IndieJourney

I naively chose CreateSpace over Lulu because I blithely (and probably wrongly) assumed that most of my sales would be from Amazon anyhow.  Read On »

Self-publishing is not for the timid.  Read On »

Has it been easy to do all the heavy lifting? No, but these days the traditional publishing world also demands significant author participation. Self-publishing was not my first chose but it turned out to be the right one.  Read On »

Thanks to word of mouth and a loyal fan club, though, within five months I had paid off all the costs incurred from self-publishing, and orders keep coming in.  Read On »

Publishing, marketing and distribution are a full time job. Would I go through conventional publishing channels given the chance? Absolutely!  Read On »

Set high standards. It is important to conform to publishing standards by making your independently published books indistinguishable from those published traditionally-including impeccable editing (both text and context), professional layout, and cover design.

Trust your instincts. I did not love the cover
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iUniverse did a spectacular job at packaging and printing Midnight in Rome; the quality of the book could not have been any better coming from a traditional publishing house. But the investment of time and money after the publishing process was simply too great a burden to shoulder individually.  Read On »

Let’s take the last question first: Would I prefer to have a real publisher instead of taking on the challenge myself? Frankly, my answer is much different today than it was only a few years ago, and the answer is: No.  Read On »

As I’ve further investigated the issue of POD/self-publishing versus traditional publishing, I’ve come to wonder why more authors aren’t turning to the former.  Read On »

I signed my first contract with a publisher. I gave up the right to sell my self-published version (which hurt when I received an order for a hundred copies from a hospital) and spent an entire summer rewriting the manuscript according to the editor’s specifications. But moments before the book went to press, the publisher downsized. My editor was let go…and so was my book.  Read On »