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.

The Best

Here are five of the best articles for the self-published author I’ve seen this month. And by best, I mean the ones I liked the best. They’ll be listed again below with the others, but if you’re short on time, just check these out.

1. Why I Self Publish – You should know why you want to self publish, or you shouldn’t do it.
2. 10,000 Ideas and Resources for Writers – Ok, it’s too much information, but hey, once you finish reading all these, you’ll pretty much know everything. On second thought, if you’re short on time, don’t check this one out.
3. How To Build Community Around Your Fiction – Do this or unless you are interested in being the only reader of your work.
4. 7 Ways to Develop an Affordable Marketing Plan – One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as I self published my novel is that I need a plan.
5. How To Get Retweeted – Hey! Stastical evidence!

Self Publishing

Why do you Self Publish? I’ve attempted to answer this question for myself on the blog before (see Why Did I Self Publish?). Morris Rosenthal at Self Publishing 2.0 blogged in June about why he self published. It’s the most delicious reason I’ve ever come across. Read Why I Self Publish to learn his reasoning. Also, he’s got a great article this month called Drawing A Line Under Amazon Kindle Numbers.

Why do self publishers get a bad rap? Check out these Media Comments on Self Published Books.

Joe Wikert mused about current issues with ebooks with Cheap Copies of the Original.

Novelr had an article titled Making Money From Online Fiction – I’ve Done It, So Can You. It has some good stuff to consider.

It’s not quite self-publishing, it’s Co-Publishing. The Crafty Writer has an article titled Co Publishing Pros and Cons. I’m still not sure what I think of the concept.

Self Publishing Companies

Mick Rooney of Ireland has a short critique of Lulu at Lulu’s Faux Pas.

Writing

If you’ve got absolutely nothing to do, but you’d like to read about writing, Publetariat pointed out this article with 10,000 Ideas and Resources for Writers. While reading through the list, don’t forget: at some point, you’re still going to have to write.

If you’re interested in self-publishing children’s books, Jon Bard has a little video with some tips on How To Write a Picture Book That Shines.

Another couple of exercises geared toward the fiction-writing set. Putting Images Into Words (via Writers Community)

Hyper Modern Writing reviews a new writing tool FastPencil: Practical Features and Practical Fiction.

Editing

Publetariat pointed out a great article on finding an editor for your work by Alan Rinzler on The Book Deal. Read Choosing a freelance editor: What you need to know.

Marketing

I came across a post from 2008 on novelr titled How To Build Community Around Your Fiction.

Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger gave the world 13 Lessons Learned Launching an eBook. It all seems like a lot of work to me, but I suppose success doesn’t come without effort. And as it ends up, Darren has been quite successful.

Marketing uberguru Seth Godin wrote something you should think about: The Law of the Little Shovel.

Want to get the word out via twitter? Mashable had a few stastically sound suggestions on How To Get Retweeted.

Is blogging and twittering even worth it? Charlotte Abbot seeks answers in Do Twitter and Blogs Really Drive Book Sales? Manna Stephenson also has some thoughts on How Blogging and Feeds Benefit Authors.

Dana Lynn Smith from The Book Marketing Maven blogged about Finding Promotional Hooks for Novels. This is an interesting thought, and I stumbled across this with my novel Oasis. I’ve had a bunch of folks say they tried it out because they are nurses, and the lead character is a nurse. Dana also posted some ideas for using video to promote your book. 7 Ways to Promote Your Book With Video

Joanna Penn (of the Creative Penn) had a guest article on the Book Marketing Maven on Why Freemium is an Excellent Opportunity for Authors. If you don’t know what Freemium is, you’d better go check it out.

Another great find on Publetariat was a link to this article: Victoria Strauss — Authorfail: When Authors Attack. Here’s the point – if someone doesn’t like your book and says so online, don’t freak out. It’s not cool. I mean, hey, if I can keep a lid on it when someone calls my book a literary bean burrito from Taco Bell, you can brush off what they say about yours.

Sell It! on the Web has a little Guide for Writing an Effective Press Release.

Writer’s Digest has a good little article on 7 Ways to Develop an Affordable Marketing Plan.

An article that put into words what I have long suspected – 4 Reasons Why Authors Should Avoid MySpace.

Marketing Christian Books blogged about One Creative Book Promotion Idea.

The End.

See you next time.

If you have self published a book and posted or been interviewed online about it, I’d really like like to include your story. If you haven’t yet but you’d like to tell your story, I’d be happy to feature you on my blog.

Submissions will close on July 31st, and the Carnival will be posted on August 3rd.

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

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

Cheers,

Bryce

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?

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.

Last month I reviewed a new resource for authors called FiledBy.com. (FiledBy.com Review) Sometime during the couple of days that followed, I showed up for a heartbeat on the “Most Viewed Authors” list at #2 – right under marketing guru Seth Godin. I drank it in, for it will almost certainly be the last time I am ever on a list with Selth Godin, and even more certainly be the last time I show up on a “Most Viewed Authors” list.

Enough tomfoolery, let’s get on with the self publishing stuff.

Self-Publishing

The Digirati Life mentioned how prevalent self-publishing is becoming, and how there are two members of her close family that are self publishing a book this year. Book Authors Among Us 

BlogCritics.org had an interesting article about the changing world of self-publishing: Self Published Authors and New Self Respect.

Natalie at Journey to Self Publishing blogged about different Printing Options for the Self Publisher.

Marketing

Do you have a hard time getting up the gumption to market yourself? One Minute How-To has up a podcast episode titled How To Build Confidence In Your Self-Promotion Skills.

How well is your online marketing going? April Hamilton had a guest post on Editor Unleashed titled How to measure your online success. She mentions watching for online chatter, which I think is a great idea. It helps you find communities and websites where it might be beneficial to stop by and say hi or hold a giveaway for a couple of your books. She specifically mentions who’s talkin to search social media websites only. Another good way to see what folks are saying about you is to use google’s Alerts application. It will automatically let you know whenever new references to the search terms of your choice (i.e. your name) are found.

Peter Jones at the Bauu Institute suggested something else you can do to help your book along – prepare some material so a book club could use your book. 6 Tips For Creating Book Club or Reading Group Discussion Questions. All you have to do after that is, you know, find some book clubs.

C.F. Jackson presents How To Promote A Self-Published Book Online posted at Website Makeover Workshop. She’s put up a video to help get you started building traffic by using social bookmarking. She also asks a question worth answering – Who Is Your Audience?

How do you plan to get new readers for your work? It doesn’t just happen. It’s something you need to consider. Tiffany Colter recently posted an article on the writing examiner that lays some groundwork for establishing a readership in Getting readers to pick you.

One excellent way to gain readers is by releasing some form of your fiction for free. There are several authors that recently got picked up by major publishers who have done this. You can hear one of them, Seth Harwood, explain what he did to get readers (and thus court a publisher) on another episode from the One Minute How-To. The episode is titled How to Build Your Online Author Fan Base.  I may try out Seth’s main idea for my next book.

Patricia Fry at Matilija Press suggests you Go to a Book Fair and Train as a Public Speaker.

Kelly at Self Publishing Advice put up a list of resources you can use when looking for places to promote your work. Publicity Tools for Self-Published Authors. She also pointed out a “Hot or Not” for Self Published Books.

Self Publishing Companies

Great little tool – Brian Astbury pointed out this calculator for comparing Lulu and CreateSpace pricing http://www.lugaru.com/lulucalc.html

Fiction Writing

Jon Bard at  Children’s Writing Web Journal posted a couple of writing exercises to keep your skills sharp. See Point of View, Voice & Character Descriptions. He also suggested some resources to help Add Realism to Your Writing.

Courtney Vail posted a whole bunch of writing exercises during May – one for (almost) every day of the month. There’s lots of good ideas here. May Mania ~ Stretch #1, May Mania ~ Stretch #2, May Mania ~ Stretch #3, May Mania ~ Stretch #4, May Mania ~ Stretch #5, May Mania ~ Stretch #6, May Mania ~ Stretch #7, May Mania ~ Stretch #8, May Mania ~ Stretch #9, May Mania ~ Stretch #10 , May Mania ~ Stretch #11 , May Mania ~ Stretch #12 , May Mania ~ Stretch #13 , May Mania ~ Stretch #14 , May Mania ~ Stretch #15 , May Mania ~ Stretch #16 , May Mania ~ Stretch #17 , May Mania ~ Stretch #18 , May Mania ~ Stretch #19, May Mania ~ Stretch #20, May Mania ~ Stretch #21, May Mania ~ Stretch #22, May Mania ~ Stretch #23, May Mania ~ Stretch #24, May Mania ~ Stretch #25, May Mania ~ Stretch #26, May Mania ~ Stretch #27, May Mania ~ Stretch #28,

Have you ever thought of co-authoring a book? The Crafty Writer interviewed a couple of friends that recently self published a book. Find it here: Co-authoring: when two become one. Randy Ingermanson also wrote an article on this subject for his newsletter. It’s called Coauthoring Without Murder. The link goes to my repost of the article (with permission) here on StoryHack, as you have to dig through the newsletter .txt file to find the article.

I saw a tweet to this list of Free Online Writing Courses. I made a similar list a while back. There’s lots of excellent info out there, but remember – you have to write or you’ll never get better.

Non-Fiction Writing

Joshua Seth gives some ideas on How to Write Your Book in a Month.

Editing

Publitariat had a nice collection of links to editing resources earlier this month. Focus on Editing. I especially liked Five Common Grammar Errors as Illustrated by Zombies

That’s About It For This Month

Do any of you have any self-publishing success stories? I’d love to hear them.

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

Self Publishing

Natalie Wickham over at Journey to Self Publishing took a humorous look at the Top 10 Reasons to Self-Publish.

Ron Pramschufer took a more serious look at whether or not it’s a good time to self publish. During these bad economic times, do you still think it’s a good time to self publish a book? He also gives a good step by step overview of what it takes to “traditionally” (not POD) self publish a book. This one comes from Publishing Basics.

Marketing/Promotion

Ten Great Ways To Promote Your Book – Each of the ideas on this list are worth at least a post of its own. Using #9 has generated more sales for me than anything else I have done to promote Oasis.

Peter Jones presents Marketing Your Book to Libraries: General Rules and Guidelines for Authors, Writers, and Publishers posted at Bauu Institute and Press. Getting my book into my local library system is now on my to do list.

Kathleen Gaga has been exploring using social networks for marketing on her blog Street Smarts Marketing & Promotions. She learned a couple of things not to do while getting banned from Facebook. Check out Confessions of a Facebook Reject! and I was banned from Facebook…but why? for the whole story. This month she also sought to answer the question Is Twitter useful or a waste of time for authors? She also sends out a warning. Are you guilty of annoying others via social networks? I get like four hundred Facebook invitation things a day. Most of which come from two or three people. If those three people ever had anything important to say, I’d miss it completely. I’m okay with someone sending an occasional request, especially if they thought about it and decided that I might actually be interested. I just don’t care what Mid-80’s hairstyle or which season 4 episode of “Friends” I am.

Jeanne Anderson also has some thoughts on using twitter. Is Self-Tweeting Selfish Tweeting? One Blogger’s Twitter Journey at The Writer in Me – Teaching, Writing, Living.

If you are interested in using twitter in your promotion, Kelly over at OnlineCollegeDegree.org pointed me to a list of 50 Useful Twitter Tools for Writers and Researchers.

There was another marketing idea about Using Webrings to Promote Your Self-Published Book over at Self Publishing Advice.

April Hamilton at Publetariat talked at length about the pros and cons of using Google book search. Her conclusion, and I agree with her, is that it is good to get your book in front of as many new folks as possible. Why Google Book Search Is A GOOD Thing For Indies

Alison had another good Facebook related idea with How to Create a Book Launch Party on Facebook | Christian Publishing Tips posted at Christian Publishing Tips.

Writing

Mind mapping is one way to plan out a book, whether it be fiction or non-fiction. Burak Bilgin over at Distiller’s Corner writes how to Explore Your Creativity with Mind Maps. I use XMind (free) when I feel like doing a mind map.

Self Publishers

Lulu vs. CreateSpace: Which Is More Economical For The DIY Author? – A while back I wrote an article comparing CreateSpace and Lulu. While surfing the net, I came across this great article also contrasting the two services. It’s well worth the read if you’re looking for a “free” POD self publisher.

Self Published Books

Here’s the word on a self-published book. Checking out what’s being done out there can give you a good idea of the quality you should shoot for, and maybe give you some ideas. If you have a self-published book, be sure to submit it for next month’s carnival.

• History Is Elementary presents a review of the self published book The Gift.

That’s all folks!

That concludes the first edition of the self-published carnival. 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.

Now it’s time to start gathering up entries for the second 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.

What is a Blog Carnival?

(From BlogCarnival.com)

A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks.

So what is The Self Published Carnival?

This blog carnival is intended to be a resource for authors of fiction or non-fiction who wish to self publish. Topics will include writing, editing, marketing, POD publishers, more traditional self-publishing company reviews, book promotion, and whatever else might be relevant for self publishing a book.

It’s not intended to be a place for book reviews (unless that book is about self-publishing). I suppose announcements for self published books are OK, but they should be books you’ve written.

Are you an author that either plans to self-publish or has already done so? Would you like to be involved?

Here’s how. You can either use the interface at blogcarnival.com to submit an article (the Self Published Carnival) or you can use my contact form to let me know about your article. If you’d like to host the carnival sometime, that’d be great, too.

Clarification:

I’ve had a couple of questions, so I thought I’d clarify.

If you want to participate, you can do one of two things: write an article or host the carnival.

To write an article, you:

1. Write an article about self-publishing and post it on your blog.
2. Send me a link to your written article via my already-mentioned contact form or using the interface at blogcarnival.com
3. When the next edition of the carnival goes live, you can write a very short post pointing to it. This is optional, but it helps more folks find it.

To host the carnival, you:

1. Contact me and set up a month to host it.
2. Go through all the submissions people have made for the month.
3. Write a “carnival post” where you put links to the submitted articles along with a little commentary about each.

I hope that helps.

The First Edition.

The last day of April will be the last day to submit articles for May’s carnival. May’s carnival will be hosted here on May 5th.