Saturday, February 20, 2010

Publishing on a shoestring budget







Layout, Formatting & Cover Design















  1. While Smashwords has an affiliate program, their books are not yet listed with Amazon, nor Barnes and Noble. I'm somewhat at a loss as to who their affiliates actually are at this point. They do however, own several domains:,,, and so on.

  2. Writing the book is easy. Editing the book is the hard part.

  3. I agree with Tom! But you made a lot of great points in this post. I'm looking forward to the follow up. It's important for writers to know what technology has made possible.


  4. "Once you've gotten your book published, it's time to let your audience know about it."

    Actually, promotions should start well in advance of publication. Unless you've already got a well-established platform, you need to start laying the groundwork for marketing the book once it is available.

    Two other things to keep in mind, especially if you go the very "inexpensive" POD "self-publishing" route: Make sure you own the ISBN (if you use one of Lulu's, they are the publisher, not you--and a subsidy press name on your book likely means reviewers won't touch it and bookstores won't carry it) and make sure you can still price your book affordably. Most POD titles sell no more than 100 copies--and that is partially because they cannot be priced well.

    The bottom line is to make sure you do your research when choosing your path to publication!

  5. Many years ago, I got the impression that and Trafford were the big dogs in print on demand/self-publishing. Maybe they got passed by Lulu?

  6. does a person go about "owning" the ISBN? Who does a person use for a publisher, then, if not someone like Lulu? And how does a person go about pricing the book to be affordable?

    Thank you, kindly, in advance, for any information on these matters; it would be greatly appreciated.