Where are the cycling tours de force?
With the Tour de France in full swing, I’ve been considering, between mass crashes and team buses getting stuck underneath the finishing line, the paucity of novels about cycling, particularly road racing.
Ebook club aims to build up global membership to help new writers
Rick Karlsruher reports on how he is setting up an ebook club to help to provide a platform for new writers
How to choose typography for ebooks
What are the best fonts to use for ebooks? Writers who self-publish can get a shock when they publish an ebook with carefully selected styles and then view it on a Kindle to find their selected typefaces have been changed, sometimes dramatically.
Amazon Publishing hangs in there with its first million-seller
A series of German books in translation about a Bavarian hangman has given Amazon Publishing its first million-selling author.
Maverick move takes iBooks into your laptop
The laptop could be taking a big leap forward for reading books as Apple has made a Maverick move that could be a winner in bringing its iBooks platform to laptop and desktop computers.
In blog we trust – how to win friends and influence people
Blogging is a vital foundation for a writer’s platform and trust is the key to a successful blog.
Under-the-radar writers are the real success stories of self-publishing
Best-selling self-publisher Hugh Howey has a revealing article in Salon where he writes about under-the-radar writers who are making substantial sums from their ebooks.
1984 taps into snooping debacle to leap into the best sellers
Sales of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984 have been tapping into the NSA snooping revelations to shoot up the book charts.
8 ways to crowdfund your book
Crowdfunding helps authors to pre-test their book before publication and can give you an instant readership and social media circle all your own as your supporters will be getting your book and telling their friends about it.
How to get a single link for your Amazon book that redirects worldwide
If you have ever provided a link to your book on Amazon from your website or tweet or Facebook or wherever you may have faced the problem of which Amazon site to link to.
Amazon adds spell check to Kindle book publishing
Since around the start of this year, Amazon has been testing out a spell checker for ebooks published on its Kindle Direct Publishing service and now it seems to have the checker in full operation across KDP.
Macro photography with the Ricoh GR V
The Ricoh GR V crams a great APS-C sensor and a sharp, fast(ish) f2.8 lens into a slim and stylish camera body that can be easily pocketed.
How to add HTML to your Kindle book description the easy way
If you’ve been using old versions of HTML tags on your Amazon book descriptions you need to change them now for the simple versions as Amazon are no longer recognising the old type of tag.
Is this is the Great American Dust Jacket?
What current best-selling novel features the blurb: “It is a magical, living book, blended of irony, romance, and mysticism”?
Damaged brings up best-selling double for H M Ward
H M Ward is one of the most prolific and successful authors self-publishing on Amazon and this week sees her with two books on the New York Times Bestseller List with Damaged at No 6 and The Arrangement 6 in 18th place. It might soon be a hat-trick for Holly Ward as the seventh instalment of The Arrangement has just been published and already has over 50 five-star reviews on Amazon within the first two days of publication.
Thank you to my many word processors
Reading the paperback of Michael Chabon’s latest brilliant novel Telegraph Avenue, I spotted at the back of the book under Acknowledgements: “This novel was written using Scrivener on Macintosh computers.”
The Viral Catalysts that push a book to the top of the sales charts
Viral Catalysts are the vital difference that can make a book a best seller and Smashwords founder Mark Coker has tried to pick out these catalysts in a major analysis of indie book sales data.
What does it take to be a self-publishing best seller?
Sales figures are the big secret of self-publishing with plenty of estimates but no solid basis for working out how many ebooks are being sold by Amazon and the rest.
Indies are the future of book publishing
The future of book publishing lies with the independents, according to journalist and ebook writer and publisher Robert Niles.
The return of Spare Rib
Legendary feminist magazine Spare Rib is set for a comeback as journalist Charlotte Raven looks to set up a website and a glossy magazine focusing on life rather than lifestyle.
