The first annual self-publishing book expo in Manhattan drew a small but quality crowd of about 200 people at the midtown Sheraton Hotel last Saturday. They included industry professionals, the general public, as well as published and potential authors. The expo featured 55 exhibitors and 12 panels, lectures, and discussions on the art of self-publishing and marketing self-published books.
 

Everybody has a story to tell. And November is National Novel Writing month. So, you may be working hard to pen your novel. Next up: landing a publisher.
 

Last summer, while sitting in a team meeting reviewing numbers (bear with me, it gets better), an intriguing stat caught my eye: 70% of our authors make their print books available as downloads, and those authors sell 30% more books than those who offer print editions only! Even without a “real” eBook publishing option, Lulu authors were flocking to make digital files available, and succeeding in increasing their sales. Since then, we’ve been on a mission to provide a better eBook option.

The concept of personal branding has been around for more than a decade, but the Internet and social networking have made it easier than ever to sell brand "you." The basic idea of personal branding is to promote yourself as having certain values, skills or expertise -- your brand -- so that if someone needs that expertise, they'll come to you first.

There are three general choices for getting your book published:

• Traditional Publishing
• Vanity Publishing
• Self-Publishing

We are storytelling animals. One might even argue that the ability to tell stories is what defines us as human. For much of our time on earth, the great stories were sung as verse. Traveling bards and jesters were heralded as they delivered that most important message of all -- the story of the human condition. With the invention of the alphabet by the Phoenicians, followed centuries later by Gutenberg's astonishing printing press, these stories could finally be encoded onto stones, papyrus and paper.
 

For nearly as long as I have been in the publishing industry, the term “self-publishing” has carried with it a certain stigma. Publishers who specialized in it were branded “vanity presses.” We hope to change that perception with the announcement of WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson. This imprint officially launches today.
 

...or at least it should continue.  The work you've put into designing an effective, attention-grabbing cover now continues with the spine and back.  I've made a point of mentioning in the first installment of this discussion, that I believe the spine can be as important as the front cover in generating interest.  It might be where your sales presentation begins.
 

Last week we covered the use of photography in your book cover to create a simple, attention-grabbing cover image.  This week we’ll look into why some colors seem to work better than others on bookstore shelves.  We’ll also investigate good layout and design practices when it comes to typography and non-photographic covers.  It's all about relationships.

Sony has signed deals with Smashwords and Authors Solutions that will permit e-books published or distributed by the two companies to be sold through the Sony eBook Store. The two agreements, Chris Smythe, director of the eBook Store for Sony, gives Sony another way to let self-published authors and small publishers get their e-books sold through the Sony store. E-books from both companies will be available through Sony once the company completes the conversion of its store to the ePub standard.

We’ve all worked the keyboards till our fingertips are bruised getting our books into shape for readers to actually read and enjoy.  At some point, towards the end of the editing and rewrite drudgery, I need a break.  I’ll assume we all do, and that’s a good point to start thinking about your cover design, if you haven’t already been carrying the whole idea, or components of it around inside you head for months and months.  Putting together a hard hitting cover design will require a whole different set of tools from writing, although you’ll use some of your well-honed writing skills on the cover, you’ll need to put on a new cap – the graphics designer cap...

Until recently, if you were self-published virtually any agent or book editor worth her salt didn’t want to hear about it. Many of them would want nothing to do with you at all, as if your self-published status might rub their own cachet off or something. But given the tenor and content of the sessions at this year’s Writers Digest Business of Getting Published Conference, I predict it won’t be long before agents and editors will routinely respond to queries by asking what you’ve self-published, and how it’s doing. That’s right, and you heard it here first:

I sat down today to a quick brainstorm outlining the advantages of partnering with a top notch custom self-publisher, but came up just shy of double digits. Help!
 
Self-publishing Advantages top 10 list:

 
I recently stumbled upon an Internet discussion about how to "trick" libraries into ordering self published books. It was a great example of doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason, and failing at it to boot. Some self publishers fall in love with the idea of being underdogs fighting against the system, but authors who get libraries mixed up with the enemy should be forced to turn in their library card and watch televison for the rest of their lives. Libraries are the good guys, and, as it turns out, they do acquire self published books.