or rub against another idea and spark. That’s why it’s important to write everything down: the brilliant lines, the half-baked notions, and that nonsense you scribbled on a sticky-note after a dream.

Gather the seeds. Plant them later.

Scraps of ideas can come from anywhere. The best two lines from a discarded poem. A bit of interesting chatter you overheard in a cafe…

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Order Publishing Credits Today & Save Money on BookBaby’s ePublishing Packages

Order Publishing Credits Today & Save Money on BookBaby’s ePublishing Packages

by on May 22, 2013 in BookBaby News, eBook Distribution

Publishing Credits for BookBaby

Last chance for current Standard and Premium ePublishing prices.

Our Standard and Premium ePublishing packages are changing on June 1st. We’ll be including more in each package, and as a result, the price will go up. So, if you want to take advantage of our current pricing, act now and purchase BookBaby Publishing Credits.

Our current Standard ePublishing package, which includes ePub conversion as well as conversion of up to 10 graphic elements, costs $149. This gives you access to our extensive retail distribution network, which includes Amazon, Apple’s iTunes Bookstore, Barnes & Noble, and more.

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“Never Give Up” — or How One Writer Got Published in Poetry Magazine After 12 Rejections

“Never Give Up” — or How One Writer Got Published in Poetry Magazine After 12 Rejections

by on May 22, 2013 in Writing Tips

Dealing with Rejection as a WriterWhy persistence can pay off in the publishing world

I like Todd Boss‘ writing. He’s a little like Kay Ryan, only male and midwestern. His poems, like Ryan’s, are compact, playful, filled with internal music, and demand as much of themselves as they do of the reader — which I guess is my way of saying they strike me as the best sort of “accessible” poems.

On top of enjoying his poetry, I was also happy to discover that he seems like a nice guy. I met him briefly last year at the Printer’s Row LitFest in Chicago just before he gave a reading — and he even took a request. Anyway, I digress…

Dealing with rejection as a writer

A few months later, Todd posted this photograph on his Facebook profile of twelve rejection letters he’d received from Poetry Magazine over the years:

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