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.

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.

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.

From Publishers Weekly: Black Friday Weekend Proves A Dickensian Start to Holidays
This year’s holiday selling season at independent bookstores hews closely to the opening of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Some stores, especially those near closed Borders, reported sales for Black Friday weekend up between 30% and 40%, while others have seen flat sales or even a dip…

From The Millions: Reasons Not to Self-Publish in 2011-2012: A List
In a previous essay, I interviewed four self-published authors I admire, and I examined some of the benefits of that career path. Midway through writing the piece, I realized I’d have to continue the discussion in a second essay in order to fully explore my feelings (complicated) on the topic (multifaceted)…

From Allison Winn Scotch: Bouncing Back From Disappointment: Christina Katz Weighs In (and GIVEAWAY!)
The worst thing a writer can do is wear his disappointment like a badge of resentment. That is the first thing other people notice about you and the last thing they forget. You want, instead, to become the writer who bounces back from disappointment, stronger and wiser…

From Paid Content: No More New Titles For Seth Godin’s Amazon Imprint, The Domino Project
About a year after it launched, Seth Godin is ceasing publication of new titles at his Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Publishing imprint, The Domino Project. His biggest takeaway, he writes, is the importance of “permission”: “The core group of 50,000 subscribers to the Domino blog made all the difference in getting the word out and turning each of our books into a bestseller.”…

From Huffington Post: 5 Most Dangerous Career Pitfalls For New Writers
The writing life is fraught with dangers big and small—everything from life-crushing depression to sore fingers from long typing jags. But there are a few dangers that can derail a new writer’s career at the outset…

From Publishers Weekly: B&N Sales Dip, Losses Cut, Forecast Moderate
Barnes & Noble’s second quarter report was a bit of a mixed bag. The company reported a 0.6% decline in total revenue for the period ended October 29, to $1.89 billion, but its net loss was cut to $6.6 million from $12.6 million in the comparable period in fiscal 2011. The company said, however, that more investment in “customer acquisition activities” plus continued investment in technology would result in EBITDA for the full fiscal year coming in at the low part of its range of $210 million to $250 million…

From Indie Bound: INDIEBOUND READER FOR ANDROID AND IOS
IndieBound Reader™ is an ebook reading application created by the American Booksellers Association and Bluefire Productions, an independent software company in Seattle, WA. It allows book lovers to read ebooks purchased at their local, independent bookstores. Currently, IndieBound Reader is available for the Android operating system, and it will soon be available for iPhones and iOS devices…

From NY Times: The 10 Best Books of 2011
At a small college on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan, the baseball team sees its fortunes rise and then rise some more with the arrival of a supremely gifted shortstop. Harbach’s expansive, allusive first novel combines the pleasures of an old-fashioned baseball story with a stately, self-reflective meditation on talent and the limits of ambition, played out on a field where every hesitation is amplified and every error judged by an exacting, bloodthirsty audience…

From Book Marketing Bestsellers: Book Marketing Makeover: Top 15 Reasons to Do a Virtual Book Tour
As publishers’ promotional budgets shrink and travel costs rise, the traditional city to city author tour is waning in popularity. But what if you could reach a much larger, highly targeted audience from the comfort of home? You can, with a virtual book tour…

From Publishers Weekly: E-book Sales Doubled in September, Mass Market Tanked
E-book sales doubled in September, to $80.3 million, at the publishers that report results to the AAP. Sales in the print segments had a mixed performance with children’s/YA hardcover sales up 2.1% at reporting publishers, although children’s/YA paperback sales fell 14.6%. Sales of mass market paperback plunged in September, falling 54.3% at reporting houses…

From The Register: Penguin pulls its e-books off library shelves
A new “security concern” has forced the British book publisher Penguin to stop making electronic editions of its new books available to American libraries. Penguin has also banned the libraries from loaning existing Penguin e-books on their shelves to Kindle owners…

From Publishers Lunch: Kindle Lending Library Reaches Out to KDP Authors–With Cash
When Kindle launched their free ebook library for their prime customers–now called Kindle Owner’s Lending Library to clearly communicate it is for device owners only–it included titles from Amazon Publishing (138 by our exclusive count) but no self-published ebooks from the KDP program. As of December 1, Amazon intends to…

From Writer Beware ®: Book Country And Self-Publishing: Why the Hate?
Last week, Penguin subsidiary Book Country–a digital slush pile/peer critique community with a focus on genre fiction–announced that it was adding self-publishing services…

From Publishers Weekly: Nook Tablet Reviewed: Like the Kindle Fire, But…
The Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet are the two big players in a new category of device that has emerged in the wake of the iPad: the handheld multimedia viewer. Unlike the iPad, these devices really don’t mimic and transform the functions of the personal computer, which is made for both input and output…

From Media Bistro: Anne McCaffrey Has Died
Fantasy novelist Anne McCaffrey has passed away. She was 85 years old. GalleyCat confirmed the sad news with Random House this afternoon…

From USA Today: Katherine Heigl lands a Plum role in ‘One for the Money’
For years, there was one mystery author Janet Evanovich couldn’t crack — finding the right Hollywood actress to embody Stephanie Plum, the crime-solving heroine of her best-selling books…

From Publishers Lunch: Penguin Returns to Kindle Lending
OverDrive announced on its blog Wednesday that Kindle availability for Penguin eBooks already in library catalogs “has been restored as of this morning. Penguin titles are available for check out by Kindle users and the Kindle format will be available for patrons who are currently on a waiting list for a Penguin title…

From Blogging Authors: The Skinny on Self-Publishing Companies: Is it the Best Option for You?
There are three basic ways to become a published author: Have your manuscript accepted by a traditional trade book publishing company. You risk no money (beyond properly preparing your manuscript) and there is no cost to you…

From Media Bistro: Quentin Rowan Explains Why He Plagiarized
Quentin Rowan, the novelist who wrote under the pen name Q.R. Markham, explained why he plagiarized numerous spy novels for his debut book…

From Mystery Writing is Murder: 9 Pieces of Bad Writing Advice it’s Best to Ignore
Finding a beta reader or critique group is essential to any writer’s development. We can’t write in a vacuum. Nobody ever learned to be a good writer holed up in an attic with no one to review his work but the cat. (Cats can be so cruel.)…

From Media Bistro: Nikky Finney Speech Rocks National Book Awards
Last night poet Nikky Finney rocked the National Book Awards with her acceptance speech for the poetry award. You can watch her speech in the video embedded above–simply scroll ahead to 16:10-mark…

From Write NonFiction in November: 10 Tips for Prepping Your Manuscript: A Self-Publishers’ Checklist
If you want to self-publish your book, completing the manuscript constitutes only the first step. Then you need to take that (hopefully) professionally edited piece of work and have it turned into a book. That means you must have it designed (hopefully) by a professional designer and then printed. I say ”hopefully” because all too many indie authors fail to employ the expertise of experts at these stages. Yet, doing so ensures that their books will meet the same standards as traditionally published books and have the same chance of success once they hit the market…

From Web Pro News: Choosing A Tablet For The Holidays
Prepare yourself – the holiday shopping season is upon us. While Black Friday, the deal-packed day following the Thanksgiving holiday, is the unofficial kickoff, folks are already thinking about what they’re asking for and what they’re going to buy their loved ones this holiday season…

From Writer Beware ® Blogs!: Alert: Light Sword Publishing, a.k.a. LSP Digital, Returns
In July of 2008, I blogged about Light Sword Publishing, a.k.a. LSP Digital, about which Writer Beware had received a substantial number of complaints (delays, nonpayment of royalties, unprofessional behavior,  misrepresentation of the company’s expertise and capabilities). For examples, see the Light Sword Publishing thread at Absolute Write, and also the comments thread of my blog post…

From Publishers Weekly: Barnes & Noble Sees Bright Future in Digital
Barnes & Noble sees it sales of e-books rising from about $250 million in 2010 to over $2 billion in 2015, according to a presentation made by CEO William Lynch at Liberty Media’s investor meeting Thursday. While e-book sales are expected to skyrocket, sales of print books through B&N are expected to fall from about $3.6 billion in 2010 to about $2.8 billion in 2015, Lynch reported…

From Media Bistro: ‘The Hunger Games’ First Official Trailer Released
The first full trailer for The Hunger Games film debuted on Good Morning America in New York City’s Times Square today. We’ve embedded the video above. More than three thousand Facebook fans have hit “like” on the announcement…

From PC World: Amazon’s Prime Lending Library Collection Now Viewable Online
Amazon is tempting Kindle owners to sign up for its Prime service with free e-books, and if you are wondering if there are any good ones to read you can now peruse a list right from your PC…

From Geek.com: Amazon sells 6,111 copies of an ebook for free by mistake, won’t compensate author
Amazon has some pretty strict rules in place when it comes to the price of ebooks put up for sale through Kindle Direct Publishing. The main rule we hear about is Amazon not allowing an author to sell the same book anywhere else cheaper than it appears on Amazon. If it finds the book cheaper elsewhere, then it will automatically reduce the price to match that other store…

From The Book Seller: Hodder withdraws ‘plagiarised’ novel
Hodder & Stoughton is withdrawing the novel Assassin of Secrets by Q R Markham from sale, alongside its US publisher Little, Brown, after the announcement that the book contains “numerous plagiarised passages”…

From Media Bistro: Amanda Hocking Is Second Self-Published Author to Sell a Million Kindle eBooks
Amanda Hocking joined David Baldacci and Stephenie Meyer in the Kindle Million Club today, becoming the second self-published author to sell more than a million eBooks through Amazon’s Kindle Store.

From Publishers Weekly: Paolini’s ‘Inheritance’ Sells Nearly 500K Out of the Gate
Inheritance, the fourth and final book in Christopher Paolini’s bestselling children’s series, moved a hefty 489,500 copies in print, digital and audio combined in its first day on sale, on November 8. The numbers, according to Random House Children’s Books, give Inheritance the highest first-day sales of any book published in 2011, thus far…

From Alan Rinzler: Great book jackets: Tips from 4 design pros
Every good book needs a great cover. It’s a powerful billboard for conveying the spirit and content of your book.

From Media Bistro: Share Books & eBooks with Our Troops
As you celebrate Veterans Day today, remember all our  soldiers stationed overseas. We’ve collected seven different ways you can share books with our troops. First up, E-Books for Troops will help you share your used Kindle with our troops overseas.

From Media Bistro: Author Finds Flaws In Kindle Auto Pricing
Author James Crawford has found some flaws in using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform. After noticing a huge spike in downloads over night for his novel Blood Soaked & Contagious, he went to see what was going on with his book…

From My Daley Rant: Self-Published Books: The Perception of Quality
The question of quality in self-published books is a sticky subject, just because self-publishers and traditionalists tend to line up along this issue, ready to duke it out (Note: I’m a fence straddler, firmly in both camps. I’m self-publishing my new paranormal/SF novel Open Minds, but still pursuing traditional publication with my middle grade stories)…

From ‘Adopt an Indie’ Month: Assuming that “self-published” and “not good enough to be published” are the same? Think again!
Life is full of assumptions. We do it all the time. There is only so much time in the day. We can’t learn everything there is to learn, buy everything there is to buy or do everything there is to do. As much as we try, we just can’t do it all. So, we make decisions. Learn this, don’t learn that. Buy this, don’t buy that. Do this, don’t do that. We make these decisions based on assumptions…

From Media Bistro: NaNoWriMo Tip #1: Read 30 Tips from Last Year
Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), as thousands of writers around the world try to write a 50,000-word manuscript in one month…

From Publishing Perspectives: Are Social Media Sites the New Slush Pile?
How does a first-time YA author get published when she doesn’t know the first thing about how publishing works? Slush piles of unsolicited manuscripts are seemingly a thing of the past — but if you’re Leigh Fallon, the answer was surprisingly easy — Inkpop…

From Self-Publishing Review: What’s So “Indie” About Indie Writers?
Henry Baum’s recent post (about foul language in self-published books) raised this issue, which has been on my mind for a while. What IS so “indie” about “indie writers.” Is it merely a fashionable term, wishful thinking? The term comes from the “indie” film and music trends of the late 20th century, but I think those artistic fields are fundamentally different in important ways from book publishing. Both music and film require much more equipment, technical expertise and money, and usually involve more people as well, whereas writers only need to type into a computer, save their files, and upload them to online providers such as Amazon or Smashwords…

From Jane Friedman: Writing on the Ether
So when the publishing gets weird, the weird go to conferences. Digital conferences. Transmedia conferences. Convene and confer. Confab and rehab. Early bird discounts are extended to all. Then simply extended. And extended. Do not attempt to adjust the verticals of F+W Media, they’re bigger than you…

From Time NewsFeed: Amazon Under Fire for Selling Kids’ Book Written by Convicted Serial Killer
Here’s one book to leave off your Christmas list this year: Amazon is reportedly selling a children’s book that was penned by convicted serial killer Charles Kembo. The 372-page book, The Trinity of Superkidds Book One: Quest for Water, was released by Publish America on Jan. 20, 2010, a publish date that coincided with Kembo’s trial on four counts of first-degree murder, according to British Columbia publication The Province…

From The Book Seller: OFT gives go-ahead for Amazon/TBD merger
The Office of Fair Trading has cleared Amazon to take over The Book Depository, ruling the merger would not lead to a lessening of competition within the UK book industry…

From Publishers Weekly: U.S. Copyright Office Outlines “Priorities and Special Projects”
Orphan works, preservation for libraries, mass digitization, and fighting digital piracy are among the priorities set by the Register of Copyrights Maria A. Pallante this week in a paper outlining the U.S. Copyright Office’s “priorities and special projects” for the next two years. In all, the paper articulates 17 priorities in the areas of copyright policy…

From Self-Publishing Review: Indie Publishing’s Impact on Independent Publishing
First off, let me just say that I was a holdout for a long time for not calling self-publishing “indie publishing.”  But that was back when self-publishing was desperate to be taken seriously.  Now it is.  And it’s become as vital a force in the publishing as “true” independent publishing.  So indie publishing works now because all of independent publishing is changing…

From Publishers Weekly: Sales Jump, Earnings Plunge at Amazon; Fire Orders Soar
Amazon posted another huge increase in sales in the third quarter ended September 30, with total revenue rising 44%, to $10.88 billion, but continued investments in infrastructure and technology led to a 73% decline in earnings to $63 million. For the fourth quarter, Amazon predicted that sales will increase between 27% and 44%…

From Los Angeles Times: N.Y. Public Library’s e-book lending increased 81% in one year
The New York Public Library has 6 million print books to lend and just 75,000 e-books — but demand for those e-books is growing tremendously. Over the last 12 months, the N.Y. Public Library’s e-book lending has increased by 81%, CNN reports. They spoke to Christopher Platt, The New York Public Library’s director of collections and circulation operations…

From Publishers Weekly: Publishers: Want to Improve Sales?
I can’t stand it another second: one too many hideous book jackets has entered my life and I don’t understand why. Recognizing an unsellable jacket is not rocket science—or perhaps that’s just true for anyone who works in retail bookselling. When my colleagues and I gather at various conferences and share books we love, we are almost always in universal agreement…

From Good E-Reader: Bowker, BookStats Provide Industry Data
At last week’s SelfPub BookExpo, R. R. Bowker was on hand and provided valuable information to attendees in both a panel and in the distribution of the information that Bowker works diligently to make available to the entire publishing industry…

From CBC News: Kobo to become a publisher
Canadian-based e-book seller Kobo is following in Amazon’s footsteps and creating a publishing arm that will deal directly with authors, CBC News has learned…

From Publetariat: There’s Something Odd About Self-Publishing Books
Here’s something that’s mystified me for a long time: Most books about self-publishing look a lot worse than they ought to. I’ve often said that it doesn’t cost any more to produce a good-looking book than it does to produce a bad-looking one, but people aren’t listening…

From Publishers Weekly: PW Select Fall 2011: E-Book Master Class: PW Talks with Joshua Tallent
If self-publishing is a major part of the future of the publishing business, then its most uncharted region, and the frontier of greatest possibility, is digital self-publishing, where authors can make their own names and sell infinite numbers of books with the help of a handful of increasingly…

From Publishers Weekly: Bookstore Sales Jumped in August
After falling 4% in July, bookstore sales posted unexpectedly strong gains in August, according to preliminary estimates released by the Census Bureau. Bookstore sales jumped 11.8% in August, to $2.44 billion, an increase that likely reflects strong sales of books and other items through college bookstores and the going-out-of-business sales at Borders…

From Self-Publishing Review: eBook Marketing: What Goes Around Comes Around
To eBook authors, marketing can be a daunting task. Whether you’re an indie publisher or you are using a traditional publisher, the marketing is usually left up to you. It is a digital world now and self-publishers are not tied to bookstores with limited shelf space and a revolving inventory. In fact it will be on sale for a very long time…

From Media Bistro: Kindle Now Supports HTML 5
Amazon is definitely gearing up for the release of their upcoming Kindle Fire tablet. And from the looks of it, the company is trying to populate their rich media content offerings because the Kindle now supports the HTML 5 format…

From Publishers Weekly: Kobo Unveils Kobo Vox, $200 Color Tablet e-Reader
Responding quickly to Amazon’s Kindle Fire e-reading tablet, e-book retailer Kobo is releasing Kobo Vox, a seven inch, full-color, multimedia digital reading device for $200. Reminiscent of both the Kindle Fire and B&N’s NookColor, the new device runs the Android 2.3 OS and offers access to 15,000 free apps…

From School Library Journal: Oops! National Book Foundation Unveils Six YA Finalists
And then there were six. For the first time in recent history, the National Book Foundation unveiled six finalists yesterday in the Young People’s Literature category. What happened? Someone screwed up…

From A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: Guest Post by Adam Pepper
In July, I self published my dark urban fantasy novel, SYMPHONY OF BLOOD: A Hank Mondale Supernatural Case. The process leading up to this decision caused me to rethink my entire worldview on writing. I’ve been circling the periphery of the publishing business for over a decade…

From The Savvy Book Marketer: Use Statistics Counters in Managing Your Author Website
In managing your author website and your publishing business, it’s important to understand visitor trends for your site. Here are just a few of the things you can learn by studying website statistics: Number of visitors each day/week/month, Number of page views each day/week/month…