The Indieauthor Guide [Paperback]

April L. Hamilton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1434857689 | ISBN-13: 978-1434857682

The publishing industry is now run like the movie business, with publishers only interested in a narrow selection of likely blockbusters. No matter how good your manuscript is, unless big publishers feel your book is destined for the bestseller lists, they will not buy it. A lot of quality work never finds its way to readers, but at last, with eBooks, Print On Demand and the power of Web 2.0, authors and micro-publishers finally have the means to publish their own books and go indie, just as filmmakers and musicians have done before them. The IndieAuthor Guide takes you through every stage of the process, including illustrated, detailed, step-by-step instructions in its comprehensive chapters: Indie Authorship An Introduction; Publishing Options; Getting Organized; Creating Your Brand; DIY Formatting For POD; Editing And Revising; Designing Your Own Book Cover; Publishing Through CreateSpace; Publishing For The Kindle; Publishing To Other EBook Formats; Promotion; An HTML Primer.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Please be sure to check out the companion website for the book, indieauthorguide.com, which includes lots of helpful links for self-publishers and a number of free, downloadable supplemental materials too. For example, there's a guide to publishing for the Kindle and a packet of the worksheets which appear in one of the appendices, both provided in pdf format for easy download and printing. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

April L. Hamilton lives in Southern California with her two children and entirely too many pets. When she's not writing, kid-wrangling, working to expand the indie author movement, promoting her work, or pursuing her grandiose and hopeless dream of a neat and orderly household, she can generally be found reading, reclaiming the domestic arts (aka "crafting") or taking in a movie.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (May 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1434857689
• ISBN-13: 978-1434857682
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,296,395 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

April L. Hamilton is an author, blogger, Technorati BlogCritic, speaker and essayist on issues related to self-publishing and indie authorship. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Association of Independent Authors, and is the founder and Editor In Chief of Publetariat: the premier online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a gem. It is good as a stand-alone guide, but it will really shine if used in conjunction with other books., June 22, 2008

By 

Jeff Lippincott "JLIPPIN" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Indieauthor Guide (Paperback)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is informative, well outlined, well written, and covers a topic close to my heart - self publishing. This book is divided into the following 12 chapters:

1. Indie authorship: An introduction

2. Publishing options

3. Getting organized

4. Creating your brand

5. DIY formatting for POD

6. Editing and revising

7. Designing your own book cover

8. Publishing through CreateSpace

9. Publishing for Kindle

10. Publishing for other eBook formats

11. Promotion

12. An HTML primer

At one point the author says that subsidy and vanity publishing don't offer any advantages over POD publishing these days. I'm not sure this is true. After reading Aaron Shepard's book entitled "Aiming at Amazon" (ISBN: 093849743X) last year I learned that small text does not print as well with POD. Nor do pictures in the book using POD technology. And if the book is going to be over 200 pages or so, then POD might get a little expensive as compared to traditional printing methods. But if you understand the ins and outs of POD publishing, then it is definitely the route to go in order to sell your writing on Amazon. A good, but slightly dated, book on POD is "Print-on-Demand Book Publishing" (ISBN: 0972380132).

Although I haven't read "The Frugal Book Promoter" (ISBN: 193299310X), it is my understanding that it goes into some depth about the importance of branding when promoting one's book. Chapter 4 in the instant book did a nice job explaining the importance of branding.

Although I haven't read "Perfect Pages" (ISBN: 0938497332), it is my understanding that it goes into some depth about how to create formatted Word documents for Print on Demand (POD). Chapter 5 in the instant book did a wonderful job explaining how to use Word to format your self published book copy for POD.

This afternoon at Barnes & Noble I read "The Frugal Editor" (ISBN: 0978515870) and found it to be a good book. But I liked the coverage of how to edit and revise (or get help in editing and revising) in Chapter 6 of the instant book. Well done!

Mr. Shepard in "Aiming at Amazon" explained how to go about designing your book's cover if you were going to use Lightning Source, Inc. as your POD printing service. In Chapter 7 of the instant book we are told how to design a cover if we are going to use Amazon's CreateSpace printing service. I think this coverage could have gone into a little more detail on how to use and customize graphic files. But it was certainly good coverage on the topic.

The material covered in chapters 8 and 9 I have not seen in print in other books yet. They were well done. And Chapter 10 was informative.

Chapter 11 covered promotion well. I liked it. Other books on the subject I like are: "Sell Your Book on Amazon" (ISBN: 1432701967), "Plug Your Book!" (ISBN: 0977240614), and "The Author's Guide to Building an Online Platform" (ISBN: 1884956823). But consider getting another book ["The Web Savvy Writer" (ISBN: 0977830403)] sold as an ebook by its author, and an audio book entitled "Secrets of Successful Blogging System" (ISBN: 0978806018) which is kind of pricey, but really good. If you get all these resources, read them, and study them, then you should have an excellent idea about how to go about marketing your tome or tomes.

Chapter 12 was OK. But I think I would have liked the book better if it had been left out. It kind of felt as though it was not within the scope of the book's subject matter. All in all, this book is a gem. I think it is good as a stand-alone guide, but it will really shine if used in conjunction with other books I have referenced in this review. 5 stars!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You Can Do It!, August 1, 2008

By 

Clive Collins (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Indieauthor Guide (Paperback)

It is probably true to say that writing a book has never been easier than it is today. The sheer facility of composition with a computer word processing programme has removed one of the great barriers to producing a large volume of text. At the same time, it is also probably true to say that it has never been more difficult to place a book with a publishing company, the reasons for which are persuasively presented at the beginning of April Hamilton's wonderfully comprehensive guide to independent publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide.

As a man, as a previously published author, it might seem that I would have no need of such a self-help volume. Men, supposedly, hesitate to ask for advice or assistance, particularly from women; published authors are - erm - published. Why would one of them want to think about independent publishing? Well, the fact is that I, along with many other published writers, am published no longer. I am still writing, however, and so independent publishing is an increasingly beckoning way out of the impasse I find myself in. But how on earth does one go about it? Enter Ms Hamilton.

The IndieAuthor Guide leads even the chronically inept (I'm thinking of myself) along the road from desire to achievement. It seems to me that there is nothing the would-be independent author needs to know that is not covered, in detail and with examples, in this splendid guide. Even when Ms Hamilton tells her readers that she cannot offer advice on something (the legal aspects of Kindle publication, for example), she promptly offers a link to a site where such advice will be forthcoming.

Some readers might possibly be disappointed that this guide is particularly centred on independent publication through Amazon and its subsidiaries, but the truth is that Amazon is very much the big boy in this particular world now. That minor quibble aside, the vast majority of the advice in the book is as relevant to other independent publishing venues as it is to Amazon.

All in all, The IndieAuthor Guide seems to me to be an excellent and timely helpmate to writers pondering new ways of setting their work before the public. "Come on, you can do it," this guide seems to say, and it does not deceive in this. A five-star piece of work if ever there was one.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The IndieAuthor Guide, June 10, 2008

By 

Sunni Morris "FaerieMound Books" (in the SW desert) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Indieauthor Guide (Paperback)

Reading this book is a must for the writer who is trying to self publish their work. Everything you need to know or could ever have a question about is covered. I had the honor of reading it before publication and I found it extremely helpful and easy to understand. The author has done a massive amount of research.

April Hamilton gives a brief background to the publishing business as a whole and then leads you from start to finish on getting your work into print. She covers subjects like getting started, formatting, editing and designing your own cover as well as promotion and getting a website up. Everything is in plain easy to understand language so it is very easy to follow if you are new at this. In my opinion this book is a must have.