Originally published February 18, 2019; most recently updated November 22, 2021. To keep things simple for first-time authors, I often suggest they stick with Amazon’s ecosystem, using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for both ebooks and print books. However, there is another major player in the print-on-demand (POD) space: IngramSpark (IS), which is the POD service from […]
Technology
Position Your Book for Top Billing on the Publishing Stage – Part 2: Behind-the-Scenes Metadata
This two-part series looks at how to position your book for top billing online. In Part 1, we looked at front-of-house elements that make your book appealing to your audience: cover design, title, description. In Part 2, we cover the behind-the-scenes elements that make your book findable: metadata. You’re at a Broadway show. In the […]
The Amazon Ecosystem for Authors: A Field Guide
Originally published August 16, 2018; most recently updated June 21, 2022. With an estimated half of the US print book market and three-quarters of the ebook market, Amazon is the behemoth in the indie book space. There are other self-publishing companies of course, but I so frequently get questions about Amazon that I thought it […]
Trouble Getting That First Draft on the Page? Speak Your Book
When new acquaintances learn that I help business professionals write books, they often remark, “I have so many good ideas, but when I sit down to write, they just don’t come out the way I want them to!” After asking a few questions, I often suggest that instead of writing their initial content, they speak […]
The Automatic Table of Contents: Your Secret Writing Weapon
You start with a writing plan—maybe it’s a mind map, maybe a detailed point-by-point outline, maybe just five key points and a few jotted subpoints. It’s your choice, depending on whether you’re a pantser or a plotter, whether you’re doing self-contained or emergent writing. Now you start writing. As the pages grow (because you are super-committed […]