Third edition of The Global Indie Author now available in Canada

Well, after much trial and tribulation, the third edition of The Global Indie Author is out now in Canada. Readers can find it on Chapters/Indigo and Amazon.ca. By the way, that “Usually delivers in 3-5 weeks” declaration on the Amazon.ca website is nonsense; the book delivers in less than a week. The extended delivery time is just part of Amazon/CreateSpace’s strategy against competitor Lightning Source, which, incidentally, is covered in detail in the book. If you want to avoid supporting Amazon, buy from the Chapters/Indigo website, where the book is Read More …

Third Edition of The Global Indie Author is now available in U.S. and Europe

The third edition of The Global Indie Author is out now in print on Amazon U.S., UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. All other territories coming soon! eBooks are also on the way. As mentioned in my previous post, the third edition features a new cover, new subtitle — to reflect the truly global phenomenon that self-publishing has become — and a great deal of new content (over 80 pages). The technical chapters have been completely overhauled to deal with the complexities of image handling, the increasing frustrations of font Read More …

Consumer desire: vastly more important than DRM

On December 14 CNN Money published an article on the success of comedian Louis CK’s experiment selling his comedy special DVD from his website direct to consumers. In just three days CK had gross sales of $500,000, a successful venture that should, as the article notes, make media companies nervous. But what starts out as a fact-based story on disintermediation slips into speculation about the role that selling the units DRM-free had in CK’s success: He was worried about piracy, and he’s been pleading with his fans to not put Read More …

ProseQuest: read the contract then run — don’t walk — away

A new company called ProseQuest is offering authors the option to sell ePubs directly via the BooksOnBoard website. It is not entirely clear what the relationship between ProseQuest and BooksOnBoard is — that is, whether ProseQuest is a sister company or subsidiary of BooksOnBoard or if this is an affiliate partnership — and this, as you will read, is only the first of many unanswered, and often troubling, questions the ProseQuest website raises. ProseQuest clients are invited to upload their Word manuscripts for free conversion; you can also upload an Read More …