Self-Publishing Resources

Posted By Sue Collier on January 30, 2012

Here’s some of the latest in industry news and views:

From Media Life Magazine: Behind the surge in holiday tablet sales
For tablets and e-readers, the future is now. After months of buzz in the print industry over the messiah-like potential of these gadgets to revive a flagging industry, consumers went gaga over the devices during the holidays, sparking unprecedented growth in the budding sector. Tablet and e-reader ownership went from 18 percent in mid December to 29 percent in January, meaning nearly a third of the U.S. adult population now owns a digital reading device.

From World Book Night: Sign up by February 1 to be a giver for World Book Night 2012
We need book-loving volunteers to fan out across America on April 23, 2012! Just take 20 free copies of a book to a location in your community, and you just might change someone’s life. Please sign up by Feb. 1.

From PaidContent.org: As Goodreads Ends Sourcing From Amazon, Users Fear Lost Books
Book-centered social networking site Goodreads, which allows users to keep records of the books they read and share the information with others, has long sourced most of its basic book data from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN). Now, saying Amazon’s API terms have become “more and more restrictive,” Goodreads is switching data providers and entering an agreement with book wholesaler Ingram—alarming some users who fear their reading records will be lost.

From Publishers Weekly: Red Wheel/Weiser Enters Self Publishing with Turning Stone Press
Red Wheel/Weiser Conari Press, in collaboration with Hampton Roads and Hierophant Publishing, are entering the self-publishing market for spiritual and self-help authors. The companies have formed Turning Stone Press which will be under the director of Red Wheel /Weiser Conari publisher Jan Johnson.

From Fast Company: Unmasking A Digital Pirate On Amazon
A Kuwaiti national using fake names and selling others’ copyrighted stories in the Kindle Store sheds light on black hat hacker forums–and the theft, taboo sex, and swindles festering in the recesses of Amazon.

From GalleyCat: Should Authors Listen To Readers?
At a panel this morning at the Digital Book World conference in New York, publishing CEOs discussed the future of publishing. Across the panel, the executives agreed that the digital world offers publishers better insights into the customer point of view.

From Exciting Writing: Further on Kindle Select and the Amazon Lending Library
The other day, Inside the Outside author Martin Lastrapes asked me about Kindle Select (or Kindle Direct Publishing Select, or KDP Select, depending on the day and who’s typing, it seems). I’m now several weeks committed to being a Kindle-exclusive author, and I thought I’d share some of my experiences.

From GalleyCat: Facebook Timeline to Be Mandatory Soon
Facebook announced this week that the Facebook Timeline feature will be mandatory for all accounts soon, inspiring excitement, concern and a Jeffrey Koterba cartoon.

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Posted By Sue Collier on January 22, 2012

Here’s some of the latest in industry news and views:

From PaidContent.org: Did Self-Publishing Hype Hit Its Peak In 2011?
The average price of a self-published Kindle top-100 bestseller continues to drop, but a new look at these titles’ performance in 2011 suggests these books are facing increased competition from traditional publishers.

From MediaShift: Self-Published Authors Still Rarely Make the Jump to Publishing Houses
For many self-published authors, a traditional publisher is an elusive dream. It means a team of professionals taking over marketing, advertising, publicity and the mechanics of publishing one’s own book on paper and electronically. It means already forged relationships with booksellers, critics and other writers — and it means more time to write, rather than haggling over the costs of a book cover design or editing.

From Publishing Perspectives: The Value Rubric: Do Book Bloggers Really Matter?
News travels fast in the Land of Book Blogs. That’s by design and according to passion. But what is the value of book blogger news? Who does it ultimately influence? And are the publishers that are still courting book bloggers — hosting them at the BEA, sending them ARCs by the crateful — calling it right? Or was William Morrow on to something when it sent book bloggers its now notorious “your job” e-mail, signaling a possible era of fences?

From Publishers Weekly: Naggar Agency to Offer Reprint Rights Representation
While a number of literary agencies have announced plans to self-publish books by clients, others have taken the tack of offering ancillary publishing (and agenting) services. The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency is taking the latter approach, and has launched a program to represent other agencies looking to republish their clients’ backlist titles.

From Writer Beware Blogs: The Fine Print of iBooks Author
Yesterday, with great fanfare, Apple rolled out two new applications:  iBooks 2, with new features aimed at students; and iBooks Author, which allows individuals to create iPad-optimized ebooks. Both applications are targeted to the textbook market, and Apple is billing iBooks Author as a textbook-creation utility–but essentially it’s a free self-publishing platform that can be used by anyone (as long as they have a Mac).

From Publishers Weekly: Hungry for More About the Hunger Games? A Q&A with Amandla Stenberg (aka Rue)
Unfortunately for fans of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, the trilogy ended in 2010. But fortunately, the franchise gets a new lease on life with the release of the big-screen version of the first novel on March 23. So far nearly six million fans have watched the trailer for the Hunger Games movie on YouTube. Eighth-grader Amandla Stenberg, 13, who portrays Rue in the film, talked with PW reporter Karen Springen (a longtime friend of Amandla’s mother) about reading the books, shooting the post-apocalyptic story, and getting everyone on the set to sign her copy of The Hunger Games.

From The Next Web: Apple facing new accusations in lawsuit over publisher e-book price fixing
A law firm representing e-book purchasers has amended its class-action lawsuit to include fresh allegations of price-fixing and offers evidence from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography to backup claims that Apple and five book publishers conspired to break Amazon’s dominance of the market.

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Posted By Sue Collier on January 20, 2012

My team and I come across so many useful websites, I thought it would handy to put them together in a regular blog series. If you have or know of a website that would be of interest to my blog readers, please post it here.

Enjoy!

Digital media gaining on traditional email—but not always. comScore, which keeps tabs on digital media, released its The comScore 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review earlier this year. As might be expected, younger users 12 to 17 years of age have lost interest in email to the tune of 59 percent. In fact, when all U.S. Internet users under 55 sit down in front of their home computers, they are spending less time on email. What are they doing? Nine out of ten are visiting a social networking site more than four hours every month. To be sure, 1 out of every 8 minutes online is spent on Facebook. You can download the report for free here. Meanwhile, marketing agency Merkle has published “View from the Digital Inbox 2011” (available for download here), which found that consumers spending 20 minutes or more per week with personal e-mail tipped from 71 percent in 2009 to 66 percent in 2010. Mobile technology is picking up the slack. Still, the survey revealed a cross-breeding effect. Almost 87 percent of Internet users checked their personal email daily in 2010, and social media users are more likely to check their email four or more times a day. While interchange with friends and relatives is decreasing, commercial messages are on the rise. Facebook users (73% ) have become fans of at least one company or brand, either through preference (34%) or exclusive offers (24%). Let the social networking begin.

Celebrate International Women’s Day in publishing, all year long. International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8^th every year, but the awareness continues around the globe during all year long. To mark the 100^th anniversary of IWD, GalleyCat culled tweets that rolled in after Jane Litte (cofounder of romance novel review site Dear Author) posted a list of her favorite women in publishing. From “Charlotte Abbott” to “Zoe Winters,” the roster is assembled as a Women in Publishing Twitter Directory for all to explore. Watch for 2012’s IWD events, which will be built around the theme, “Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures.”

Self-Publishers Can Profit from Book Club Sales. Book clubs can be an important sales outlet for the self-publisher. Yes, with the exception of block-buster bestsellers, the truth is that the income from book club sales (though very welcome) may not be as great as one might wish. But the added visibility selection that a book club brings can be even more valuable than its immediate cash value. Since most successfully self-published books are niche market nonfiction, the specialized book clubs are your most likely outlets. Get more insights at Literary Savannah.

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Posted By Sue Collier on January 18, 2012

I’m pleased to welcome author and blogger Ted Lacksonen with a very timely post today. He’s written for us before; don’t miss his previous post on publishing your ebook.

The blackouts today at websites like Wikipedia in protest of proposed anti-piracy legislation reminded me to do something simple that every author/copyright holder should do—search the internet for vendors who are selling pirated versions of your book.

I did a search for my novel The Eagle Has Crashed, and found several suspicious sites. One named Chegg is an internet textbook rental company, with, as I found out through further research, is a legitimate business with a checkered reputation. Strangely, they have Sue Collier listed as the author. She was the editor. Indeed, if you click on her name, she is listed as the author of many books she has edited—but not written! This isn’t evidence of piracy, but it is suspicious.
But my listing at Chegg begs the question: Why is a company specializing in textbooks listing a novel that could not possibly be required reading at any college? (It was released in September.)

So I have sent them an email asking them that question, as well as through what distribution chain they are getting copies of the book. That’s the key—where are they getting the books? If it’s through a legitimate distribution chain, there’s no problem.
But, if I don’t get a response to my email I will try calling, even though they have a reputation for putting people on hold ad infinitum. If that doesn’t work, I’ll see what other legal channels I have to find out if my book is being pirated.

An even more suspicious site where I found my novel was Betweenreads.com.au. I had no idea The Eagle Has Crashed was being distributed internationally! This begged even more questions than the Chegg listing. Is it legal for my book to be distributed in Australia? Am I protected by Australian copyright law, or is there a formal process I need to go through? And since they are selling paperback copies, where are they being printed? I find it difficult to believe that they are originating in Tennessee at Lightning Source; the shipping fees would be astronomical.

So, although I am a newly published author, I still think these basic steps would be wise for any author (assuming you aren’t doing it already).
1) Do an internet search for your title. Go deep into the search, not just three or four pages. Remember that the search engines give customized results, so an overseas pirate may show up higher in the rankings than your search. Bookmark every suspicious site.
2) Do a general search for the company and see what’s out there. Then, search the name with terms like “fraud,” “scam,” “pirating,” and any other term you can think of.
3) If your search of the company didn’t ease your concerns, go back to your bookmarks and contact the company.
4) If they don’t get back to you, follow up.

And if that doesn’t work, what else can you do to ensure the company isn’t selling pirated copies of your book? I’m not sure yet, but if I have any experiences to share I’ll fill everyone in on the details.

Ted Lacksonen is the author of the novel The Eagle Has Crashed. He also maintains The Country Thinker, a blog about the interrelated areas of Politics, Law, and Economics.

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Posted By Sue Collier on January 16, 2012

Your name: Daree Allen, M.S.

Your website/blog: Website is http://DareeAllen.com and Blog is http://DareesInsights.wordpress.com

Your bibliography: What’s Wrong With Me? (book), Articles for Hope for Women, Shuga, and Clutch magazines

1. What is your background? I’ve been a technical writer for 13 years, a personal development blogger for 5 years, and been doing speaking here and there for about 8 years. I’ve done some (mostly free) freelance work for exposure, but decided to buckle down from freelancing and finished my book’s first draft in 2009.




2. What led you to self-publishing? I got tired of a strange catch-22: people everywhere told me how much of a need there is for my book (a teen self-help book), but agents said that publishers couldn’t sell such a book, even from someone with a bigger platform than mine. Yet I saw countless celebrities launch several of these types of books while I was writing mine.




3. What have you found to be the biggest challenge in self-publishing? Funding and hiring. The salability and marketing of your book hinges on being able to recruit and afford contractors and consultants who produce professional, quality work on time, and without too much back-and-forth.




4. What has been the biggest surprise about self-publishing? I didn’t know how much “hate” existed in the publishing world. Some people do not respect it. They underestimate the amount of time that goes into it. A big misconception is that writers self-publish their work because it’s not good enough for anyone else (traditional publishers) to publish it. Many prestigious/scholarly journals and book bloggers will not review SP books.




5. Describe your writing process. For this book, I had most of the content before I started, because the book is based on my personal journals that I’ve kept since childhood. But selecting and organizing the stories into chapters was the hardest part for me. So my process was mostly about revising over and over again. Handing it over to an editor for the first time was terrifying because I didn’t know what she would say, or how well all that revising would work for me.




6. How do you stay disciplined? I don’t. But the way I inadvertently kept myself accountable was to tell anyone and everyone I knew that I was writing a book. So the next time I would see any of my friends, whether it was a week later or a month later, they asked, “So how’s the book coming along?” And that simple, benign question kept the project at the forefront of my mind, even in those months that I felt “stuck.” Another motivator was seeing all the self-help books get released every quarter that were similar to mine (see #2).




7. How are you financing your publishing project? I have been paying-as-I-go, which is something I don’t recommend! (See #9.) I set up pre-orders in September of last year, and am offering the book in ebook and audiobook form. I also started lining up speaking engagements, although most of them are not paid, it gives me another avenue to build my list and sell in the back of the room.




8. What is your favorite self-marketing idea? Network online and offline. Use the same etiquette (if not better) for people you approach online “cold.” I turned a lovely person who was a “friend-in-my-head” and NYT best-selling author into a mentor. She is very helpful and sweet, and over a year after our first contact, we met in person, which was awesome enough (she interviews celebrities but to me SHE is the celebrity), and later she gave me an endorsement on my book. She’s awesome! (My second and third favorite ways to self-market are to speak often and publish guest blog posts/articles frequently.)




9. What advice do you have for burgeoning self-publishers? Get a mentor to help you make sense of things during your first go-round. People will offer to “help” you do different things (for a fee- marketing, publicist, etc.) that you may or may not be able to do on your own. Make sure you have adequate savings and a good team in place, whether you’re hiring a project manager, editors, photographers, indexers, proofreaders, or graphic designers. TEST your referrals—I had disappointing experiences with many of the people I hired, and almost all of them were referred to me by people I trusted.




10. When you’re not writing what do you do for fun? I like to eat, bowl, read, sleep, and dance (but not in that order)




11. What project are you currently working on? I am writing another nonfiction book that focuses on the perspective of single Black fathers in America. There is so much emphasis on single mothers in the Black community (which is fine—I am one and I identify), but I want to bring Black families together for those who want that. The Black community is struggling so much because of broken homes. I want to tell the single dads’ side of the story, through the many voices of the real Black America. If you are interested in contributing via an interview, you can contact me at info@dareeallen.net for more details.

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Posted By Sue Collier on January 15, 2012

Here’s some of the latest in industry news and views:

From Good E Reader: What Does It Mean for Aggregator Companies if Apple Launches Their Self-Publishing Program?
We broke the news last week that Apple is in development of a self-publishing program and many leading websites such as Media Bistro, Paidcontent, and tons of others. The essence of our writeup was that Apple will be holding an event at the end of the month where they are expected to take the wraps off of their self-publishing program for iBooks. This may benefit indie authors that want to submit directly to the service and not be forcibly relegated to doing business with various Aggregators. What does it mean for these companies if Apple starts their own program?

From Publisher’s Victims: The Top 10 Book Marketing Lies Ever Told
As a book publishing company, we harp constantly about book marketing and how important it is for authors to market their books. More often than not, we get these explanations, excuses, reasons, etc. why authors won’t or can’t market their own books. When we ask authors where they come up with these things, we often hear, “Oh it’s what we’ve been told for years,” or “Honey! That advice is all over the internet.”

From Melville House Books: McNally Jackson’s bestselling book is … a fee?
The New York bookseller McNally Jackson here posts a fascinating list of its bestselling titles of 2011, but there’s one big surprise: the bestselling thing in the store isn’t a book from a publisher large or small, nor is it a book at all: it’s the set-up fee the store charges customers who want to self-publish a book on McNally’s Espresso Book Machine.

From The Idea Logical Company: Some things that were true about publishing for decades aren’t true anymore
Back when my father, Leonard Shatzkin, was active with significant publishers — the quarter century following World War II — he observed that very few books actually took in less cash than they required. That is not to say that publishers saw most books as “profitable”. Indeed, they didn’t. They placed an overhead charge of 25% or 30% or more on each book so most looked unprofitable. But that didn’t change the fact that the cash expended to publish just about every book was less than the cash it brought back in.

From GalleyCat: Study: Kids Like eBooks Better Than Print
Do you think that this generation of kids will still read print books when they grow up? According to a new report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, little kids already prefer to eBooks to print books.

From Publishing Perspectives: Repurposing Blogs as Books for ‘Immediacy’
Undeterred by lean and shaky times, British-born journalist, writer and editor Helena Cobban recently founded Just World Books in the US where she has lived for 30-odd years. Following her son’s advice to look into print-on-demand (POD) publishing, Cobban was able to launch her company without any heavy financial commitments. Just World’s focus is on the Middle East (but not only) as Cobban has extensive experience in the region. Her idea for content was to “curate” people’s blogs on current international affairs that she had enjoyed reading over the years and transform them into books. POD publishing enables her to give readers “immediacy” on pertinent international themes.

From Book Making: Bullshit, high prices and stupidity at InstantPublisher.com
According to its website, “InstantPublisher.com is the short run book publisher division of Fundcraft Publishing Company, the world’s largest personalized cookbook publisher. Fundcraft started as a small publishing house in eastern Kansas in the early 30′s specializing in short-run custom cookbooks for groups and organizations across the country. Today, Fundcraft ships millions of personalized cookbooks each year to every state.”

From Self Publishing Review: 20 Economical Book Marketing Techniques
Learn how to get your book publicity campaign moving despite the current economic recession by trying these practically economical methods of book marketing.

From Reuters: 16 year-old makes $6200 in Dec from her e-books on Amazon
Amazon.com said on Thursday that its new Kindle Owners’ Lending Library was off to a strong start, but the largest Internet retailer may have buried the lead.

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Posted By Sue Collier on January 8, 2012

Here’s some of the latest in industry news and views:

From The Independent Publishing Magazine: Apple Poised To Launch Self-Publishing Program This Month
Reporting on Good E-Reader this morning, Michael Kozlowski has revealed that Apple will host an event in New York later in January and speculates that it may herald the launch of a self-publishing program for iBooks that will rival Amazon’s DTP and the Barnes and Noble Pubit platform. As yet nothing formal has been stated by Apple.

From Accredited Online Colleges: 12 Marketing Skills Every Writer Now Needs
In a world of blogs, tweets, website comments, and Facebook status updates, everyone is a writer. That is, they are in the sense that they are communicating through the written word. But you’re a writer: you know what a gerund is, and you would never mistake “it’s” with “its.” Of course, the proliferation of social media has only served to flood the market with content producers. If you want to make it as a writer, you will have to separate yourself from the crowd so your work can be appreciated. Here are 12 marketing skills to help you become the next Hemingway.

From eBook Newser: Smashwords’ Mark Coker Responds To Apple Rumors
We’ve been hearing rumors that Apple is hosting a press conference this month to announce a new software. One report suggests that it will be a new self-publishing platform for iBooks, but Mark Coker, the CEO of self-publishing platform Smashwords, is not convinced.

From Salon.com: Indies battle Amazon — by becoming publishers
Of all the booksellers I’ve met over the years, no doubt the busiest is Mitchell Kaplan. In addition to overseeing Miami’s venerated Books & Books stores, Kaplan is a co-founder of the Miami Book Fair, a former president of the American Booksellers Association, and the most recent recipient of the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award. So it was pretty surprising to see Kaplan himself when I read at his flagship store in Coral Gables last month.

From FonerBooks: Kindle eBooks Outselling Paper Books Big Time
I originally titled this post, Amazon’s Free eBooks Outsell All Other Amazon Books Combined, but I think people will be more interested in the paid book comparison on the graph. The graph is from my page on Kindle eBook sales which I updated yesterday.  The main caveat is that January 2nd isn’t a typical day since many people must have received Kindles and iPads for Christmas and are still excited about buying eBooks. The graph shows paid Kindle eBook sales vs all paper book sales, and I’ll pick a few points off for people who don’t read log-log graphs.

From Paid Content: Which E-Books Are Most Borrowed From Libraries, And Why?
OverDrive released its lists of the most-downloaded e-books from libraries in December 2011. These lists look pretty different from the current New York Times e-book bestseller lists. Here’s why, plus a few interesting tidbits.

From The Book Designer:Video: Brian Felsen of BookBaby.com on the Future of e-Books
I’m pleased today to have an interview for you with Brian Felsen, CEO of BookBaby.com, the e-book distributor that started as an offshoot of CDbaby, the independent music distributor.

From the GalleyCat: Occupy Wall Street Library Adds Hundreds of Books
Today the Occupy Wall Street Library posted a photograph of the hundreds of books added to their collection. Even though the activists have been evicted from Zuccotti Park, the spirit continues as donations continue to pour into the library. A number of Twitter supporters banded together for the donations: Liz Danzico, Maria Popova, Akashic Books, Housing Works Bookstore and Nathan Larson.

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Posted By Sue Collier on January 6, 2012

My team and I come across so many useful websites, I thought it would handy to put them together in a regular blog series. If you have or know of a website that would be of interest to my blog readers, please post it here.

Enjoy!

FirstWriter.com is a one-stop resource for new writers as they progress through their writing career.  On the resource list is copyright information, editorial services, writing tips, and much more.  Firstwriter’s mission is:  “quite simply, to help you get published. Whether you’re an aspiring writer or an established professional, we aim to provide you with the tools you need to find placements for your writing quickly, accurately, and with minimum cost.”  Firstwriter is maintained by a small group of dedicated professionals based around the world. The company exists only online, so they are not restricted by geography and can choose to work with the best people for the job—regardless of where they live. Their team includes people from the United Kingdom, the United States, and as far afield as China.

Finding your way through the conference maze. Romance writer Roni Loren (Crash Into You, available in January 2012) has both feet on the ground—usually at one writers’ conference or another. She attends three such events every year and has developed a working strategy, which she gladly shares in her Fiction Groupie post, “Top Five Mistakes Writers Make at Conferences.” Her nitty gritty advice is strong on seeking out sessions that will help you hone your craft, rather than leaping ahead to composing query letters and courting agents. Learning and networking are king and queen, according to Loren. If you’re interested in scouting out what’s happening from New York City to Grand Cayman, visit the Writers’ Conferences & Centers website, where you can also find out about scholarships and retreats.

Give your chapters, books, and promotional materials unforgettable endings. In “Endings To Remember,” Peter P. Jacobi offers news story tips that any writer can employ for more effective prose. The former university professor and writing/editing consultant outlines the importance of crafting a persuasive, thoughtful, provocative conclusion to your literary piece that will cling to your reader’s consciousness like static electricity. So how is it done? Should you use a quote? What about a descriptive snapshot, some dialogue, or an anecdote? Only you, the writer, can tap inside to discover the best choice for your particular story, but if you put in the effort, it will cap your writing with meaning that can make a difference in the life of your readers, and maybe even move them to action.

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Posted By Sue Collier on December 26, 2011

Here’s some of the latest in industry news and views:

From The Huffington Post: Are eBooks Too Cheap?: Indie Authors Question 99 Cent Price
There’s a lot of controversy circulating throughout the publishing industry about the pricing of ebooks, and it’s a significant topic that warrants discussion. Independent authors are rallying around the controversial 99-cent price point.

From Jane Friedman: My Best Advice for Writers From 2011
Last week I shared 12 Must-Read Articles From 2011. Now I’m going to share a list of the best advice I gave in 2011 as a handy reference.

From Author’s Echo: The Offer I Turned Down
If all the posts about getting an agent didn’t drive you off, then you know I got another offer before Tricia called. I turned it down because it felt sketchy, for a number of reasons I’ll go into here. Though I won’t name anybody; for all I know, the agency and the offer was totally legit and it was just the way it was handled that scared me off.

From The GalleyCat: The Best Gift You Can Give a Writer
Like most GalleyCat readers, you probably have a few writers on your holiday gift list. This GalleyCat editor has a foolproof, economical, practical and meaningful gift that you can give to the writer in your life: TIME.

From RT Book Reviews: Amazon’s Best Selling E-Books of 2011
Amazon has just announced its lists of the best-selling books of 2011 in print and e-book formats. Looking at the e-book list says a lot about the reading choices that booklovers made this year. The winning e-books fall into three major categories; there are the big name mystery authors we couldn’t get enough of, the non-fiction books that gave us a look inside the lives of others and then three inexpensive self-published e-reads.

From The GalleyCat: 7 Free eBooks Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Everybody Should Read
“Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet?” one literary Reddit user asked Neil deGrasse Tyson last week. The famous physicist and author responded with a concise list of classic books. If you are looking for books to fill your new eReader, we have collected links to free digital copies of all the books on his list. Follow the links below to download ePub, Kindle or text versions of the books.

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Posted By Sue Collier on December 18, 2011

Here’s some of the latest in industry news and views:

From The Book Designer: Do Writers Really Need a Book Business Plan?
Seriously. I know no one likes to hear this, even my clients who are not of the author persuasion, but without a business plan you’re going nowhere.  It’s vital for a writer to have a Book Business Plan because your books and you are the products to be sold. It makes most writers queasy to even imagine selling themselves but without a plan, you can hardly figure out a way for your book to sell itself. Think of it as a GPS getting you from Starving Writer Street to Successful Author Square.

From GalleyCat: Farhad Manjoo: ‘You Should Thank [Amazon] for Crushing That Precious Indie on the Corner’
Farhad Manjoo infuriated booksellers around the country with a provocative essay at Slate, calling independent bookstores “some of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find.”

From Writer’s Digest: 50 Simple Ways to Build Your Platform in 5 Minutes a Day
Writing rules. Self-promotion drools. Isn’t this how most writers think? But as long as you view your writing as art and your self-promotion efforts as the furthest thing from art, your chances of ramping up a successful 21st-century writing career are going to remain slim to none.

From eBook Newser: Are eBooks Getting More Expensive?
eBook pricing ebbs and flows like the tide and we hear a lot of different pricing ideas from the publishers, authors and readers that we speak to. Some people think that $.99 is the right price to get a reader to try an unknown author and others think that such a low price point makes the book seem unworthy of a reader’s attention. The big publishers succumbed to Amazon’s $9.99 price point, but then adopted the agency model and set their own prices.

From The New York Times: As Kindle Fire Faces Critics, Remedies Are Promised
The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success with many of its early users. The most disgruntled are packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer.

From Publishers Weekly: Is Amazon Pushing Publishers to Brink On Terms, Co-op?
Last week Amazon caused a furor in the bookselling world, with its reveal of a price check app consumers could use in bricks-and-mortar stores to get discounts at the retailer. Although the app did not include books, its announcement offered many a chance to slam Amazon as a ruthless corporation out to destroy the community bookstore and, as Richard Russo claimed in the New York Times, literary culture along with it.

From Dallas News: Year in Review: Books trends that got our attention
Looking back, 2011 will be remembered as the year when publishing was turned on its head. Self-published authors, once the pariahs of the book business, gained credibility — outselling many established names and giving hope to would-be authors everywhere. Borders, the second-biggest bookstore chain in the country, went under, signaling a shift in priority from print books to e-books.

From Forbes: Integrate Everything: 10 Tech Predictions For 2012
Mark Anderson is the editor of the Strategic News Service, a newsletter about the technology business, which previously published this column. He also runs the the annual Future In Review conference.  Here are my top technology calls for next year. My theme for the year is “integrate everything.”

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