Self-Publishing Archives | Page 4 of 10 | Jennifer Lancaster

January 13, 2021

A Blurb Book Publishing Review

I’ve talked about IngramSpark, Amazon and Reedsy, but never reviewed Blurb. With image-rich books as a point of difference, Blurb book publishing has two parts: one for the hobbyist putting their photos into a book for the family treasure chest, and the other for offering colour trade books. This post contains affiliate links and if you click on them, we may get a commission from the company out of what you paid. To be fair, the hardback, gloss paper photo book option is also useful for designers and photographers to showcase their work. Make sure you use the “au” site if Australian, e.g. au.blurb.com. Once registered and logged in, you can choose ‘personal’ or ‘business’ and fill out your author details. Looks to me like Product Reviews aren’t what they should be, with a 2.8* out of 5 on average.…

December 23, 2020

Book Writing, Self-Publishing

How to Motivate Yourself to Write (and Finish) a Book

Towards the start of the new year, my thoughts turn to how writers can motivate themselves to write and finish a book. It pains me to think of all those amazing books going unpublished or not promoted, just because of a lack of confidence, so let’s find out some motivation tips. When I’m trying to finish my own books and in need of motivation, I think about other people’s problems. I believe the power of writing is not in the medium – as readers enjoy books, ebooks or courses – it’s in the targeted solution to very real problems today. Young people growing up now need to see and hear your message, if that message is of a life-guiding nature, because very few have yet to recognise the most important priorities in life, e.g.: Health Family and friends The doing…

December 22, 2020

Book Design, Self-Publishing

All About Reedsy

Online Book Editor to Save on Typesetting One of the major costs of book production is typesetting and design. The art of book typesetting is a lofty one, with things like chapter rules, widow/orphan rules, and page bottom alignment. Reedsy Book Editor is an app to do your own layout and make the PDF artwork–for free! Let’s say we don’t mind too much about rules, we just want to get our book formatted with simplicity. Then online tool ‘Reedsy Book Editor’ is your tool. I tried it out, and some of the issues were: Inability to expand the type size, as it is set in the template style Difficulty aligning the table of contents (heading 2’s only would not auto-align) Not yet sure if PDF is compatible with IngramSpark, but Reedsy claims that it is. Background of Reedsy Reedsy was established…

May 18, 2023

Book Writing, Self-Publishing

What’s an Aussie Alternative to Self-Publishing School?

Authors often look online for book publishing training, and some Australians find Self-Publishing School, by Chandler Bolt. He is American. Some novice authors enrol in these kinds of courses with the hope that they will provide book editing or publishing services but always remember that author training schools are not services. (SPS has changed and now includes this, hence the price increase). Let’s compare Self-Publishing School to Book Creation Success course at Business Author Academy, Australia. It is a sequential type of course, delivered one part at a time. With Book Creation, you can also get sequential lessons and videos, with no waiting. It is adjusted as feedback comes in and is regularly updated. There is a commitment contract to yourself and to the school. This is a good idea and we might implement this later. There are some common…

January 28, 2023

Self-Publishing

Dodge the Vanity Press and Do Your Own Publishing

Self-publisher support companies — like Balboa Press and Austin Macauley — are everywhere. On Amazon I found someone else passionate about saving authors from the clutches of uncaring vanity presses, or as they call themselves, hybrid publishers. Yay! Michael N Marcus seems to have dedicated a good portion of his life to warning authors and informing them on how to self-publish independently. Such idiotic titles as ‘Can I really publish a decent book with Microsoft Word? Yes!’ and ‘How to Not Get Screwed by a Self-Publishing Company’ first made me wonder at the quality of advice. However, on his How to Not Get Screwed Amazon blurb, Michael makes a great point: Self-publishing companies enable anyone who can type to quickly become a “published author” and compete for the attention of the reading public. There is no longer a need to go…

October 15, 2020

Book Writing, Self-Publishing

How to Publish a Book in Australia

Even though this is meant to be light relief, hopefully you’ll also learn a lot about how to publish a book in Australia, without losing your shirt. First step, ignore all ads that start following you around the internet. Those are likely to be vanity press/support companies who want your dollars. Next, write a list of simple actions you will take to get this book published. Here’s a fun look at the usual book publishing steps for Australians. 1. Decide on your publish path. Choose whether you want to pitch for your life to Literary Agents (or do Friday Pitches by email to big publishers)… or Self-Publish and pay for everything. It’s tougher to get wide bookstore distribution as your own publisher. 2. Determine your costs, if going indie. Expect to pay around $3,000 to $8,000 for two rounds of…