Home

Search form

  • Home
  • Getting Started
  • Inside Publishing
    • Editing
    • Design & Production
    • Marketing & Publicity
    • Rights
    • Distribution
  • Events & Resources
    • Events
    • Other Resources
  • FAQs

You've Written Your Book. Now What?

Here at Self Published Author.com, we offer tools, advice, and resources to help you through the publishing process. Bowker is the official ISBN agency in the US. We're excited about authors taking the publishing process into their own hands, and we're here to help however you need it.

At Self Published Author.com, we

  • offer industry advice and perspective, giving you an inside scoop on the business
  • explore marketing tools
  • refer you to partners who can help
  • list events specifically for self-published authors

Welcome! Let's get started!

Courting Catalogs and Bulk Sales

by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Wed Mar 5, 2014

Have you ever dreamed of selling your book to a catalog or large corporation? A sale like that would register several thousand copies of non-returnable product on the book sale meter. The trick is knowing who to pitch and when.  

Distribution
  • Read more about Courting Catalogs and Bulk Sales

Vook Releases Free Daily Sales Tracking for Any Author, Any Book, and All Major Retailers

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Tue Mar 4, 2014

Leading ebook technology company Vook today launched Author Control, a daily market intelligence dashboard that allows authors to track the sales and unit downloads of their books in Amazon, Amazon KDP, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Nook Press, Kobo Writing Life, CreateSpace, Smashwords, Google, and Samsung, and display their results in a secure, easy-to-use online and mobile-accessible dashboard. Learn more about the new service at http://vook.com.

“Author Control is the next step in our vision to empower authors with the best digital publishing services and the right data,” said Matthew Cavnar, co-founder of Vook. “For the first time, authors can get the complete picture of their sales across the major retail channels in one dashboard, helping them take control of their publishing initiatives.”

Inside Publishing
Distribution
  • Read more about Vook Releases Free Daily Sales Tracking for Any Author, Any Book, and All Major Retailers

Copy-Editing: Not Just a "Nice to Have"

by Laura Dawson
Bowker | Fri Feb 28, 2014

Most of us, even English majors, make grammatical mistakes. The difference between a copy-edited book and one that has not been copy-edited is enormous. Copy-editing doesn’t change the substance of what you’re writing about. In fact, it enhances it – clarifying meaning, correcting distracting mistakes.

A good copy editor will adjust your punctuation and spelling, question whether or not you really want to use jargon, make sure you’re using the right terminology, and keep you from embarrassing errors of usage. He will keep your language consistent from page to page, and ensure that you capitalize names properly. 

Editing
  • Read more about Copy-Editing: Not Just a "Nice to Have"

Who Is Your Customer?

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Fri Feb 28, 2014

Who is your customer? Are you sure?

Your first response is probably, “That is a pretty silly question.” Of course, your customer is the person who buys your books. But if you interpret the question differently, your answer could have significant impact on your business future, since it determines your business model and where you will invest your resources. 

In a retail setting, your customer could be the retailer who ordered your book to place on the shelf. And, it could be the distributor from which the retailer ordered your book. In non-retail segments people buy books not for resale, but to use as tools to sell more of their products, motivate their employees, generate more members for their association or educate their students. Couldn’t they all be considered customers?

Inside Publishing
Getting Started
  • Read more about Who Is Your Customer?
  • Obtain ISBNs
  • Edit your metadata
  • Convert your file to ebook
  • Acquire a bar code
  • Build a "View Inside" widget
  • Increase discovery
  • Purchase a QR code
  • Create an Android app

Did you know?

According to Bowker® Market Research in The Book Consumer In 2012

  • 71% of self-published books that were sold in 2012 were purchased by women
  • After Romance, the most popular category of self-published books sold in 2012 was Literary.
  • Nonfiction, Cooking and Self-Help were the most popular nonfiction categories of self-published books in 2012.

Subscribe to our newsletter

 

Email Format
 
 

Links We Like

  • Alliance of Independent Authors
  • Smashwords Blog
  • Bibliocrunch Blog
  • Author Marketing Experts
  • Independent Book Publishers Association
  • The Creative Penn
  • Blog at Lulu
  • Writers Digest: There Are No Rules
  • Porter Anderson
  • Writer Beware
  • The Book Designer
  • Association of Publishers for Special Sales

Bowker is an affiliated business of ProQuest. | © 2013 R.R. Bowker LLC. All rights reserved.
Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use