Creating a Cover for Your CreateSpace Book.

Could you answer a question for me? If I used a free ISBN at a printer like lulu, and I later decided to have the same book printed elsewhere, would I still be allowed to use that ISBN, even though Lulu owns it, or would I have to get a different ISBN for the same book now?

The answer: If you are using Lulu or CreateSpace and you are using their free services, then you cannot take the ISBN with you if you get it printed anywhere else. They own the ISBN. If owning it is important to you (& you’re in the US), you can buy an ISBN through the upgraded services at Lulu, or you can go obtain your own. There’s a big discount if you buy more than one.

So if you do want to buy an ISBN straight from the “Manufacturer” you need to visit: https://www.myidentifiers.com

Again: buying two single ISBNs costs the same as buying a block of 10.

It mentions a few directories where you can submit submit links to fiction you’ve posted on the web.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a little more exposure to your work, check these out.

1. WebFictionGuide – First sign up for an account, then sign in, then go to the submissions page.
2. Muse’s Success – First sign up for an account, then visit the contribute page.
3. Web Fiction Directory – Register here, then login, then submit madly away by going to the category page for your submission and clicking “Add your listing here”. This one has categories for flash fiction, short stories, novelettes, and novels.

Also, I’m still in need of at least a couple more 140 word stories for Micro Flash Fiction. And I suppose a couple more 1140 worders wouldn’t be too bad. And I still have room for some 140 character ones, too.

First up: Here’s 5 of August’s most interesting/useful posts. If you don’t have all day, just read these.

1. Maybe you don’t judge a book by its cover…
2. Selling To Foreign Language Markets
3. The Single Most Powerful Writing Tool You’ll Ever See That Fits On One Page – This one is actually the culmination of his recent excellent series on Story Structure.
4. What Is ‘Value Added’ And What Does It Have To Do With Indie Authorship?
5. How to Market Your Book on a Shoe-String Budget – Great collection of links at the bottom of the article.

And here’s the full list:

self publishing

How to Organize Your Small Book Project

Is there a good reason why someone should NOT self-publish their book?

How Do Successful Writers Deal With Competition?

Self-publishing, Literature and Pop Culture

Publishing is NOT Advanced Writing

What Is ‘Value Added’ And What Does It Have To Do With Indie Authorship?

Here’s a POD, There’s a POD, Everywhere a POD POD

marketing

C.F. Jackson presents Top Four Key Success Factors of Online Business posted at Website Makeover Workshop, saying, “How can I get traffic to my website? How do you make a website? I need help and I just don’t know where to start! And with the internet growing by leaps and bounds it can seem overwhelming. http://www.WebsiteMakeoverWorkshop.com”

Monica O’Brien presents The right and wrong book launch strategies – and 4 ways authors can get blog publicity for their book posted at Twenty Set.

Hints for Conducting Telephone Interviews for Radio Shows

Why Turning a Website Visitor into a Subscriber is Important

How to Market Your Book on a Shoe-String Budget

How to Market While on Vacation

Sell More Books By Changing How You Do It

Business Cards for Books

Pitch Your Nonfiction Book in One-Minute Segments

The Dont’s of Pitching Your Self-Published Book to Producers

The Do’s of Pitching Your Self-Published Book to Producers

Selling To Foreign Language Markets

Book Buying Behavior

writing

Eldon Sarte presents This is My Night Job posted at Wordpreneur.com, saying, “Writing is everything. Or is it? Sometimes, even with the best laid plans, it needs to take second place. Temporarily at least.”

Joshua Dodson presents Proprioceptive Writing: The Rules and Concluding Questions posted at Writers Community.

Joshua Dodson presents How to Craft a Great Metaphor or Simile posted at Writers Community.

Joshua Dodson presents Movement in Writing posted at Writers Community.

Joshua Dodson presents How Writers Turn People Into Words posted at Writers Community.

Jon Bard presents Want to Write Children’s Books? You Need These Four Things! posted at Children’s Writing Web Journal.

The Writing Life: I Don’t Believe In Writer’s Block

You Gotta Love The Conflict!

The Single Most Powerful Writing Tool You’ll Ever See That Fits On One Page

book design

Maybe you don’t judge a book by its cover…

What is the difference between a $149 cover design and one that costs $1500?

self published books

Self-Published Book Review of the Week: Mediterranean Madness

Self-Published Book Review of the Week: Pajama School

Self-Published Book Review of the Week: Moaning Banshee

random

Chain Bookstores: The Rise, Struggle and Downfall?

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the self-published carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

UniBook.com Announces Free Self-Publishing Service

UniBook has launched a revised website that allows authors to write and publish their own books without any listing or start-up costs. Authors retain ownership of their copyrights and earn money on the sale of each book sold on the website.

In contrast to other self-publishing systems that often charge their customers hundreds or even thousands of dollars to publish books, UniBook takes a different approach. “When we surveyed our customers we found that many of them felt that charging for uploads or forcing authors to pay for services or products they didn’t want was a predatory practice,” said Matthew Coers, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing North America. “Or goal is to offer a solution that maximizes flexibility and minimizes costs for the author.”

While UniBook’s pricing has always been among the lowest in the industry, the recent changes eliminated a prior requirement that authors purchase at least five copies of their own books. The new system allows an author to upload a book at no cost, or purchase a single proof copy prior to making the book publicly available.

About UniBook: UniBook is a brand name of Peleman Industries Inc.  UniBook caters to the self-publishing needs of writers, businesses and government agencies, and is currently available in 10 languages servicing Europe, North America and Asia.  For more information, visit www.unibook.com.

My experience

When I got this, I promptly went back and checked them out. That’s when I clued in that they used to be Wwaow. Their website was easy to use, and I didn’t have trouble signing up for an account or anything. Since UniBook is now free to publish a book, I decided to give it a go. The pricing still did not look fantastic for paperback book printing when compared to CreateSpace or Lulu. However, the pricing was still excellent for hardcovers. It costs an extra $14 or so to upgrade to hardcover on Lulu.com, and CreateSpace has no hardcover options at all. It’s only about $2 more to go from softcover to hardcover on UniBook. And as I already had a novel ready to go, I decided to set up a hardcover release of Oasis.

I had other things going on that day, so I promptly forgot that I had set it up and never did order a copy for myself.

I have a Google alert set up to notify me when Google finds my name on a new website, which is also a pretty great tool for anyone from online universities name-checking themselves to people like me who like seeing where they’re popping up across the web. Yes, I am that vain. Plus, it’s nice to know what people really think about me… but I digress. Anyway, I got a Google alert for my name that pointed to a very nice review of Oasis on the UniBook blog. (Thanks UniBook!)

And so I was reminded that I should really mention UniBook here on the blog.

Oh, and when I do get in a copy of the hardcover, I’ll let you know about the quality thereof.

The pros

Easy to use. Easy to publish. Good pricing for printing hardcovers.

The cons

I found the cover design process to be restrictive. Also, you don’t get an author discount when ordering copies of your book. You still get paid your royalty, though, so you do get that money back. It would be nice if they could streamline that and just give the author the discount up front.

The conclusion

I think putting your self-published book on UniBook is a good thing to do. It’s free, and you’ve already worked out the layout and cover files so that you could publish elsewhere, right?

(if you only watch one, watch #3 ‘Author gets slammed by grandmother’)

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Want to make your own book trailer? Here’s some info:

How to create the BEST book trailer, EVER. (seriously.)

Make a Book Trailer FREE!

Promoting your novel: How to make a book trailer

Book Trailers: 11 steps to make your own

Are there any other good book trailers that everyone should see? Do you have a book trailer? Let me know.

Self Publishing

Jennifer Ferroland from Jen’s Writing Journey sought answers this month to the age old question – If a Book Is Good, Does It Matter How It Was Published?

Want to know where to self-publish your work? Timothy Pontious from The Pencil Place wrote a great list of POD publishers. Publishing Comparisons (POD vs POD). (Thanks to Publitariat for pointing this out.)

Here’s a great reminder from Patricia Fry at Writing and Publishing News: Your writing and your publishing are two separate entities. When you self publish, you’re really building two skills. Read her article The Business of Authorship.

On Publitariat, Alan Baxter wished that he had started selling ebooks sooner. Free Books And Ebooks And Promos, Oh My!

S.M.D at The World in the Satin Bag issued a Reality Check: The Average Consumer and Books. I agree with his sentiment. Self published or traditionally published, if you expect to earn any real money, you have to earn your fans and readers one by one until you have an awful lot of them. You can’t expect readers to flock to you – even if your work is great. You have to put in the hours and the effort to get your name/face/presence in front of people.

Marketing

Jon Bard over at Children’s Writing Web Journal offered a Smart Promotion Tip for Children’s Book Authors.

Peter Jones at the Bauu Institute has another great article, this time about setting up book signings. Seven Tips for Book Signing And Author Writing Events

Tiffany Colter continued her series on getting readers to pick you at writing examiner with How Readers Decide What To Read and Presenting Yourself Well (Which happens to be good advice to everybody, not just writers.)

Morris Rosenthal over at Self Publishing 2.0 showed us how he used a YouTube video to boost the sales of a non-fiction book. Book Video Drives Book and eBook Sales Increase.

Natalie from Journey to Self Publishing posted some Tips for Sending Press Releases. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

The Creative Penn pointed out a few Lessons You Can Learn from Scott Sigler, Author and Podcaster. Sigler has been very successful, so it’d be a good idea to at least know how he did it.

Anne Leedom had an article on Publishing Basics called Online Publicity: Economic Survival Tips You Need to Know. There’s nothing new here, but sometimes we need to hear things many times before we actually do them.

Editing

There was another article on Publishing Basics, this time by Patricia Fry, with a vital reminder: Yes, You DO Need an Editor.

Jon Bard at the Children’s Writing Web Journal has a short video with 5 Ways to Improve Your Manuscript. (Hint: edit your work)

Writing

John Bard had a a couple of interesting ideas for using wordle. Unique Tool For Writers: Wordle

Self Publishing Experiences

I posted an article from Kate Lord Brown about her experiences self publishing a book of blog posts. Vanity Fair?

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I am 25, unmarried, but dating. I live in Alabama, and as a result, some Southern colloquialisms creep into my novels, which happen to be space operas at the moment. A bit incongruent, but I try to edit those out later when they simply don’t fit, or when it’s really bad grammar. My parents were air force, so half my life, I spent moving every year. My first years of schooling were in Germany, though I didn’t learn any German… except how to count.

What started you writing?

I used to hate reading and books – mostly because when I was taught to read, I was forced to amuse myself with Dick and Jane. I despised Spot. As a result, I thought all books were just as boring. Back when I was about 12, I saw my mom playing a computer game. I got her to let me play it, and after I finished, Mom said the game was based after a set of books. These were not children’s books either. I sped through them as fast as I could and decided that I was imaginative, and thus capable of writing books just as good as these.

Do you have a website folks can check out?

I do. My website is www.natanfleetshow.com. I’m posting a webnovel there, updating on Mondays (unless I’m delayed for some reason, such as being incredibly sick). The website also has additional information pertaining to the universe I have created. There are files on the aliens I have made up, extra scenes that haven’t or couldn’t be included in the books I’m going to write, and artwork, both mine, and fanart.

How many books have you written?

Ha – not quite sure how to answer this one, given that I’ve written several books… only to tear them apart and rewrite them again, trying to make them better. Additionally, I spent at least 8 or 10 years writing fanfiction as a mode of practice, and I have several finished stories there. I have no intention of selling them, though. That’d be mildly illegal.

How many have you self published?

I have only self-published one book so far, but I have plans to self-publish the rest of the Natan Fleet Show series. These additional books are listed in “The Story” tab on my website. So far, I have five more planned, plus Ghost Talent, which once I’m finished posting it on my website, I’ll edit it again and self-publish that one.

Tell me about your most recent book.

Playing the Hero is a space opera centering on a young alien male named Vathion. When his father is assassinated, Vathion inherits his father’s fleet of twelve privateer battleships. Unfortunately, this includes all the fleets problems as well – from malfunctioning equipment to spies and the annoying second in command. Gilonnia has been torn apart by a civil war that has been going on for almost an entire generation now, due to the Gilons themselves being generally new to the very idea of war. While most believe this war is due to selfishness and greed for power, there are far more insidious things going on under the surface. In Playing the Hero, Vathion is unaware of this big picture; as he is too busy trying to keep his second in command from stealing his fleet.

Why did you choose to self publish?

In the past, the “route” to getting published was to write a bunch of short fiction, sell it to magazines to get your name out there, then write full-length novels and attempt to sell them to publishers. However, print magazines are going out of business, though, and it’s unclear at this time whether they’ll revive with the economy or if they’ll go completely digital. Either way, I’ve never been interested in writing short stories, nor do I have the skills required to do so. Book publishers aren’t picking up many new authors these days, and it almost seems like it’s easier to get your book into the hands of someone famous than to get your book published by a “legit” source. I felt that as an unknown writer, it was unlikely that my work would be picked up by a brick-and-mortar publishing house, let alone an agent.

What have you liked/disliked about self publishing?

I’ve liked the control I have over what my book looks like, and how it’s presented. What I haven’t liked so far is the fact that it’s been a one-woman-show. In short, I’ve liked and disliked it for the same reasons.

What have you done to promote your book?

So far, I have been cashing in on my time spent writing fanfiction, pestering the people who loved reading those stories to come check out my original work. I’ve been emailing people, and I have a flier I’ve designed (but haven’t had the chance to distribute anywhere yet). I’ve got an author Livejournal, and have created a community on LJ for self-published authors (specifically the ones on Createspace) to advertise their writing, as well as to ask for assistance on things they’re having trouble with. I have my website, and I’ve got word-of-mouth. I’m pondering contacting the local radio station to see if I can get them to either interview me or plug my book.

What has given you the most success?

The problem with marketing is that a lot of the time, you really never know what is working.

Do you plan on self publishing again?

I do indeed plan on doing this again. The first book was difficult to get off the ground – mostly because I had no clue what I was doing, but now that I do, it shouldn’t be so hard. As a result, I’m going to finish off the Natan Fleet Show series as self-published books, then see about getting something published with a publishing house. Hopefully by the time I finish the NFS series, the economy will have gotten better and the publishers will start taking risks on new authors again.

What else should I have asked you?

What my influences are. …Given where I live, it’s no wonder I’ve become enamored with space and aliens. But other things have influenced me just as greatly – those being anime and video games. As a result, there is a lot of color in my writing. Vathion has purple hair, for example. C. J. Cherryh has also been an influence. After reading her Foreigner series, Cookoo’s Egg, the Chanur series, I’ve analyzed how she creates believable aliens and have replicated it in my own style (to the best of my ability).

Thanks, K.E. and best of luck with your writing.

More about K.E. and her work can be found at:

• http://natanfleetshow.com (fiction)
• http://keireland.livejournal.com (other stuff)

If you are interested in hearing more self-published authors’s stories, check out some of my other interviews:

• Self Published Pulp – Lucien Black
• Zombies, Vampires, & Texan Independent Authors – Rhiannon Frater
• Self Publishing, Belgian Horror, and Cats. – Vanessa Morgan
• Self-Publishied Interview: Joe Perrone Jr. – Joe Perrone Jr.

If you’re a self published author and you would like an interview here on Story Hack, just use the contact page and let me know.

note: This is a guest post by Katie Lord Brown.

The high profile success stories of blog to book writers the Wife in the North and Petite Anglaise may have encouraged writers to believe blogs are a good way to get your work noticed, but is self-publishing your blog little better than vanity publishing?  The internet has been called the biggest slushpile in history.  Without the expertise of agents and editors to filter the good from the bad (and the downright ugly), who is the final judge of quality? Websites like Harper Collins’ innovative Authonomy give new writers the chance to reach potential readers – only the most popular submissions will be published.  However, print on demand services like Xlibris, Lulu and Blurb now mean that writers of blogs and traditional manuscripts can sidestep the route of agent/publisher and go it alone entirely.

The necessarily glacial pace of publishing is a familiar writer’s lament – compared to months languishing on slushpiles, the appeal of POD is obvious, particularly to anyone whose book has a limited market.  There is something almost magical about how fast it is to download the software, and upload your manuscript into a recognizable book format within minutes.  Self-publishing has a long history – at various points in their careers writers of the calibre of Margaret Atwood, Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King have self published.  It’s now easier than ever for any writer willing to take on their own marketing and distribution to produce their own books.

Personally, I differentiate my blog which started for fun from my ‘real’ work writing novels.  With that I have chosen the traditional agent/publisher route, and never considered self-publishing, (I’d rather write and leave the business to the professionals). Editing a year’s blog posts into book format has been an interesting insight into POD though.  Blogs are usually stream-of-consciousness – it’s funny how it feels every word matters more when it is going into book format, and designing the cover for ‘What Kate Did Next’ has taken equally as much thought as the editing.  WKDN is a blog for writers with daily prompts – like most small blogs it has grown by word of mouth, reaching a hundred countries and tens of thousands of readers in under a year.  Enough of the 150+ daily subscribers asked for it to be published in book format that I’ve produced a writer’s workbook based on the most popular posts for charity, (all profits will go to War Child). Since deciding to do this, I’ve been approached by an old (computer-phobic) writer friend to edit and publish her Beirut diaries from the 1960’s.  With small projects like this the advantages of POD are obvious.  Sales success is usually measured in the hundreds let alone the thousands.  But when it is this easy for writers to get their work straight to their audience through ‘one-click’ POD books and e-books what does the future hold?

‘What Kate Did Next’ is available from Blurb

Further details through a link at www.katelordbrown.com

This article first appeared in The Bookseller 2009

Now it’s time to start gathering up entries for the second edition. Do any of you have any self-publishing success stories (or links to such stories)? I’d love to feature a couple in the next edition.

Submissions will close on May 31st, and the second edition will be out on June 5th.

If you don’t know what The Self-Published Carnival is, check out this post.

And remember – if I can’t figure out how you’re article or blog post could be useful to self-publishing authors, it probably won’t be included.

As with last time, you can submit via the blog carnival interface or by using the contact form here on the site.

Also, If you are interested in having your blog play host to the Self-Published Carnival some time, let me know.