Idiotprogrammer Blog

Category: publishing

  • More publishing tips

    In 2020, I started a web page of self-publishing tips. I’ve been adding to it over time, but it’s become very unwieldy, and so I am making a new overflow page. The original tips page contained a lot of detail, but this second post offers general thoughts about promotion strategies.

    Compared to others, I am not a particularly fast or prolific writer and I don’t write books for a series. With regard to social media, I post occasionally–but not often–and I certainly do not spend time making multimedia content unless I have carefully planned it in advance. I know some people publish commercially once every year and are regularly posting things on social media (and gaining followers, etc). There is value in doing that, but it’s not for everybody — especially for slowpokes like myself.

    The key challenge in self-publishing is deciding what to spend money on and what to forgo or do yourself. You will certainly make mistakes on these decisions. No-budget methods can work occasionally, but they can also be major time sucks with little payoff.

    Make your ebook so that readers will be comfortable spending $2.99 or more on it. A low price point may make a book seem more competitive against the majors, but the jump from 70% to 35% earnings on Amazon makes it difficult and maybe even impossible to break even on what you spend for marketing.

    The first year of your book’s publication doesn’t matter. Unless you already have a track record and an army of followers or subscribers, chances are that you are going to lose money on it. (I’m almost inclined to say the same for the second year as well).

    In-person events are fun — and great way to spend your time occasionally, but they almost never bring in enough sales to make them worthwhile.

    If you publish often, I would go for cheap pre-made covers (and save money). But for occasional one-off books, I would spend a lot of time and money making sure that the cover properly conveys the book’s vibe.

    I hope this doesn’t comes off sounding too cynical, but writing and publishing books are practically exercises in futility and masochism. The writing process may be rewarding on a psychic level, but the production and promotion can be soul-crushing and wallet-crushing for an indie author. In a way you are investing in an idea or fantasy which is totally anti-commercial.

    Reviews are helpful to a point. But having only 2-5 of them is not terrible — as long as they are semi-literate and perceptive. Book description is just as important, if not more. It’s much more important to devise ways to get the ebook in front of people.

    If you write in a genre that is not particularly popular or accessible, it can be perfectly acceptable to pay for a trustworthy person or organization to write a review of it. (Midwest Book Review, Self-Publishing Review are my current picks).

    Many authors think that dropping your book into an ARC pool will result in more reviews, especially if the site running these ARCs have some mechanisms to penalize freeloaders who don’t post reviews promptly. The problem is that those who are prodded to write reviews often write superficial and worthless reviews and may not even be well-versed in the genre. I’d much rather have a single thoughtful review than ten reviews which are 1-2 sentences long by people who are just phoning it in to improve their score for the ARC pool.

    Institutions will simply not purchase ebooks if it hasn’t been reviewed in Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly or Kirkus (or NYTBR). Exceptions are possible if the publisher has previously established itself as a reliable provider of quality books or if the book has won a prize. But to even to be considered for institutional sales, you’re going to have to spend $1500 or more per ebook.

    I am generally bullish about videos for marketing. Video interviews especially. Videos are forever! I like short talking head videos, not some pretty graphics and animation. For Personville ebooks, I created a series of 3 minute vids about each ebook which I call “Literary Elevator Pitches” (Here they are on YouTube). Right now, the bookstores don’t let you link to videos, but I think that will change soon.

    Exposure is much more important for sales than reviews. That is by far the biggest challenge.

    Exposure can be bought, but it often is expensive and can often cost more than the increased sales it earns. Occasionally it is okay to throw money away for extra exposure, but in general you should stick to marketing techniques that pay for themselves and last for a longer period than the short term.

    The reason why so many people are writing series are that 1)marketing efforts will accumulate with time, and 2)you can discount the first volume to cheap or free in order to hook readers into buying later volumes. This doesn’t always work out because 1)some stories don’t benefit from sequels and 2)a number of people will never read the first volume or even if they do, won’t be inclined to read volume 2.

    A cheap way to get exposure is to have a byline and author bio for an article, but frankly very few websites or Substacks attract enough eyeballs to make it worth it.

    Writing reviews is a thankless job, but don’t dismiss the value of doing it as a way to gain extra exposure. This is true especially if 1)your review is one of the only reviews on a book or 2) the website running it gets a lot of eyeballs.

    Chasing down reviews or “shares” from individuals is a major time suck. I just spent a day and a half making a list of individuals who are 1)reviewers and 2)run book blogs. I had planned to send them press releases and offers to forward review copies to them. After a day and a half of note-taking, I concluded that 1)most of them wrote superficial reviews on genres I didn’t care about and 2)almost none of them could bring enough eyeballs to make it worth it and 3)it was hard to imagine any of them “liking” this ebook — and it wasn’t my lack of self-confidence fueling this perception; it was a fact. Another idea — to target established critics or bloggers who weren’t reviewers per se — seemed equally futile. But at least I could conceive of these people actually liking my book. Ultimately I decided to compile a much shorter list of 15-20 names of bookish people or artistic people I knew and send them the announcement. That hardly will produce an onslaught of attention and sales.

    Netgalley and Booksirens. These are services that you pay to list your advance review copy (ARC) in the hopes that some of them will write reviews. The cost of Netgalley used to put it out of reach for most indie authors, but in the last decade co-ops have formed to share the costs. I used Victory Editing Co-op ($65 per month), making it affordable. Here are my thoughts after listing an ebook for two days:

    1. Publishers can see a reviewer’s history and stats to make a decision about whether to approve the ARC. This is helpful, but it makes it easy for publishers just to approve the ARC to those who give gushing praise for every book they read.
    2. Frequent reviewers know how to play the game. So they write fast glib and mostly positive reviews in order to keep their feedback score high enough to garner future ARCs.
    3. Netgalley is helpful for identifying individuals associated with libraries and schools.

    Booksirens is both similar and different. Booksirens lets you pay by the download. It also gives you great access to reviewers. Theoretically speaking, you can browse through the reviewer list and send emails to these people without ever paying a dime for it. I never understood why Booksirens let you do that — with Booksirens link — for free. Only after I tried it myself did I realize that it’s a major time-suck browsing through the reviewer list. I recently spent a few hours browsing through the list of potential reviewers for a particular title and found it nearly impossible to find even one person who might be remotely interested in the title in question.

    About these review services, I have heard that some of the reviews can be overly negative. A publisher can screen these reviewers to some extent, but I’m not sure that doing so a good idea or even helpful.

    Organic reviews (that is, reviews posted voluntarily and not through a review service) tend to be the most interesting and useful and positive. But how do you get organic reviews? By increasing sales! But can you increase sales if a ebook has no reviews? I’ve found out the hard way that no matter how good the book description and content and price may be, you still need reviews of some kind to make advertising work optimally.

    I say this as a longtime blogger and enthusiast, but writing things on your blog rarely increases your exposure. Google used to feature blogposts prominently in search results, but that ended in the late 2010s. Now AI just paraphases a lot of things without really bringing a lot of eyeballs.

    Even though author websites don’t matter all that much for book sales, there is value is keeping the same domain — and not letting it expire. It is really reassuring (and a sign of quality and commitment) when a domain is still around 10 years later. A writer doesn’t need to blog often on their own website, but it should be at least once or twice a year — to convince readers that yes, you are still there and alive.

    It is believed that many who market books are scammers. More often, they are simply people acting in good faith who overvalue the services they provide. You should still be skeptical of what they promise.

    Literary contests are expensive gambles. With some exceptions, it is very rare for a major literary prize to award a prize to an indie author.

    Success getting a teaching gig in creative writing depends on 1)getting a Phd, 2)getting signed to a major press or university press and/or 3)regularly publishing in small literary journals. Winning a grant with a significant cash award can also make the difference (if you are courageous/foolish enough to spend the time filling out all those application forms).

    Online forums are extremely restrictive about what kind of self-promotion you can do. If you try, be prepared for rejection and rudeness from the Barney Fifes running each forum or subreddit.

    Be mindful of your authorial persona and biography. Some details might alienate certain readers, but more than likely will become part of the overall book brand.

    I know this sounds crass, but many first-time authors signed by the Big 5 are signed not so much for book quality but their credentials and charisma more than writing talent. Big 5 pay a lot of attention to how this person might come across on podcasts and video interviews and personal appearances. That has always mattered, but now more so than ever. You may not be as exuberant or as hot as the new literary flavor being touted on the talk shows, but don’t be afraid of improving what image of you gets projected to the public.

    ****

    Pinning your hopes on Amazon’s algorithm somehow discovering your book and increasing its visibility to readers is unrealistic. Gaming the Amazon algorithms is indeed a thing, but ultimately the problem of exposure has nothing to do with Amazon. It has to do with promotional efforts on the part of you and your publisher to reach consumers. That part often requires a lot of time and money– and frankly many such efforts don’t work as intended for a particular book.

    I used to think that getting good reviews is the key to increasing visibility. It is not. If I had a great book page on Amazon (with a stellar cover, great book description and 100 5 star ratings/reviews on Amazon) that would still not solve the problem of increasing exposure (even though it would probably help later).

    Amazon provides a lot of (paid) methods for increasing exposure, but I think it is dangerous to rely too much on Amazon’s methods because they literally hold all the cards. (They are practically a monopoly, etc.)

    I realize that I have not provided much useful information here. Here’s one tip learned the hard way. Keeping the price very low is not a very effective marketing method for raising visibility. Maybe 5-10 years ago competing on price was a viable strategy, but nowadays, there’s so many low-cost titles even from the majors that it won’t lead to sales except in certain limited circumstances.

    The recent announcement of Draft2Digital to impose an annual $12 charge on accounts not earning $100 in a year is a sobering reminder about the limited distribution opportunities for ebooks. It’s ironic really that as it becomes easier to sell and distribute digital content, most ebook customers are still resistant to the idea of buying DRM-free digital content — opting instead for cloud-based ebooks controlled by gigantic (and often monopolistic) companies. I shudder to think what would happen if Amazon and Google also started charging “publishing fees” for platform access. Ideally authors should make readers aware of a variety of different methods to obtain a book (and include at least one way to bypass the Amazon near-monopoly.

    Direct Sales. It’s a good idea to set up some direct sales method even though only a small number will actually buy through it. According to this reader survey, readers are open-minded to buying direct, and in 2025 Bargainbooksy started to allow links to direct sales. Setting a direct pay method is a time-suck with limited payoff, but as this chart shows, author earnings from a Payhip sale over $2 or $2.25 will bring higher earnings than other channels.

  • Pre-Pulitzer Poetry by Robert Hillyer (Ebook)

    [RJN: For several boring reasons I am announcing the latest Personville Book title on this blog. Below the book description is the book’s introduction and a Table of Contents.] 

    Book Cover -- Pre Pulitzer poetry by Robert Hillyer

    TITLE: Pre-Pulitzer Poetry

    AUTHOR: Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)

    Publisher: Personville Press

    Word Count: 50,000 words (200 pages)

    Publication Date: December 29 2023

    Get the downloadable book: Smashwords || Payhip

    Get the cloud-based ebook: Amazon US || Amazon UK | Amazon CN || Amazon AUS || Amazon IN || Google Play || BN || Kobo || Apple

    Reviews/Feedback: Librarything | Goodreads

    Before winning the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Robert Hillyer (1895-1961) explored a variety of subjects and poetic forms in his books. This new poetry collection contains six of Hillyer’s pre-Pulitzer books in their entirety, including a longer narrative poem (Carmus) that is a haunting fairy tale for adults.

    Book Description

    Before winning the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Robert Hillyer (1895-1961) explored a variety of subjects and poetic forms in his books. This new poetry collection contains six of Hillyer’s pre-Pulitzer books in their entirety, including a longer narrative poem (Carmus) that is a haunting fairy tale for adults with beautiful imagery and sentences.

    Hillyer was classmates with E.E. Cummings at Harvard and became lifelong friends with Robert Frost (who said that he and Hillyer had been “running side-by-side all these years, and he knows that I think of his poetry as he thinks of mine: with affection … (and) … admiration.” While poets of Hillyer’s era were flirting with modernism, imagism and symbolism, Hillyer was working with sonnets and pastorals, mostly rejecting free verse and the “existential agonies of modern man” in order to write about eternal themes like nature, love and death. Hillyer was not really an innovator. Hillyer felt most comfortable writing sonnets and other constricted forms with meter and rhyme, and his poems rarely sounded artificial or stilted. Although occasionally the poems used allusions to art and history and mythology, the poems mostly remained accessible and didn’t require elaborate footnotes.

    This ebook edition also contains illustrations by Beatrice Stevens and two books of translations: a collection of Danish poetry and an improved translation in verse of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It also includes an essay about Robert Hillyer’s poetry by horror writer Arthur Machen and an essay that Hillyer wrote comparing Egyptian religion with Christianity.

    Recently Personville Press republished Hillyer’s 1942 poetic novel “My Heart for Hostage” (which evokes Hillyer’s experiences of living in Paris after WWI and presents a coherent aesthetic sensibility for a lyrical novel). This sensibility is apparent in his poems as well. Critics Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska said that the “gift that Hillyer possessed was an extremely sensitive ear for verbal music, a gift that, however ‘literary’ its speech may be, never fails to delight the reader, for among the best of Hillyer’s lyrics the clear strains of sixteenth-century music were revived and were sounded with the mastery that conceals its art.”

    This volume includes English translations Hillyer did of Danish poems by notable Danish poets (sometimes for the first time). That includes: Adam Oehlenschläger (1779-1850), B.S. Ingeman (1789-1862), Poul M. Møller (1794-1838), Christian Winther (1796-1876), Frederick Paludan-Müller (1809-1876), Holger Drachmann (1846-1908), Johannes Jørgensen (1866-1956), Ludvig Holstein (1864-1943), Jeppe Aakjær (1866-1930), Sophus Claussen (1865-1931) and Johannes V. Jensen (1873-1950) .

    About the Author: Between 1937-1945 Hillyer was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard and taught several authors including Howard Nemerov, James Agee and Theodore Roethke. After that appointment ended, Hillyer taught at Kenyon College between 1948-1951 and ultimately finished his teaching career at University of Delaware between 1954-1961. In addition to publishing several more poetry collections after winning the Pulitzer, Hillyer published two books about versification and several scholarly essays about well-known poets. To avoid having lines of poetry run onto multiple lines, reading this ebook on smaller displays (such as mobile phones) is not recommended.

    Introduction by Robert Nagle

    This ebook collects several poetry books which Robert Hillyer (1895-1961) published during the 1920s.

    I recently edited a critical ebook edition of Robert Hillyer’s 1942 novel My Heart for Hostage, which led me to explore all of Hillyer’s poetry. I wrote a long biographical sketch of Hillyer’s life and works which you can find on the Personville Press website.

    Before Hillyer’s Collected Verse won the Pulitzer Prize in 1934, Hillyer had published 6 poetry books and 2 translations. Three of these poetry books (Alchemy, Carmus and Gates of the Compass) were longer narrative poems which Hillyer called “symphonic poems.” The first two symphonic poems (Alchemy and Carmus) contained beautiful illustrations by Beatrice Stevens. Ultimately I decided to omit Alchemy (1920) from this ebook because the large number of illustrations in Alchemy would make this ebook have an unwieldy file size. You can still view a free PDF scan of Alchemy on archive.org, and eventually Personville Press will release an ebook version of it as well. Carmus is still a terrific read and contains the original illustrations; the story is a haunting fairy tale for adults full of beautiful imagery and sentences. (I personally found it helpful to read the poem synopsis before diving into the poem, but some might prefer skipping it).

    Seventh Hill appears first in this ebook even though it was the last to be published. I mostly tried to replicate the original sequence of the poems as they appeared in each book. Carmus was published together in the same volume as The Hills Give Promise, but that was probably done more for the publisher’s convenience than for artistic reasons. That is why they appear here as separate books.

    Instead of listing each individual poem in the table of contents, this ebook lists poems at the top of the appropriate book section. At the end there is an “Index of First Lines” which should make it easy to look up a poem. There is a small number of notes and commentaries about individual poems which mainly pertain to textual discrepancies and perhaps relevant biographical details. By now, there are many online resources for looking up literary and mythological references (as I had to do for Hesperides in the poem titled “Halt in the Garden”), so there is rarely a need to mention them here.

    In several cases, I added brief explanatory notes of a sentence or two in each section. Short notes are indicated with brackets […] to make it clear that they did not appear in the original books. Some poems translated for the Book of Danish Verse have never before been translated in English and their creators are probably unknown to English-speaking readers. For this reason, this ebook includes a 1-2 sentence biographical profile about these poets .

    Audio Recordings. The Robert Hillyer page on Wikipedia also links to two audio recordings of Hillyer reciting his own poetry in the 1950s: University of Delaware recordings of audio readings (MSS 0696) and a recording of Hillyer reading his own poems at the Library of Congress (PL 25) on archive.org. The University of Delaware recordings include Hillyer reciting a mix of original poems along with many of his favorite poems from previous centuries.
    Layout & Presentation

    When publishing poetry ebooks, it can be a challenge to convey line breaks and indents in accordance with the poet’s wishes (especially when the poet is no longer around). It can sometimes be ambiguous in the printed edition whether the stanza ends at the bottom of the page or at the beginning of the next. Hillyer’s rhyme and meter is fairly regular and predictable, so in most cases it can be easy to figure out these things. Some poems use indents and occasionally an indent is used for special emphasis or echo of a previous line.

    Line length varies from poem to poem, but many of Hillyer’s poems have passages with long lines (sometimes 10 syllables or more). On an ebook, if a line exceeds the length of the screen, it appears as a runon which will be indented. (This may happen a lot if reading in a very small display). 95% of the time, you can tell the difference between an actual indented line (and not simply a continuation of a previous line) by checking if the 2nd line is capitalized (which indicates a planned indent). My best advice would be to try to read this ebook on a larger screen; if this is not possible, try to reduce font size as much as your eyes allow. If you discover any formatting problems or any other quality problems, feel free to drop me a line.

    Pre-Pulitzer Poetry Table of Contents

    Introduction
    Seventh Hill

    • Book One – Meditations
    • Book One – Sonnets
    • Book Three – Pastorals
    • Book Three – Prothalamion

    Halt in the Garden

    • Introduction by Arthur Machen
    • Poems

    The Hills Give Promise: Lyric Poems
    Carmus: A Symphonic Poem

    • Synopsis
    • Canto I.
      • Interlude: Ocean
    • Canto II.
      •  Interlude: The Song of Frema, the Earth-Spirit
    • Canto III.
      •  Interlude
    • Canto IV.

    Book of Danish Verse (Translations)

    • About the Danish Poets
    • By Adam Oehlenschläger (1779-1850)
    • By B.S. Ingeman (1789-1862)
    • By Poul M. Møller (1794-1838)
    • By Christian Winther (1796-1876)
    • By Frederick Paludan-Müller (1809-1876)
    • By Holger Drachmann (1846-1908)
    • By Johannes Jørgensen (1866-1956)
    • By Ludvig Holstein (1864-1943)
    • By Jeppe Aakjær (1866-1930)
    • By Sophus Claussen (1865-1931)
    • By Johannes V. Jensen (1873-1950)

    Coming Forth by Day (Translations)

    • The Egyptian Religion (Essay)
    • Translated Verses from “Egyptian Book of the Dead”

    Superficial Notes & Commentaries
    Index of First Lines
    About the Author

  • Personville Press links

    The Personville Press home page includes information about the latest ebooks published by this Houston-based ebook press.

    It’s still a work in progress, but this web page lets you download Robert Hillyer’s 1942 novel My Heart for Hostage. I actually put the novel entirely on the web.

    Aha, I put up a URL for the Personville Press mailing list.

    I’ll say more about both web pages later.

  • HOW TO: Submit Author Photos to Wikimedia Commons (for Wikipedia)

    Recently I was editing a wikipedia page about an author when I realized I needed an author photo.

    You may not realize that graphics for wikipedia come from a separate website called Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons has a separate mission from Wikipedia. Unlike Wikipedia (which requires that pages for living people meet a “notability” test), it’s pretty easy to upload art or photographs to Wikimedia Commons. The main challenge is making sure that the person uploading it has the rights to do so and that they are willing to use a license that allows others the unlimited right to use the image commercially. After a person’s photo has been uploaded onto Wikimedia Commons, it can be used anywhere on Wikipedia (or other third party sites even). For authors and publishers, it generally makes sense that publicity photos have no special restrictions on use.

    Uploading Book covers (which are copyrighted and not-free) is allowed by Wikipedia under fair use, but there are special rules about that. I discuss this more at the bottom of this blogpost.

    Unfortunately, this information is not widely known. That’s why the wikipedia page for many authors, musicians and public figures lack a photograph of the subject.

    For this reason, I have prepared this page which explains how to get an author photo onto wikicommons (and possibly at some point Wikipedia). Because I work in publishing, the main use case I’m thinking of is author photos, but most of these rules are generally applicable to other living persons on Wikipedia (musicians, politicians, etc).

    Important Pre-Conditions

    To be able to use this upload wizard, you must either be the original photographer or the copyright holder with full copyright control. If you do not own the copyright, then you must be able to verify that the image has one of these creative commons licenses. That means you must 1)know the name of the copyright holder and specify where the digital file comes from. It could be a URL, a book or a publication.

    Personality Rights (and Model Releases). Generally the Wikicommons Upload Wizard does not require a model release. But the copyright owner who is doing the uploading must choose an image which respects the publicity rights (i.e., personality rights) of people inside the photo for that country (or US State). Wikimedia Commons has a process for considering removal requests if an individual feels that a photo violates someone’s personality rights. More information about publicity rights and personality rights and Wikimedia Commons can be found at the bottom of this blogpost.

    How to Upload the Image

    There are basically two ways to upload a graphic or photo to Wikimedia Commons.    Assuming you meet the pre-condition, you must take one of these two steps:

    1.    use wikimedia commons upload form wizard OR
    2.    email wikimedia commons, attach the photo and include a release of the rights to the image in the body of the email message. 

    The first option is easy to do (takes less than 5 minutes), even if the wizard is somewhat complicated. Importantly, it goes live within minutes of uploading.  Below are explicit directions  about how to use the form. 

    The second option is for less tech-savvy people. It takes several weeks for wikimedia volunteers to process.  But it works. 

    Below is a technical guide I wrote about how to perform either step.   Fasten your seat belts! 

    FIRST OPTION: The photographer uses the upload form wizard

    THE EASIEST WAY to get everything done is for the person taking the photograph to do the uploading. It often asks you to include a lot of metadata, but a lot of it is optional. You can always add/edit these things later.

    Before you do anything, you must create an account for yourself on Wikicommmons.

    After you do that, go to the upload form wizard.  

    Below the explanatory graphic, there is a blue NEXT button, which you should press. 

    Some remarks about the process of using the upload form.

    1. First tab allows you to upload the photo.

    2. Second tab allows you to specify if it’s your own work or not (i.e., Release Rights). If you choose THE FILE IS NOT MY OWN WORK, you then have to fill out some rights information. I would avoid selecting this option if at all possible.

    3. Next tag asks you to provide a description — pretty self-explanatory. However, the bottom category is somewhat important. You should add categories by typing AUTHORS FROM THE UNITED STATES and WRITERS FROM TEXAS. Filling out the category part is optional. Anyone can add  it later. Depending on the kind of person in the photo, you may need to choose different categories.

    4. The Add Data tab asks for you to fill out more data (like a description of the picture). Totally optional.

    5. Publish and then you’re done.

    I tried uploading a random selfie of myself to see how to do it. You can use this as a model. 

    Here is another photograph of myself on Wikimedia Commons. In this case, a professional photographer took it and he uploaded it to Wikimedia Commons himself. (I actually sat next to him and watched him do it!) He had to license it with a creative commons license.

    It’s really easy to do if you own the copyright to the image. It’s almost as easy if you have proof that you have full copyright control over the photo (like a signed agreement or posting on a website by the organization which owns the photo). After you finish the wizard and press submit, the image will immediately be available.

    SECOND OPTION: Send Wikimedia Commons an Email 

    The person who holds the copyright to the image (presumably the photographer) should send this email to photosubmission@wikimedia.org . The email should come from an email address that we can recognise as associated with the content being released. For instance, if you are releasing images shown on a website, your email address should be associated with the website or listed on the contact page of the website; if you are releasing images on behalf of an organisation, your email address should be an official email address of the organization.

    I used this wikicommons form to auto-generate this letter .

    EMAIL SUBJECT LINE: release of content attached to this email

    SAMPLE LETTER 

    I hereby affirm that I represent [University of Texas at Dallas], the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of the following media work:

    (list content attached to this email)

    I agree to publish the above-mentioned work under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

    I acknowledge that by doing so I grant anyone the right to use the work, even in a commercial product or otherwise, and to modify it according to their needs, provided that they abide by the terms of the license and any other applicable laws.

    I am aware that this agreement is not limited to Wikipedia or related sites.

    I am aware that the copyright holder always retains ownership of the copyright as well as the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be claimed to have been made by the copyright holder.

    I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the content may or may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project.

    JOHN DOE 

    OFFICE OF MEDIA RELATIONS — UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS

    2022-01-14

    [generated using relgen.js]

    Publicity Rights (Personality Rights) for Author Photos

    Publicity rights (or personality rights) vary according to the country and US state you reside in. The copyright owner (usually the photographer) will generally have to respect these rights when choosing what kinds of photos to upload to WikiCommons (although it is not always required to obtain consent to take or publish it). This can be accomplished simply by getting a model release (even though in many cases it is not necessary). Generally though it is permissible to upload photographs of people taking part in a public event at a privately-owned venue; Some of the questions which the uploader should keep in mind when trying to decide:

    1. Generally is the photo reasonably flattering (i.e., in focus, not sweating, etc)?
    2. Was the author (subject) aware that he or she is being photographed? Does the context suggest that the author is performing a role as writer at a certain event (like after a reading or at a book sale)?
    3. Has this photo already been used by an individual or organization in order to promote some event or product or the author himself? (like publicity for a book, etc). If yes, this implies consent for the image being used for other promotional purposes.
    4. Does the upload include other people in the background? Are the individuals identifiable? Is it possible to crop the photo so that unnecessary figures are removed without damaging the overall photo?

    Generally my impression is that the Wikicommons upload wizard does not have any specific requirements about personality rights, except that the photo must follow the rules in one’s own country and state.

    Uploading Book Covers (non-free, Fair Use) to Wikicommons

    Book covers are a special case; Wikicommons/Wikipedia allows the uploading of certain non-free content still in copyright. On the upload page for non-free content, you should click This is a copyrighted, non-free work, but I believe it is Fair Use. and then check this box: This is the cover or dustjacket of a book, the cover of a CD or video, the official release poster of a movie, or a comparable item. It will be included as that work’s primary means of visual identification, at the top of the article about the book, movie, etc. in question.

    Here are wiki guidelines about what is a low-res images, summary of fair use cases (up to 2019),

    One other thing. If you are uploading non-free content, it must be low-resolution and it must be used on at least one wikipedia article. So if you are uploading a non-free book cover without actually including it inside a Wikipedia article, I’m guessing that it will be subject to deletion.

  • Tips & Advice for New & Indie Authors

    (Jan 2026 Update). I made a More Publishing Tips post which sketches out my latest publishing strategies. The post you are reading has a lot of detail — perhaps too much. Also, I occasionally edit and format ebooks by other people. (here’s my rate sheet for this service).

    This single post has become overlong.

    General Observations

    Writing Habits and Goals

    Ebook Formatting and Quality Control

    Ebook Covers — Value and Technical Requirements

    Promotional Strategies — Branding, Targeting, Audience Building

    Getting Reviews

    Using a Professional Book Reader instead of Hiring an Editor

    Deciding upon a production & promotion budget

    Newsletters and Audience Management

    Selling ebook files directly to readers (i.e., the DRM-free option)

    Pricing Psychology

    Advertising and Promotion

    Advertising on Facebook and Amazon

    Promotional Value (and Challenge) of Making Ebooks Free

    Blurbs and Making the Amazon Book Page Look Pretty

    Should you submit your short fiction to magazines?

    Reference: Legal Stuff

    Tips for Young Student Authors

    Reference: Book Description Character Limits (for sites, ads)

    Reference: How to Get Amazon to pricematch your ebook to free

    Tips I have Given on Social Media & Reddit (reposted)

    Marketing Guides and websites which were actually useful to me

    Publishing How to Books I recommend

    General Observations

    Every author and book is different. What works for one kind of book doesn’t work for another, so advice from one person may be utterly irrelevant to your project. Also, some advice may be applicable to one genre but not the other. Advice about standalone books may not apply to books in a series and vice versa. Except for coffee table books, cookbooks, children’s books, science textbooks and maybe some other specialty books, ebooks are where it’s at. Unless you are buying your own print copies and selling them yourself at live events, the profit for indies is primarily in ebooks.

    Don’t treat advice from successful authors or publishing gurus as sacrosanct. When I was in grad school, my teachers (well-known authors) gave great publishing advice — or so I thought. But I ended up not publishing anything for the next 10 years, so their advice — even if helpful when given, was irrelevant by the time I started publishing. At that time — the late 80s, the big obstacle was finding agents — and developing a long list of publication credits to help convince an agent to sign you. Looking back, that seems absolutely irrelevant to my career — even for someone like me who specialized in short stories.

    Bigger publishers are publishing a much slimmer percentage of titles with every year. You can’t rely on them to get a publishing contract. Even if you do, the wait time is significant and the advance is unlikely to be big if at all. Publishers have been blind to many high quality books –opting instead for books by celebrities and books which neatly fit into a genre. The last decade has led to many different hybrid publishing types (described in Jane Friedman’s chart about indie publishing).

    Focusing all your efforts on Amazon is dangerous. It’s good to sell at least in one place which is DRM-free. (Draft 2 Digital or payhip). I talk about this in more detail in the section below titled Selling Ebook Files Directly to Readers.

    I personally don’t like reading or writing serials, but be prepared for books to be rolled up into and sold as bundles later on.

    A lot of market tendencies for nonfiction don’t apply for fiction and vice versa. Only you can decide what’s best. I would especially be wary of authors in nonfiction — the marketing techniques and success stories they talk about are usually not relevant to your books.

    Don’t fixate on the opinions of what beta readers and friends think. Some people obsess about pleasing everyone with their book. Don’t water your book down just to make Sam or Sally happy.

    You are pushed to publish often — which even good writers can’t do reliably or well. I can probably write a book in 2 years, but that took a lot of practice and that’s even hard for me. Only you can decide what is a reasonable pace for writing books given your individual life circumstances.

    Perhaps this is obvious, but other writers don’t judge you by your sales record; they judge you by steady output and your mastery of the fundamentals. Frankly, every writer starts out clueless about promotion, and eventually the basics of marketing will come naturally. Spending too much of your focus on marketing is a certain recipe for psyching yourself out and diverting attention from the muse’s calling.

    Finally, and I hate to say that, but 99.9% of the world’s population does not care about books and specifically your book. Don’t let that get you down.

    Writing Habits and Goals

    Publishing frequently helps a lot. You should be publishing every 2 years, so arrange your book projects so that they meet that pace.

    Deadlines and Productivity. In the software industry, the question about when something will be ready always has the same answer: it’s done when it needs to be. At some point, project managers need to cut off work on new features and just make the existing features work great. Inevitably compromises have to be made. With books and creative writing, no deadline is set in stone and no compromises need to be made. It’s done whenever you decide it is. Setting writing goals (300 words a day, 2 chapters a month, 1 novel per year) is a pretty thing to do for motivation, but ultimately the goal should not be how many books or pages you have cranked out, but whether you have produced something which is the best you can possibly do.

    Ebook Formatting and Quality Control

    If you have the technical competence, it’s better to make an epub file yourself rather than use one of the distributors’ tools (like Kindle Create). That allows you to submit the same file to multiple distributors. If you don’t, you end up using a company’s specific tools and then have problems using them at a different ebook distributor. Amazon, Draft 2 Digital and Apple have great author creation tools, but they produce ebooks optimized for their own readers). In any case, it’s necessary to keep your text in a source file (.DOCX or .ODT or .IND) and then update your source file before using the company’s creation tools. Feb 2022 Update: Draft2Digital is becoming a major player in ebook distribution and now offers good tools for converting from MS Word to epub. If you use D2D’s templates, it can output semi-decent print books as well as semi-decent ebooks. D2D is also letting you input backmatter and front matter which it will roll into ebooks (and let you update those things rather than having to make another epub file from scratch).

    Before you sell at online bookstores, at minimum you need to verify that an ebook renders passably on Kindle e-ink (Paperwhite), an ios/android tablet, a 2 year old iPhone and Google Play (both inside Chrome browser and the Google Play Books mobile application). Now apparently the Kindle Previewer gives a highly accurate view of how ebooks render on mobile, e-ink and tablet devices (even more accurate than emailing the ebook to your Kindle device). I frequently see discrepancies between how things render on Kindle Previewer and the emailed epub.

    Amazon has an ebook formatting guide (PDF), but it’s often out of date, and even the formatting guide on their website contains out-of-date information. Info about CSS support and image rendering is out of date. Sometimes certain CSS works but is not officially supported. Maybe you can find help on the KDP forums, but Kindle Previewer is now good enough that you can tell how things render across devices.

    Ebook Covers — Value and Technical Requirements

    Whenever authors ask online for feedback about why their ebook isn’t selling, the overwhelming answer from others is “Your cover sucks. You need to hire a professional.” A cover certainly helps with branding and catching attention, but it’s not that important. In the ebook world, a book description, good reviews and author website are much more important than having a topnotch cover. Sure, a good cover can pay for itself (and isn’t that expensive compared to hiring an editor), but 99.9 percent of the time, “Your cover sucks” is a wrong-headed diagnosis of why the book hasn’t sold. Unlike the prose itself, an ebook cover doesn’t need to be awesome; it often needs only to be adequate and functional. Maybe a cover was more important in the days of print books; now it’s just a small and pleasant-looking graphic which appears in search results. (Recently I have been keeping a web page gallery of my fave book covers — so far it has about 200 titles). Update: I ended up paying a pretty penny for an ebook cover for one of my press’s fiction titles. I was very happy with the result; the book was hard to define, and this professionally done cover captured the spirit of it while also looking beautiful to the eyes! But I still think that a bad cover doesn’t damn a book, and a great cover doesn’t ensure the book’s success.

    Unfortunately Amazon gives lower royalties for ebooks with a lot of graphics. This is unfortunate, because graphics can make an ebook look nicer. If you want to use a graphics-intense ebook, you should still publish on Amazon, but use at least one other distribution service which doesn’t charge a fee for large ebook files. For Amazon, larger books also require a higher minimum price. If you keep the epub under 10MB, minimum price must be 1.99. If it’s over 10MB, minimum price must be 2.99. There is no delivery fee if you simply choose the 35% royalty option on Amazon

    The good news is that some other distributors like Google Play Books don’t charge delivery fees. Also, if you sell the files directly to consumers (via Payhip or something similar), you don’t have to worry about delivery fees.

    11/2024 Update: I have several ebooks which are in the 8-15 MB range. Although there is no getting around the delivery fees or lower earnings, here’s a strategy for shaving off 1 or 2 megabytes off the ebook cover so that you can price the ebook below 2.99. In its cover image guidelines, Amazon lets you upload 2 different files — one for Marketing Cover Image and another for Internal Content Image (which is part of the zipped epub file). The Marketing Cover Image can be a super-big file, but apparently there’s a lot more flexibility in what the size of the Internal Content Image can be. The main requirements of the internal content image is 1)that it not be compressed (i.e., a jpg where quality is set to 95/90/80 whatever) and 2)the internal cover takes up at least 50% of the allocated space. I’m still experimenting to figure out what 2) means. After some experimentation, I made my cover 1063 pixels width by 1700 pixels height (96dpi, 24 bit depth) which was 1.69MB. Everything still looks great in all readers and tablets.The marketing cover was 1600 pixels width and 2500 pixels height which was 3.76MB.

    Promotional Strategies — Branding, Targeting, Audience Building

    Along with the previous suggestion, it’s important to build the author brand rather than the book brand. You need to have some kind of regular public presence (via social media, blogs, podcasts). You shouldn’t have to post regularly on these places unless you have a burning desire to. Many writers do fine without posting on the Internet or do so rarely. I like the idea of contributing occasionally to a group blog or something similar. Another author regularly contributes to Quora which increases the number of times that strangers can learn who he is. Maybe one shouldn’t start writing for Quora purely to publicize the author brand, but if it’s something you were doing anyway, it might bring payoffs for the author brand.

    Some kinds of books are unlikely to make money no matter what. It’s important to maintain a diverse portfolio of book projects, mixing ones with more commercial potential with less potential.

    I generally think you get the biggest bang for your buck from efforts that permanently improve your visibility or brand. On the other hand, advertising only works for a finite period of time, and then you have to pay again. That’s why I think things like author websites, videos, podcasts, author photos and sponsored reviews are better investments than paying for ads which only last for a day or small number of days.

    It helps if you are living in a big city or can go to conferences/festivals. It also helps to appear on podcasts and youtube interviews.

    Getting Reviews

    You should pay for one review in the trades (Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, etc) especially for your first book. (cost — 300-500$).Some of the low cost review services are worth doing (at least initially) because you can repost them on your book page on various ebook stores. Midwest Book Review, City Book Review, US Review of Books, (and possibly Reedsy Discovery which I’ve heard good things about): these cost about $50-200. Keep in mind that Citybook or Midwest might do a blurb review even if you don’t pay for a review. Citybook Review says that they do reviews of 40% of books received regardless if it’s paid for. Booklife (aka Publishers Weekly for Indies) claims to review ebooks for free, but I’m skeptical). (Nov 2021 Update: I am less impressed by City Book Review — especially for the price). June 2022 Update: Self-Publishing Review does respectable sponsored reviews in the 160-240$ price range and Independent Review of Books charges $250.

    Set pub date 3-4 months after it is 100% finished and use the intervening time to find reviewers/beta reviewers. (Actually, 6 months in advance is fine too).

    Personally I wouldn’t bother trying to contact major publications or book critics about reviews. Too little likelihood of success. Bloggers are more amenable, but I wouldn’t spend much time trying to research them — unless you already know about them. It’s a big time-suck with little payoff. (If you are going that route, you should check out this book . ) I would probably spend the time contacting your local press, but don’t expect miracles.

    There are a few websites and services which allow you to do giveaways of ebooks in the hopes that winners will eventually post a review. I recommend the free service Librarything Member giveaways which are easy to do. (March 2022 Update: Librarything totally revamped their giveaway service to make it more friendly to small presses. Definitely check it out. The older version didn’t result in many reviews, but the new version seems to reward those who post reviews).

    Netgalley and Booksirens. These are services that you pay to list your advance review copy (ARC) in the hopes that some of them will write reviews. The cost of Netgalley used to put it out of reach for most indie authors, but in the last decade co-ops have formed to share the costs. I used Victory Editing Co-op ($65 per month), making it affordable. Here are my thoughts after listing an ebook for two days:

    1. Publishers can see a reviewer’s history and stats to make a decision about whether to approve the ARC. This is helpful, but it makes it easy for publishers just to approve the ARC to those who give gushing praise for every book they read.
    2. Frequent reviewers know how to play the game. So they write fast glib and mostly positive reviews in order to keep their feedback score high enough to garner future ARCs.
    3. Netgalley is helpful for identifying individuals associated with libraries and schools.

    Booksirens is both similar and different. Booksirens lets you pay by the download. It also gives you great access to reviewers. Theoretically speaking, you can browse through the reviewer list and send emails to these people without ever paying a dime for it. I never understood why Booksirens let you do that — with Booksirens link — for free. Only after I tried it myself did I realize that browsing through their reviewer list is a major time-suck with little payoffs. I recently spent a few hours browsing through the list of potential reviewers for a particular title and found it nearly impossible to find even one person who might be remotely interested in the title in question.

    About these review services, I have heard that some of the reviews can be overly negative. A publisher can screen these reviewers to some extent, but I’m not sure that doing so a good idea or even helpful.

    I’m recommend Bookroar, a book review swap service which opened in July 2021. You list your books and then agree to buy and review a book by another indie author. After you post a review of the book you chose, you will receive a credit which allows you to post your book for reviewing by someone else. Amazon generally prohibits reciprocal reviews, but Bookroar ensures that you never review a book by a person who has reviewed your book. It’s a very good service especially if your book is accessible and not too long or strenuous or reading. In fact, I’d even recommend that you pay $10 or $25 to be a paid member, so you get 1 or 3 extra credits a month. So far all the reviews from Bookroar have been high quality. Even the somewhat negative review was so well-written that I think it still helped the book. That’s enough to make me think that the whole concept has great potential — and the only price you pay is the time to review another stranger’s book. I’m somewhat less impressed at the low quality of the other BookRoar ebooks; finding a title to read and review can be a real chore. Bookroar sets a limit of 3 weeks to review a book, with the option for reviewers to request a 3 week extension. (FYI, I requested an extension for every single book I reviewed!) This is the main complaint I have about the service. Expecting reviewers to write a decent review of a substantially-sized book within 3 weeks is slightly insane. But overall, the people reviewing your title on Bookroar are competent and sympathetic readers.

    Getting Organic Reviews: The Paradox. Organic reviews (that is, reviews posted voluntarily and not through a review service) tend to be the most interesting and useful and positive. But how do you get organic reviews? By increasing sales! But can you increase sales if a ebook has no reviews? I’ve found out the hard way that no matter how good the book description and content and price may be, you still need reviews of some kind to make advertising work optimally.

    Don’t count on friends and family to review your title, much less read it. Most of them won’t bother to read the first page (unless the subject is salacious or they think it’s about them).

    Using a Professional Book Reader instead of Hiring an Editor

    Some common advice given to new writers is that they need to hire an editor. What they don’t tell you is how expensive that can be. You can be talking about over $1000 for something that is not guaranteed to result in more sales.

    For some people who are starting out or recognize that their writing style is flabby, paying 1000-2000 can be a worthwhile investment for a full editing job. But you shouldn’t have to do it every time. Few writers can afford to spend that much for each book they write.

    Here’s an alternative idea: Instead of hiring a developmental editor (which can be pricey), I’ve been recommending that people hire someone to be a “beta reader.” They can be a friend, but it’s better that you not know the person too well — it might affect their objectivity. The beta reader will read the book and then provide one or two pages of notes — reactions and responses. The beta reader won’t correct for style or suggest ways to rewrite paragraphs. Instead this reader will just give touchy-feely responses and mention parts he did not understand. Paying 200-300$ or so seems reasonable for this kind of feedback without putting too much of a burden on the editor (or your pocketbook). Keep in mind that this is only one reader. Another beta reader may notice totally different things. Here is the kind of beta reader feedback which really helps:

    • This part can be skipped without ruining the story.
    • I didn’t understand Person X’s motivation here or what he/she meant when he said Y.
    • I lost track of who was saying what during the conversation.
    • This person’s name (or another proper name) is used inconsistently.
    • This part dragged.
    • This scene or chapter didn’t seem necessary or relevant to the main story.
    • Is there a sentence or paragraph missing here? This word seemed wrong or misplaced.
    • It would be better to spell out earlier that A is B (I didn’t realize it the first time I read it).
    • I wanted to know more about Person G and why he/she would act this way.
    • (Occasionally) Wouldn’t it be nice if J happened or if K did this? (Authors rarely follow suggestions about plot or character, but once in a while such a suggestion hits its mark).
    • This part was too predictable. Or this part was a big surprise. (In response, the author should always ask: Was it good or bad that it was predictable or surprising? Why was it good/bad?)

    August 2025. After reading Dale Roberts’ rundown of Manuscript Analysis (which he admitted was a “sponsored post”), I can see the utility of these tools for some authors (especially if you can use it for less than a one-time cost of $25 or so).

    Deciding upon a production & promotion budget

    Professional advice-givers often recommend that indie authors spend money on X, Y and Z. (Fill in the blanks as necessary: a decent editor, a cover design artist, a video book trailer, 1 or more paid reviews, a professionally done author website, a booth at a literary conference, an author photo by a professional photographer, Facebook advertising, Amazon marketing service, a book promoter, ads in newsletters). But you could spend yourself to bankruptcy on these ancillary services without getting any real payoff. If you believe that one area is especially holding back your book’s success, fine, spend money on it while recognizing that it may not improve earnings. Book advertising is notoriously unreliable; it’s trial and error. Spend a little money, watch for results, make necessary adjustments and repeat. The most common criteria for evaluating an ancillary service is: will this extra expense of X dollars produce more than X dollars of earnings? Actually, you don’t have to break even at the beginning. Spending money on author branding (like a good author photo) are steep one-time investments, but after they’re done, they can have long-term promotional value.

    The most common “easy advice” given to authors is that they should hire a decent editor and hire a professional to do the cover. What they don’t tell you is that hiring an editor is very expensive ($500 to $1500 for someone experienced, possibly higher). Every writer should aspire to the point where they could edit their own copy as an expert — perhaps asking someone to read through just for typos and obvious discrepancies. Paying handsomely for an outside editor won’t necessarily make a book better or more saleable. It just will make it seem less bad to paying customers. Sure, you need to have a quality control process for your writing. But that doesn’t require paying someone. Remember: with ebooks, there’s always the option to make corrections later and upload a revised version of the book.

    You’re going to waste a percent of your ad budget on things which accomplish nothing. Generally book marketing always starts out as an exercise in futility — until suddenly it isn’t.

    Submitting to literary contests. Here’s a detailed chart comparing fiction contests. Here’s a more recent list of literary contests, with fees. I’m of mixed feelings about submitting pieces to literary contests. Here’s some duotrope data (2021) about submission fees and chance of success. To summarize: Average fee paid for literary contests is $19, with 2% chance of receiving an award. Average submission fee paid for genre contests is $17, with 9% chance of receiving an award.

    Newsletters and Audience Management

    The big trend these days is author newsletters. I haven’t been a fan of them until recently. They can be a big time suck, so be careful. They work by advertising a freebie (or “reader magnet”) if the person would sign up for the newsletter. The easiest way to get started is to sign up for Mailer Lite (free) and put your freebies up at Book Funnel. (20$/year). 2025 Update. Substack and Ghost are other good options for posting things to be delivered to people’s mailboxes. The main problem is becoming too dependent on the platform and being able to export your posts outside of their respective platforms. Also wordpress.com has free tools that let people receive emails every time you make a new post.

    Author newsletters can’t perform miracles, but it’s easy to advertise a free book somewhere and then to keep these people interested over the long run. If they sign up, then you essentially don’t need to pay to reach these people anymore; just shoot an email. In contrast, advertising on Amazon/Facebook or the ebook deal newsletters can be expensive and time-consuming. You need an easy way to keep in touch with “interested readers”. That means of course that you need to have several books available for sale for ebook newsletters to work.

    A new service, StoryOrigin offers authors the ability to do newsletter swaps — which makes a lot of sense. But you can do informal author swaps — ads on one another’s blog or newsletters. The real trick is finding like-minded authors you want to swap with. Some authors occupy very narrow niches.

    Although it’s not necessary to set up an elaborate website to promote the books you’ve wrote, it’s necessary to have something — some kind of home base with a list of your books — and a link to ebook stores and possibly reviews. I’m a big fan of 3 minute Youtube vids consisting of nothing but the author looking at the camera and answering some basic questions about the book — the elevator pitch, why you wrote it and what’s interesting about it.

    For newsletters to be effective, you need to have some content you can use as reader magnets. Despite the fact that you make no money from these giveaways, they could potentially lead to more sales. For that reason alone, they need to be just as high quality as the stuff you sell.

    November 2024 Update. It was a bear to set up correctly, but I’m generally gungho about MailerLite to manage email list.

    August 2025 Update. I regretfully announce that Substack (and maybe Ghost) have become default choices for blogging because it allows posts to be sent as newsletters. I have avoided Substack because it’s a wholly commercial publishing system and has ridiculous pricing for “full memberships.” But a lot of people have been using them for their free content and then using the email capability to give people updates. (WordPress.com also has this capability). From a content perspective, I don’t like it because the author cannot choose which items are sent via newsletter, but I have to admit that it helps push messages to consumers (Personally I subscribe to 40+ Substacks, and I read most of them). Frankly, I am tempted to start a substack with some of my content just to allow people to receive updates. For new authors, this is probably a good option.

    Selling ebook files directly to readers (i.e., the DRM-free option)

    Probably the most common ebook question I see on forums is: where can I sell my pdfs?

    Ever since Amazon decided not to sell PDFs to consumers, authors have wanted a way to sell PDF’s instead of EPUB or MOBI. It’s easy to convert DOCX or ODT files to PDF, with one big caveat. It mainly is optimized for one display size. (You can use Adobe to create a “reflowable PDF” but it’s way more trouble than it’s worth).

    Because it’s so hard to do well and because Amazon doesn’t sell PDFs, publishers are using PDFs mainly for advanced reader copies (with the bigger publishers encrypting the PDF using Adobe). Still this does not answer the question: how to sell digital files directly to consumers?

    First, it’s important for you to accept these things:

    • theoretically people could share the file inappropriately with others. It could end up appearing on sharing/piracy networks. (I’m fine with that because it doesn’t threaten my livelihood at all).
    • At least 50% of readers lack the technical proficiency to transfer a PDF/EPUB/MOBI file to a reading device.
    • Even if people had that technical proficiency, they still prefer purchasing from a bookstore which has a cloud-based ebook reader (like Amazon, Google, BN, Kobo).
    • Many of the tools for marketing to readers are geared to Amazon and they don’t allow linking to DRM-free ecommerce stores (which is really irritating). You have to find a way to inform readers about this option, so the value of selling files directly depends on establishing a direct way to communicate with audiences.
    • These services are ideal for reader magnets, newsletter promotions, prizes and review copies. All you have to do is provide a URL and a coupon code!

    Here is a list of DRM-free bookstores. As I see it, you have 3 main options: Gumroad, Payhip and Smashwords/Draft2Digital. While I started my e-commerce store for Personville Press with Payhip in 2021, I was excited at the easy setup and promising royalty rates. Over time I have come to recognize that most consumers are unwilling to buy ebooks from websites they don’t recognize. Smashwords is probably the most prominent seller of DRM-free ebooks, but very few buyers buy directly from Smashwords these days. As of May 2025, I would break down my earnings as: 85% from Amazon, 8% from Google Play Books, 7% from Draft2Digital (3% from Apple and 4% from Smashwords). Payhip has registered zero sales for 4 years straight.

    March 2026 Update. I made an online spreadsheet detailing ebook earnings by price points for the major ebook sellers. I learned that Draft2Digital channels (which includes Apple, BN, Kobo, etc.) are paying 59% across the board regardless of price. Smashwords pays 40% for prices below 2.99 and 75% for prices above 2.99. Google Play continues to pay 70% to authors for all prices, and Payhip pays progressively higher: 45% at $1, 69% at $2 and 76% at 2.99 (and even 80%+ above that). Other distributors are definitely competing with Amazon under 2.99. That’s good news for indies.

    Amazon’s agreement with authors allow it to price match the lowest available price on the Internet. I don’t think payhip is on anyone’s radar right now, but Amazon certainly auto-detects that ebooks are free or lower price on BN, Google, Kobo. You can get around this on Smashwords by creating a “public coupon” which is a discounted price only found on the Smashwords/Draft 2 Digital site and nowhere else. My rule of thumb is to price titles on Payhip and on the Smashwords channel of D2D at 50% of its Amazon price because (for titles costing less than 2.99), the revenues are only 35%. Even with that lower prices, sales on Payhip and Smashwords are still puny compared to Amazon.

    Pricing Psychology

    It’s common to price your ebook at 0 or 1 dollar at the beginning and to raise prices gradually over time as you accumulate reviews.

    One good feature that most distributors seem to have adopted is temporary or time-limited discounts. That allows you to create a temporary price which will revert back to the normal price after an amount of time you specify. Definitely take advantage of that; saves you valuable time.

    Setting your ebook price at free has some value, but the consensus is that it doesn’t increase earnings much unless you also have 4 or 5 other titles which cost money. It’s also smart to make the first volume in a series free or 99 cents. Also, it’s okay to offer a freebie in exchange for an email signup. But ultimately you won’t win many readers solely by offering freebies. (Note: See below for important update about the effectiveness of offering freebies).

    Most of the problems with advertising come from Amazon’s low royalties on ebooks priced below 2.99.

    It’s practically impossible to compete on price these days for ebooks. The major publishers are using a high sticker price (i.e. over $10) and then doing spot sales to put the ebook under $3. The amount of quality titles you can buy between the 1.99 and 3.99 on a daily basis is jaw-droppingly high. 2024 Update. Amazon has allowed the Big 5 to discount their backlist titles to 50 cents or 75 cents, making it all the more futile to compete on price.

    Amazon’s 2.99 price floor allows you to have 70% profits. Amazon allows you to price between 99 cents and 2.99 but at 35% profits. But if you promote your stuff below 2.99, that means a unit profit of only $0.34-$1.04 per sale (compared to 2.10 per sale for $2.99). Suppose you do a marketing campaign and pay $100 for one title; to break even, a 2.99 ebook needs to sell 47 ebooks. To break even at the 35% profit threshold for your $100 investment, you need to sell 142 ebooks (for 1.99 cent per ebook) or 294 ebooks (for 0.99 cent ebooks).

    Much has been written about the 99 cent vs. 2.99 vs. 3.99 price strategy on Amazon. For some book buyers (like me) those extra dollars might be dealbreakers, but not for other people. What’s definitely true is:

    • purchasing a 2.99 ebook on Amazon is a LOT more profitable than purchasing a 99 cent ebook. (For most books, you’re talking about $2.07 profit for one sale vs. $0.34). For this reason it’s much much better to be able to persuade readers to buy on Amazon at 2.99 and above.
    • Ebook deal newsletters mostly are encouraging authors to advertise 99 cent specials rather than 2.99 and up novels.
    • Some ebookstores (Google, Smashwords) are offering higher earning percentages for ebooks below 2.99, but those account for a very small percent of sales volumes. You could probably persuade a small percent of readers to buy from those places, but the majority are still going to stick with Amazon. For example, I get a sliver of sales on Google Play Books, but the higher earnings means that I sometimes earn more $ from GPB than Amazon.

    Advertising and Promotion

    Several discussion boards always contain questions about advertising, and the consensus answer seems to be: don’t bother trying unless you have several books under your name. Purely from a marketing point of view, having several books to promote is easier than promoting only one — especially if discounting one title helps them to be a repeat customer.

    Book Marketing Guru David Gaughran has prepared 15 rules for advertising books, all of which are valid and useful.

    The primary way to promote ebooks at this moment seems to be ebook deal newsletters which authors and publishers pay for. Bookbub used to be the best service, but now it’s too expensive. Other services like bargainbooksy and booksends offer more competitive rates. (I highly recommend Dave Gaughran’s annotatedlist of Best Book Promo Sites which he ranks the promo sites and updates regularly.

    On Google Docs I created a spreadsheet where I calculated the “break even” point on advertising (prepare to be depressed!) Some remarks:

    • Sometimes the goal is not to break even but simply to increase distribution of titles (with the hope of snagging reviews or repeat customers). Maybe its goal is simply to raise awareness of the author in readers.
    • Ad effectiveness can vary with time. I promoted a new ebook at 1.99 with 3 sponsored reviews, but no reviews from paying customers. Earnings were low. On the other hand, if the Amazon page had more reviews from paying customers, maybe the rate of return would be different. Also, it’s conceivable that higher prices and/or better rates can improve future returns. For example, GPB and Smashwords currently pay 70-85% for ebooks under 2.99. It’s not too far-fetched to envision that Amazon will improve earnings below 2.99.

    So far, I’ve seen limited returns on these promo sites — only about a 20-50% of the cost is actually returned in earnings — producing a negative balance. The main reason is that most promo sites are geared to promoting discounted books at a price of 0 or 99 cents, and that’s a price point where authors receive only 35% of earnings; in other words, you need to sell 285 ebooks for the promotion to break even. That does not mean all is for naught. If you define success as raising brand awareness for other books or attracting reviews, then the campaign might still be deemed successful. Also, Gaughran makes the argument that promo stacking (running multiple overlapping promos for different ebooks) can have synergistic effects on brand awareness. For example, my press is coming out with a great story collection in July by Jack Matthews. It will be priced at 4-5$, but I’ll keep the other Jack Matthews titles on sale at different price points and promoting the cheap titles might increase the interest in the 4-5$ title.

    Generally it’s a losing proposition to buy advertising in general media if a significant portion of the audience are not book buyers. Although there is the potential to reach new audiences, the problem is that other products and companies will be willing to pay a higher rate for ads because the products or services being sold bring more profit per item. On the other hand, advertising on Amazon Marketing Service might have more potential payoffs because the people on the site are more likely to be book-buyers. (Not that I wholeheartedly endorse this service. It depends on the book and the price of the keywords you are buying). Update: Multiple sources have suggested that the bid which A.M.S. suggests is way too expensive for its effectiveness.

    Another issue with buying ads on Amazon is ad saturation. Author and book promoter Dave Gaughran once wrote: As I write these words, there are currently 248 different titles on the product page of the Kindle edition of “Let’s Get Digital.” Between the ads, Also Boughts, Also Vieweds, Amazon promotion, and other links, there are hundreds of things that could distract a reader before they purchase.

    The problem with “algorithmic advertising” that you see in social media is that a potential consumer is not likely to see it more than once. Also, consumers are less likely to trust a targeted ad provided by Google or Facebook. Watch your money carefully — especially at the beginning.

    If you advertise, you should start with a small fixed amount, then choose an advertising method and then track its performance. (Nowadays you can check daily ebook sales from every distributor). Generally the ad should pay for itself and then some. But you need to figure out which advertising method is actually cost-effective. You can do that by trying only one promotional campaign at a time and checking if it increases sales. It’s okay to burn a small amount of money when you’re starting out (200 dollars or less), but it’s also perfectly okay not to advertise at all (or rather do primarily no-cost techniques).

    March 2022 Update. I saw this Amazon Marketing strategy suggested on reddit. This sounds like a really effective strategy. (I plan to try it out and report back).

    My strategy is to not let Amazon cajole me into spending more than I can make.

    E.g., suppose it takes you 10 clicks to get a sale. This isn’t great, but also isn’t terrible for the slower months. This assumes your targeting is on point, your cover/blurb are working. If you’re at a $4.99 price point for the ebook, you make $3.44 on that sale. Your break even point is your royalty divided by the number of clicks you paid for: $3.44/10. If you bid any more than $0.34 on your clicks, you will not break even.

    Set your bid price according to your price point and potential royalty. Use your first 100 clicks to evaluate how many sales you’re getting per click. Hopefully it’s less than 10. If it’s more than 10, evaluate what’s going wrong between the click and sale, then try again.

    What we Need: More fundamentally, there is a real need for a book promotion service to allow optional links to Payhip or Smashwords or the author’s home page. That way, the author can direct the reader to a place with the lowest transaction fees and the most likely to result in a newsletter signup or a suggest sell to another ebook. It may take a long time for that to happen.

    Advertising on Facebook and Amazon

    I have never tried either service yet, although I will do so reasonably soon. I remain gloomy about its usefulness. Here are some general thoughts on strategies without having tried it:

    • If you’re linking to an Amazon ebook, you need to have the ebook priced at least 2.99 for it to pay off. (Lower prices mean you have to sell more copies to break even).
    • If you can advertise on book pages, aim not for 1st tier authors/books but 2nd/3rd tier.
    • Expect Facebook, etc to change their rules about promotions often.
    • The goal is for the potential reader/customer to come across the author’s name or book several times. Just hitting the reader one time won’t be sufficient.
    • You need to analyze your analytics to figure out which keywords are actually leading to sales. Then you need to remove any keyword combinations which are not leading to enough sales. Pruning your keywords is an important skill and requires some technical experience and knowledge to do right.

    Promotional Value (and Challenge) of Making Ebooks Free

    It’s unclear how effective offering freebies can be in promoting the author and the book itself. David Gaughran’s post on the the topic is probably the best resource.

    Offering freebies is good if you have many products by the same author which you want to sell. If multiple products are available, it’s good to have at least one thing for free.

    Given that ebooks are already usually cheap, a low price isn’t so much of a barrier that it prevents the customer from buying. But still it’s a lot easier for someone to decide to vote YES on a free item on a Cloud-based reader than paying a small fee for something. It’s slightly harder to vote yes on a free ebook from a DRM-free site even if it’s free because you have to download and manage the file. Maybe your established fans might do it, but that’s why I use a lower promotional price at No-DRM stores.

    Offering a freebie in exchange of a newsletter signup seems to be good for the author. Also having a BUY ONE GET ONE FREE does seem to make someone more likely to pay.

    I don’t think putting a book under creative commons is a particularly helpful promotional tool for ebooks. Why? You still need to pay or work hard to promote the ebook.

    The big unknown in author circles is whether participation in Kindle Select (ie, Kindle Unlimited) actually makes you more money in the long run over conventional sales. One clear advantage of Select is that you are allowed to price your ebook for free for 3 days (but elsewhere, you can do it every day without rules or limits).

    Advertising to make something free? As counterintuitive as it sounds, authors have to spend a lot of time and money promoting free works. Is it worth it? It offers several possible advantages: 1)possibly more reviews and word of mouth, 2)getting the author’s name out there (so people will buy other ebooks by the same author). Here’s what I found after promoting a first story collection (not enrolled in Kindle Select) as an experiment in Oct 2021:

    • $60 for 1 day ad on Freebooksy brought 828 Amazon downloads +36 apple (864 total) ( I paid 6.9 cents for each person to download)
    • $30 + $5 top listing for free ebook on Ereaderiq brought 671 Amazon downloads + 9 apple (680 total) (I paid 5.1 cents for each person to download).

    I did another freebie release in Feb 2022 for a very high quality title. I paid 3.5 cents per download for Freebooksy and 5 cents per download for Ereaderiq. In July 2022, I repeated the same marketing campaign for the same ebook I marketed in Oct 2021. I paid pretty much the same rate and got 700 combined downloads from Freebooksy and 200 from Ereaderiq.

    I still haven’t received any additional reviews from the Oct 21 freebie promotion. So while I don’t regret running these ad campaigns, there has been absolutely no payoff. (The ebook promoted here is for a single non-series story collection which is the only title by that author, so it’s a hard sell anyway).

    In 2025, $20 for a 1 day listing on a niche/genre service resulted in 125 Amazon downloads + 12 Google + 5 Apple (142 total). (I paid 14 cents for each person to download).

    I looked at Bookbub’s stats on Free downloads. Looking at two categories, I see that for a free download, you pay about $500 and get about 10,000-20,000 downloads. Even if you assume that the stats are rosier than reality, you’re talking about 2-5 cents for each person to download. Of course, the trick is convincing Bookbub to accept your ebook (which means getting a certain number of reviews and ratings), which is a challenge indeed.

    My current outlook on ads in ebook deal newsletters is

    1. do at least one freebie promotion during an ebook’s first year.
    2. don’t use the promoter for the same ebook more than 3 times. Sales dropped considerably after the second and even first, suggesting the audience for these newsletters is small and dedicated – they probably even saw it listed the first time.
    3. People who get freebies don’t necessarily convert to buy one of the paid copies by the same author (sad, but true). Maybe later they will, who knows.
    4. The goals of freebies is 1)to improve Amazing ratings (how many stars) and 2) to raise awareness about the author. Even ebooks which are never reviewed can be rated under the Star system (and I think that is pulled from Goodreads). August 2025 Update. Unfortunately some of the newsletters block you from advertising your ebook until your ebook have received ratings from Amazon. (Thankfully, freebooksy doesn’t do that). That may be reason to do freebies until you get enough ratings. On the other hand, paying for someone to download freebies in the hopes of receiving reviews seems like an expensive and ineffective strategy.
    5. After year 1, start advertising on deal newsletters at a budget price, but infrequently — once maybe twice a year.

    Blurbs and Making the Amazon Book Page Look Pretty

    One way that established publishers beat the pants off indie authors and publishers is amassing an impressive number of blurbs about a book which are prominently featured on the book landing page on Amazon and elsewhere. (I have pejoratively called it the “manufactured wall of praise.”) Some come from published reviews, while others may come from famous and not-so-famous authors. I suspect that some of these blurbs were written by authors from the same publishing house or friends or teachers of the author. Gosh, we readers are so easily swayed by social proof. For that reason, I once believed that blurbs weren’t particularly reliable or honest.

    When I got into publishing, I began to see things differently. It is really really hard to get a book reviewed, especially a title which is long or complex or challenging. For those hard books, you can end up purchasing sponsored reviews just to get a decent review of it–and that’s no guarantee that the result will be to your liking. I’ve heard stories of books being savaged by Kirkus reviewers which people paid $400-500 for).

    In other words, publishers and authors use blurbs to save money on efforts to get a book reviewed. Sure, it’s not better than bona fide reviews or sponsored reviews. But it’s better than nothing. Also, often a well-written blurb from another author or critic can capture what is unique or interesting about a book. (A poorly written one can make it sound generic and cliched).

    Have you noticed that occasionally a blurb can be taken from a blurb for a different book? I used to think, “what nerve trying to pawn off an old blurb on another book!” You’re missing the point. Sometimes a statement about another book can provide a good clue about the current one. For example, I’ve been using this generic blurb from an older review of a Jack Matthews book for his newer books. (“Matthews stories are like friends from small towns: They are honest, warm, occasionally lyrical and as strange and idiosyncratic as the rest of us.”) Unfair? Maybe, but this blurb (which costs nothing to rerun) is just so great and generally applicable.

    Here’s one tip for rookies: Use Amazon Author Central to create an author landing page. (It’s on the Marketing Resource Manager page). That requires a separate step — and is totally different from KDP, but it lets you add an author photo, include reviews and stuff from the Author. In July 2021 Amazon allowed authors and publishers to include A+ Content (basically illustrated banners right above the customer reviews). That’s a good thing, but I doubt it will radically change sales if the other elements aren’t compelling. (I am creating an A+ banner for one book and will report back how much of a difference it made). Update: No, it didn’t.

    Update: I created a nice A+ panel for a very quirky book. But I discovered something interesting. Apparently, these panels (and the review section) must be approved for each different country store. More importantly, the Reviews section in Amazon Author central must be approved to appear in Amazon’s other bookstores (UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan). You should definitely use the Amazon Author Central to request that the Review section which you created for the US store be copied over to the other stories likely to have a lot of US customers. August 2025 Update. The A+ panel has made almost zero impact on sales — even when I ran newsletter ads. My current preference is to stock the middle section with a “wall of praise” or an author’s intro — or even an annotated TOC for a story collection.

    Should you submit your short fiction to magazines?

    (See Erika Krouse’s awesome ranking of 500 Literary Magazines for Short Fiction).

    Here’s why I quit submitting to story magazines: the rewards (monetary and nonmonetary) never were significant enough to justify the effort. Also, the submission/acceptance process was too slow. I would spend months waiting for an answer that wasn’t an acceptance. The delays imposed by waiting for publication seemed silly given that I could self-publish a story collection fairly quickly.

    Here are some screengrabs of submission statistics (Aug 2021) for nonfiction and fiction to journals and litmags. It ain’t pretty.

    During the 1990s I followed litmags and submitted to them with marginal (and mostly disappointing) returns. It’s true that there are some paying markets, but not so many in literary fiction — many of which are being run by graduate English departments (which publish at a glacial pace). Another thing. Getting in print increasingly seemed irrelevant given that Internet and blogging has the potential to spread word of your ebook more quickly and cheaply.

    It kind of reminds me of the question of whether high school basketball stars should try out for the pros or play college basketball. Conventional wisdom says, play college basketball first, then go pro. But if you are good enough and if your athletic career only lasts for a few years anyway, why waste 4 of them in college? (It’s not like you can’t go later). Succeeding on the fiction magazine circuit seems to be more of an exercise than an actual milestone. In the past, publishing in magazines was helpful in convincing agents to represent you or publishers to publish you. But if it is no longer a problem to get published or self-publish, why bother?

    I’ve always liked litmags — they have always been vital for poetry, but the prices for most of them are high — and frankly I’d be lucky if friends and family ever picked up the New Yorker once in a while. You’re never going to get many adults — even adult readers — to keep up with Paris Review or Narrative Magazine — especially because even I personally don’t follow them anymore.

    Also, I’m not particularly convinced that getting published in these mags lead to more book sales. Readership at these places remains pretty limited (though I was pleasantly surprised recently to learn about Narrative Magazine — which seems to be doing a lot of things right).

    It’s also important to compare the cost of magazine subscriptions vs. the cost of ebooks. You can always find great discounted story collections through ebook deal newsletters and blogs and price alert services like ereaderiq. Heck, you can also sample the first chapters on the Kindle! I buy tons of discounted story collections by indie/unknown authors for less than $5 (and I even write a monthly column on what I find).

    The important question becomes: if the pay rate for stories is nominal in litmags and if litmags have very limited audiences, what value does getting published there have in establishing or helping a literary career? (aside from impressing English department heads and application committees). I’d much rather receive a positive review of a story collection ebook than have one of my stories accepted from one of the so-called prestige journals. Maybe instead of submitting to these places, I should just pay for an ad instead. There’s far less waiting involved.

    The process/time thing was the thing that most bothered me about story submissions, and I’m glad to see that services like duotrope have made it much more efficient. If I were starting out, I’d probably try harder to submit stories using this intermediary, but it does not make sense for someone my age to do so. On the other hand, I am more interested in getting published in anthologies (which are essentially special issue magazines). Duotrope is great for identifying anthologies looking for submissions.

    I could hardly call myself a commercially successful author (although I am proud of the things I have written and self-published). And I understand that some writers have benefitted from being published in story mags (especially in certain genres). On the other hand, over the decades, I have gotten the sense that most of what gets published in the New Yorker (to name a high profile mag) came in not over the transom but directly from whatever is in the publisher’s catalog for the next season.

    August 2025 Update. I still agree with what I said here, but I overlooked the importance of this publication list for impressing university department heads when applying for a job. Also, (I’m guessing) it probably impresses Big 5 editors trying to decide whether to buy a book. Perhaps the thinking of a Big 5 editor goes like this: 1) this person understands how the academic hiring system works and has already done the legwork and so 2)this person is more likely to have a full time job at a university and also a regional base of support (for doing publicity and readings) and experience doing readings and presentations; so 3)this author is more likely to have a long and varied writing career and is more likely to have financial and social support to enable a lifetime of writerly productivity. In contrast, why should I get invested in an unknown weekender author without a teaching job who probably will never find a way to sustain his writing pursuits?

    Pay careful attention to legal stuff. Buy Writer’s Legal GPS by Matt Knight (highly recommended!) to answer basic questions about contracts, copyright and fair use. (His blog is very useful too). On the other hand, I’ve noticed that authors are way too paranoid about writing/borrowing/quoting/parodying when the risk of exposure is minimal. The answer to everything is not always “Hire an attorney” or “Never do it.” Instead it’s “be aware of the potential legal ramifications” and “decide if the legal risks are high enough that you need to solicit outside advice or avoid it altogether.”

    With collaborators, it’s important to make allies, not enemies. Therefore, legal clarity is vitally important. You want to make sure that collaborators are comfortable working with you and that you are not overstepping your bounds. It’s much easier to discuss and agree on touchy matters beforehand so that collaborators don’t feel taken advantage of later.

    If there are good-faith misunderstandings between collaborators, I would bend over backwards to resolve them and even agree to split the difference about earnings/costs, etc. Get these disagreements behind you ASAP.

    It helps to become aware of legal aid organizations specifically to help artists. In Texas there is TALA (Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts) , and probably other states have something comparable.

    Here’s a legal tip. CMSI created a set of best legal practices in fair use for poetry. It describes how you can legally use poems as epigraphs for stories or book chapters.

    If you are signing a contract with a publishing company, I would be careful about signing multiple book contracts. Also, I would pay special attention to how contracts can be terminated and what steps are necessary to transfer copyright control.

    Tips I have Given on Social Media & Reddit (reposted)

    In answer to a twitter question about inside publishing wisdom, I made 4 tweets:

    • For every talented acclaimed author, there are 100+ exciting indie ones flying under radar & making almost no money. It’s incredibly $$ & risky to promote unknowns — unless you have a)blurbs by famous people b)paid reviews and c) movie deal — or if the author is young & telegenic.
    • Indie author obstacles: Paltry book coverage in Mainstream Media (except cookbooks, true crime & celebrity memoirs). Even highbrow media follows the herd. Memoirs by unknowns are especially hard sell b/c you’re still competing against Holocaust, crime victims & celebs w/ drug problems.
    • Amazon’s dominance of book industry is overwhelming. All parties really are subject to vagaries of Amzon policy & business strategy and utterly dependent on its marketing tools. Every author loves/hates Amazon!
    • Only way to overcome these obstacles is publish often, stick with conventional genres and/or have a trust fund (and/or grant money/academic position) to bankroll your noncommercial projects. Of course, to qualify for a grant or position, you have to win a prize/receive some acclaim beforehand. It’s a vicious circle.

    Thread: Dark Side of Self-Publishing? (April 2025)

    1. Friends and family have almost zero interest in mentioning your book on social media.
    2. Direct solicitation of potential reviewers is a major time suck with little reward.
    3. It’s easy to drop a lot of money in advertising and promotion and accomplish absolutely nothing. On the other hand, without doing so, the book can remain invisible to the segment of people who are your ideal readers.
    4. It really is amazing how many readers will buy only from Amazon.
    5. You discover how many great and interesting books have less than 2 reviews on Amazon/Goodreads.

    Thread: Should authors of litfiction self-publish? (May 2025)

    I feel your pain. But first, I want to differentiate literary fiction from other kinds of fiction. Literary fiction implies 1)getting signed on with a prestige press, 2)winning an award and/or 3)getting reviews in prominent places. Excelling in lit fiction helps in getting teaching jobs and qualifying for grants. So even if lit fiction is a money-losing venture for many writers, one can rationalize it by saying, “well at least it could lead to other kinds of funding or financial support.” Then it becomes a vicious circle. College teachers need to publish in obscure journals and academic presses to impress hiring/tenure committees. But these sources don’t have much visibility (and tend to be expensive for consumers). At this point these authors are chasing not commercial success but the impressive C.V.

    #2 and #3 require a considerable investment of money. Prestige presses are pretty good at figuring out how to help books win awards and get books reviewed in prominent places. Also, they will pay these fees. But how important is that really? And how much do you want to spend for those things?

    As an indie writer you can pay all those award fees in the hope of winning one of them and pay for sponsored reviews and advertising. But you’re investing a lot of your own cash. The choice then becomes: do you try for trad publishing (which has a high rate of rejection and possibly a lot of waiting) or start striking out on your own and failing quickly and often?

    I’ve always thought of trad publishers as poachers searching for quarry in the indie publishing world. Perhaps it makes more sense for indie authors to ignore the poachers until they start circling around you….

    Thread: Should authors pay for dev editors? (July 2025)

    The statement that paying for an objective set of eyes to edit a manuscript is essential for every author isn’t universally true. With the proper distance and time, an author can spot most discrepancies/errors.

    I read and review books from the Big 5 and Indie Authors. I don’t see a huge difference between the quality of fiction in both worlds.

    But when people say that every indie author must pay several thousand dollars for a professional edit to make the work presentable, I have to question that.

    I have generally recommended that new authors pay for a professional edit for their first book (and possibly second). But some authors (including myself) have gone through graduate writing programs and gained basic and even advanced editing skills. These kinds of writers generally produce clean and tight manuscripts. They have also internalized certain readerly sensibilities which they can use to analyze manuscripts. For those people, paying for another “objective set of eyes” seems like an extravagance.

    I suppose that dev editors are good at helping authors to remove flab, and that’s an important thing. That’s not just prose flabbiness, but removing scenes, etc. Maybe for longer novels, getting objective feedback about what parts seems flabby would be valuable even to experienced authors (if only from a marketing perspective). But at what cost? (And couldn’t that be solved with a beta read instead?)

    Reddit thread on what I wish I’d known. (August 2025)

    Seeking reviews and increasing exposure are two totally separate tasks.

    But book coverage in media has dwindled significantly in these outlets, and blogs don’t attract enough eyeballs (maybe they never did). So obtaining positive reviews will only do much in helping to promote a book.

    The bigger challenge is finding a way to expose the book to potential customers. That requires both time and money. It can be a challenge to devise a marketing strategy that breaks even, much less make a profit.

    Podcasting and short TikTok vids are the latest trend to promote authors and their works. But both involve time commitments and a learning curve.

    The Reader magnet strategy (get a free ebook if you sign up for a mailing list) is one way to start a relationship with customers. But that does not really solve the exposure problem.

    The difficulty in attracting organic reviews (Jan 2006)

    There are lots of factors to determine how easily the organic reviews start coming.

    Standalone books and books in a series have totally different dynamics. So do technical and nonfiction books (which may be discovered when a visitor searches by subject).

    Some types of books are relatively easy to review; some are hard. Longer, more complex works take a while to attract reviews; shorter works in a well-known genre are somewhat easier.

    Also, it can boil to budget and timing. Are you spending money to make the ebook available through review services?

    One hard lesson I learned is that for the type of ebooks I publish is that you need at least a few reviews at the start to attract sales and organic reviews. That’s a good rationale for purchasing at least one sponsored review.

    One challenge I face as a short story writer is making the collection long enough for readers to feel that they got their money’s worth at a $2.99+ price point, but not so long that it discourages organic reviews. Because royalties jump to 70% at $2.99, the goal should be to have a title which feels like a good deal for $2.99

    Biggest misconceptions of self-publishing: (March 2026)

    • That readers are willing to take a chance on unknowns (it’s a real uphill battle).
    • That organic reviews come easily over time. (For some genres, maybe, but for other genres it can be a long wait).
    • I am also struck by how disinclined friends and family are to support/publicize your efforts on social media. Actually I am struck by how little social media presence really matters.
    • I am struck by how many quality titles with great packaging and even decent marketing just never take off and are sold 5-10 years later at heavy discount.

    Marketing Guides and websites which were actually useful to me:

    One caveat is that most of these help books assume you are as prolific as Stephen King and writing in a popular genre. In Erik’s book he says that he assumes a writer is publishing 2 books a year — which is wildly out of sync with the productivity of actual writers. With literary fiction, publishing a book every 2-5 years used to be the norm (and that was only if you had some kind of cushy academic job).

    I agree that this standard was probably too easy and that writers should publish more regularly. But there’s a catch 22 embedded in these assumptions. ie.,

    1. the only way you can make a living as a writer is to publish a new book every 6 months or year BUT
    2. the only way you can write a book every 6-12 months is to quit your job and follow some write-to-market formula BUT
    3. the only way you can sell your book is to spend money on ancillary marketing services — which may or may not work depending on your book, BUT
    4. The only way you can find money to spend on marketing services is to invest your own cash — and assume the risk yourself, BUT
    5. The only way to invest your own cash is to be already making a living which lets you save money.
    6. GO to #1 .

    This definitely starts to resemble the underpants gnome business model after a while. But all is not bleak — especially if you have some supplemental income to help you with #4. Beginner’s luck could help, as well as a good circle of friends and successful author branding. The main thing I worry about is momentum: if you are not able to publish as often as Stephen King, gaining momentum can be harder (in terms of media mentions, etc). Basically all you can hope for is that readers discover your backlist of titles soon enough that you don’t go broke first.

    In the past, you would seek reviews in newspapers or TV as a way to publicize the book. More recently you would look to blogs for reviews.

    Tips for Young Student Authors

    (I prepared the next few tips for an ambitious high school author wanting to publish her first book).

    It’s good to try out a lot of things and don’t worry about success or failure. Most readers, agents and publishers are not going to want to read or publish a writer who is still in school, but there are always exceptions to that rule. The important thing is to finish the project you started and make it the best it can possibly be. Even if the book amounts to nothing, 10-20 years later you will always look with pride at how you managed to pull everything together.

    The biggest challenge a writer faces is indifference and rejection. The other big problem is that people are less interested in reading books by people who are not famous. The battle to convince people that your books are interesting takes a lot of patience and perseverance.

    The other big challenge is that writing a book is hard. It takes a lot of work and a lot of revision. It is hard making it as slim as possible and also easy to read. Just organizing plot and character is complicated and hard. It can frustrate many people (even many smart people). Often you don’t realize why your book is hard to read. It’s also hard being original, or trying an idea that doesn’t just copy what another author has tried.

    The big overwhelming question the author must ask is, “so what?!” Why is this book important? Why should someone care about your character? Why should someone read this book instead of a book by Hemingway or Tolstoy? Maybe friends or family can appreciate something you’ve written, but keep in mind that most potential readers are never going to meet you or know how interesting or unusual you are.

    Finishing or publishing a novel is a worthy summer or school project, but many writers have the sense that their writing style will improve, and so there’s no rush in publishing when your style is not yet ready. That raises a paradox. Practice makes perfect; the more you write, the easier it becomes. Also, every writing project is in a sense a practice project, so there’s no harm in perfecting it until you are completely happy with it — regardless of how old you are. (Many sci fi authors and poets get started early though).

    A writer can end up waiting forever for the right publishing opportunity. The submission/rejection process is long and frustrating. It is not unusual to self-publish your first or second book just because you’re sick and tired of waiting for opportunities.

    If you want to self-publish commercially, I recommend publishing as an ebook — either through Draft2Digital or KDP. Both are free. The main problem with KDP is that you are using proprietary tools that work on only one platform (i.e, Kindle). Ideally you want to create an ebook which is readable on several reading systems. Draft2Digital uses its own tools, but I think they produce epubs that can be submitted to any bookstore. Alternately you can use Calibre or Adobe Indesign. The main problem with printed books is that the options either require your buying 100 copies and selling it yourself — or uploading it to a print-on-demand place (like Amazon, Lulu, etc) and then being forced to sell it at too high a price.

    If you want to self-publish noncommercially, I recommend Wattpad or something similar. Many writers have developed a following of loyal readers that way even if they are giving away stories for free.

    If you want to produce something you can show your friends, consider printing it informally from Kinkos and selling for a few bucks (as a zine, etc).

    There is no shame about waiting until you finish graduating from college to start publishing; you’d still be ahead of most writers. One important reason for completing a book while still a student is so you can include it with applications for college or graduate school.

    Paying for editors to edit your fiction is always an option, but it’s too expensive for most people.

    If you are under 25, the easiest way to get feedback for your fiction is to join a writers’ group or sign up for a creative writing class (at community college or at a university). Often you can find information about local writers’ groups at your public library. Or you can start one yourself! Don’t be alarmed if people in your group are significantly older or younger than you. A variety of perspectives always provides the best feedback.

    Alternately you can join an online writers’ group; the main problem is people don’t have to be polite or civilized, so it can quickly get nasty.

    A good place for getting started is publishing to magazines. If you want to submit to magazines, submit to contests, find literary agents, I recommend signing up for duotrope $5/month or $50 per year.

    Nowadays it’s becoming common to pay a submission fee to enter a contest or submit to a magazine. This is not a scam, but you should be careful not to pay too much for this. $5 or less per submission is reasonable.

    Some good books for starting out: Stephen King — On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Also Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark and A Worker’s Writebook by Jack Matthews (which my publishing company publishes!) I love the Roy Peter Clark book even though it’s more about nonfiction writing and journalism.

    One first step to being a good writer is finding out what’s out there. I’d recommend subscribing to a newsletter of your favorite author. Also, subscribing to an ebook deal newsletter can make you aware of good cheap ebooks out there. (Look for bookgorilla, bargainbooksy, bookbub).

    Another good step is regularly listening to podcasts by authors or about a book genre. There are tons of good ones.

    See also: writing advice for middle school students (applies to older writers as well!)

    Reference: Book Description Character Limits (for sites, ads)

    Here are some character & word limits for the various ebookstores and ebook deal newsletters (current as of 11/2020:

    • Amazon opening paragraph (what appears before you click MORE): 466-490 characters.
    • Smashwords opening paragraph: 399 characters.
    • Google Books opening Paragraph: 450 characters
    • Amazon Author Central book description: 4000 characters, 600 words

    Ad copy permitted for the ebook deal promoters:

    • Bargain Booksy: 466-490 characters
    • Bookbub 297 characters
    • Book Gorilla: Lead: 105 characters, body: 324 characters
    • Fussy Librarian: 700 characters
    • Bookspry. 200 characters.

    How to Get Amazon to pricematch your ebook to free.

    It can be a challenge to price your ebook for free on Amazon. For ebooks that are exclusively on Kindle Unlimited (i.e., Kindle Select), they are allowed 2 free days every 60 days. But if you are publishing an ebook nonexclusively, it can be tricky to get it priced to free. Before you do anything, you must make sure that there are at least two places where the ebook can be obtained for free. (It’s relatively easy to price things for free on Smashwords and Google Play Books. After you have confirmed that it is available for free at two different places, follow these steps:

    1. Start at Amazon KDP Dashboard
    2. Click on the help button at the top right hand corner.
    3. Scroll down to the contact us button on the bottom left corner.
    4. Select the pricing option, then select price match and provide the requested information, including at least two addresses where your book can be purchased for zero dollars.
    5. You should hear back from them in a couple of days and the book will be price matched within a week. You have to do this for each of the Amazon stores separately, so .com, .ca, .uk etc.

    July 2025 Update: The last time I tried it, I received a “sorry but no” reply. However, after I priced a title for free on all the ebook stores, eventually Amazon picked it up and priced it for free as well. Importantly, it did this ONLY at the Amazon USA store. I’m guessing that Amazon’s commerce tools automatically pick up prices from competitors, so it no longer seems necessary to submit a pricematch to Amazon this way.

    Publishing How to Books I recommend

    (I’m limiting myself to practical books about producing and marketing books. Information in these books go out of date very quickly. I also recommended some writing guides above.)

    How to Self-publish and Market a Children’s Book (Second Edition): June 2021. Self-publishing in print, eBooks and audiobooks, children’s book marketing, translation and foreign rights Kindle Edition by Karen P. Inglis (author website). I know next to nothing about children’s books, and so in Aug 2021 I paid 6.99 for the second edition which just came out. It’s an excellent book which covers a lot of ground. The author is from UK, and UK/Europe has a different market than USA, but most of her tips still hold true.

    The Writer’s Legal GPS: A guide for navigating the legal landscape of publishing (A Sidebar Saturdays Desktop Reference) By Matt Knight. Knight runs the Sidebar Saturdays blog about publishing and the law, and this book puts all the blog stuff into book form to make a good reference.

    Relevant Things I’ve Written about publishing

    Resources for Traditional Publishing

  • Out-of-the-box ideas to promote literature

    Some unconventional thinking about books and authors:

    Amazon could easily put a little check box asking whether readers purchasing second hand books wish to pay the author a royalty, which in most cases amount to small change, but make a difference in that the actual number of people who buy the book are tabulated to the publisher.

    In Germany, every out-of-print book pays a “Goethe penny” tax to a fund that supports low-cost health care for working published writers. And books cannot be discounted beyond a certain point. And most towns have a writer-in-residence apartment.

    I love this idea; why not have a tipjar attached to the Amazon book link? The apartment idea is good (although the lease would have to be least a year to make any financial sense for the writer). As good as I find these ideas, if they were available to me, I doubt I’d have the time to apply for them. People think it’s so easy to apply for fellowships/awards. It’s not; it’s  tough and time-consuming. What would you rather spend your time on: writing fiction or filling out grant applications? I once spent 3 days on a grant application for $6000 that I ended up not getting. Relatively speaking, a grant for  $6000  shouldn’t even be  worth my time.  Sure, one can justify it by saying $6000 for 3 days of work filling out an application. It’s actually more complicated than that. It’s 3 days of work for something you have only (I’m guessing) a 5% chance of winning. (That’s to say nothing of the post-grant paperwork you would need to fill out). The competition for literary grants is extremely tough, and the application forms are needlessly gargantuan.

    By the way, even if I were interested in grant applications, I am disqualified from most  because I choose Creative Commons publishing instead of book publishing, and most awards specifically exclude you from putting down self-publication credits under the publications section. In the grant I mentioned applying for a few years ago,  judges were required to give some feedback, and their feedback was eye-opening.  2 wrongly guessed that  because I had not yet published a book I was just out of college. Leaving aside the fact that my blog has 2500 posts and I have a fiction site that has reached  100,000+ unique visitors per  year since 2005, I made a conscious decision to avoid book publishing; it’s too slow and conservative in what it chooses. Even if I wanted to publish the conventional route, it’s unlikely that a publisher would be interested in a creative commons project anyway.

    Really, all arts grant application should contain only two questions:

    1. What is your name?
    2. Are you a literary genius? (Answer yes or no).

    Even the second part is unnecessary; you wouldn’t be a writer/author unless you felt you were a genius at entertaining/enlightening. That’s what I like about the MacArthur Awards. At least you don’t have to fill in a grant application.  A friend of mine received a $3000 grant after he was nominated by someone for the award. It’s true he had to submit a one page application and a writing sample, but compared to other grants and fellowships, that’s like a walk in a park.

    Matt Stewart on having an NFL-like literary  draft:

    Most NFL enthusiasts know that the draft is a notorious statistical nightmare–half of overpaid early picks go bust, while late-round sleeper stars like Tom Brady are commonplace. So screw tiered payment.

    Instead, take that $41.7 million–just Matthew Stafford’s salary, not the whole NFL draft’s–and put it toward recruiting aspiring novelists. Personally, I’d settle for $100,000 annually, for which I will absolutely produce a brand-new novel each year. Pay me points if any sales go over a million bucks; otherwise, I settle for the hundred large. Invest in 417 writers like me (equal to one Matthew Stafford) and put the books on the market. Give us three years to get better, under rigorous coaching, literary training camp, and writing weight-lifting. Invest in us. If we don’t produce, cut us loose.

    The LitDraft is more than a mere recruitment tool–it’s a national media event focused on reading! Put the LitDraft on TV (CSPAN, PBS, whatever); give us face time with reclusive literary celebrities; provide running commentary and red carpet interviews; and package nifty segments on writers’ fascinating stories. It’d get casual fans fired up about new voices–hell, it’d get them thinking about reading for a few minutes period. Along the way, the LitDraft creates instant local celebrities, and a brief descent from the New York juggernaut might even make the book world feel slightly accessible to readers. (Did JK Rowling really wear that?)

    I met Matt at this year’s SXSW. We even did a panel together about the Novel in 2050.

    I think artist types don’t really go for these games/competitions because the criteria can be so nebulous/subjective. MSM media put out lots of Kingmaker issues (Time magazine does a lot of these "Most Important People under 40" or malarkey like that). All these series do  is pay homage to the size of  Big Media’s megaphone.

    I hate to say it, but we need more Oprahs even though only Big Media is capable of paying an Oprah-like salary.  There are smaller podcasting Oprah’s (Try Escapepod, This American Life, the  Writing Show with Paula B, KCRW Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt). A number of literary blogs have risen above the rest in prominence to have some influence on the reading public. I could name a half dozen blogs here, but really any ones I select for mention are no more interesting than a hundred others).

    There is no doubt though that one can look at draft pick salaries and say there are much more productive ways to spend that money. Here’s a factoid for you: 78% of NFL players go bankrupt within two years of retirement.

    One of the problems here is that in this day it’s  hard to turn writers into celebrities (especially when you already have celebrities in fashion, cooking, politics, blogging, geekiness, dating, ecology, etc). Not to mention celebrities on youtube, podcasting, Reality TV, entrepreneurship and  general affluence.

    Here are some ideas for helping writers which I think might actually work:

    1. Magazines that pick an author of the week (with interview + book excerpt), plus free advertising for the writer on their site for a period of time afterwards.
    2. Using donations as a gauge for estimating reader enthusiasm (similar to the Jamendo donation page)
    3. Membership fees for literary sites which go towards awards which are doled out by the site’s editors. (This might include feedback from readers, but if left to the editors, it’s less likely to be gamed).
    4. A distribution channel for high quality literary fiction. Websites gain the right to republish high quality poetry & prose on their website if they agree to some conditions (like leaving links to the Author’s site, etc). No money would change ads, but medium and big sites would have unlimited access to certain content.
    5. A literary ad-swapping network. Authors pay a modest fee for the right to be listed in an ad which is distributed across a blog network. (The trick is: how to attract websites willing to participate?)

    It’s interesting where my ideas are headed: advertising as endorsements. Hmmm…

  • Should we still buy dictionaries? (My quest for the elusive Zyjgyduf)

    Two months ago I wrote in an article I wrote about  how to build a better vocabulary,  I recommended buying a good dictionary – only to realize that I no longer possessed one!drseuss

    I have always been a dictionary fiend, but especially become one while teaching in Eastern Europe, where a good English dictionary was still a rare and valuable object. I remember the joy in my supervisor’s voice when I arranged for him to receive a brand new version of American Heritage Dictionary (AHD). I have  fond memories of reaching underneath my bed for the dictionary, looking up a common-but-unclear word like scalloped and closing the book with a precise understanding of the word.

    But I had already given away my  dictionary  and afterwards, well, there was this thing called the Internet, and suddenly dictionaries become bulky and extraneous fetish objects mainly found  in  haunts for  Luddites and retired people.

    Should I be recommending that people buy dictionaries anymore?

    Purely for nostalgia reasons I decided to buy a new dictionary, and after reading this   wonderful review of the New Oxford American dictionary(NOAD) , I dared to think the unthinkable: has  an upstart dictionary  unseated  American Heritage’s position as the best and most practical  English dictionary in the world?  I made a trek to the local Barnes and Noble to do  comparison shopping. If there’s one thing  a brick-and-mortar bookstore would be good for, it would be for comparing dictionaries (the books’  heft added substantial shipping charges when purchased online).  Both dictionaries were at my Barnes and Noble (thankfully), but both were wrapped in tight plastic — heaven forbid that anyone would actually want to flip through their pages at the store! What was the bookstore afraid of — that word pirates would sneak into the store and pilfer some definitions without paying?

    So I went home and did what I should have done in the first place. I went to Amazon.com and used the preview function to compare the NOAD with the AHD . I had expected AHD to win hands down, but even though AHD was nicer to look at and had in-depth discussions about certain words and grammatical points, I actually preferred NOAD for its better etymologies and its secondary definitions.

    So I order NOAD used on Amazon.com for $25. Let me tell you; I  love it. And imagine my delight upon finding a CD for an electronic version for Windows mobile in the front cover. This version didn’t include any  updates and the interface was sort of weird (in an age where you are used to Google’s ajaxy magic  anticipating your words before you actually think of them) but still functional.

    The problem of course was this pesky Internet thing. As wonderful as NOAD is,  it’s never going to keep up with online editions (especially with a dwindling number of customers).  Even though older public domain dictionaries still suck and wiktionary is still pretty basic, online definitions have been improving. If you type definition: iatragonic in the google search box, you will receive an ad-free list of dictionary definitions from various sites. (Do you remember those horrifying Internet days where going to a dictionary site meant having to endure popups and animated ads? those days are long behind us).

    After buying the NOAD, I  compared my online dictionary experience with my old-fashioned 20th century dictionary experience.  Again, let me repeat: NOAD is  outstanding.  Definitions are much fuller and better than any one dictionary definition online, but  they just don’t compare with google’s ability to aggregate definitions from several different sources onto a single page.  On occasion, I’ve relied on wikipedia entries for a word which describe the background of a word much better than any dictionary ever would — see exclave and (more humorously) merkin. The NOAD definitions were excellent, but the wikipedia’s explanations were better.

    The only time when a dictionary was better than Google definitions  was when I wanted to learn how to pronounce the word Swedenborgian. Actually though, I just checked dictionary.com for the same word and heard a computerized pronunciation of the word. That’s nice, except that NOAD and dictionary.com offered contradictory pronounciations. Now what?

    Here are some other things to consider in the digital vs. print debate. As a high school student I used to write  unfamiliar words on  the back cover of a  book (and look them up in the dictionary later). I  was preparing for the SAT, but the habit stuck with me.  With ebooks, I have nowhere to store these unfamiliar words; even if I bookmarked the words, they are not easily accessible (nor are they easy to transfer to a centralized word list).  Quite by accident I have started keeping a  word list on my blog and linking to the best online definition. This has the advantage of letting me access my word list from any computer and watch the list accumulate over time (and  impress random readers).  It certainly works for me, but at the same time it’s kludgy. Shouldn’t some app developer be able to store word lookups from your iPad or Stanza or Kindle and upload them to some website?  Also, wouldn’t it  be great if you could preview  hard words from an ebook  before you start reading?  That would be  helpful for reading a book in a second language (for example).

    In the ebook world, content creators on mobileread have complained about epub’s inadequacy about supporting dictionaries. Here’s Nate the Great’s great xml-based proposal for implementing dictionary definitions in epub.

    Finally I would like to tell you about my first encounter with a dictionary. It was Cat in the Hat’s Beginner Dictionary by Dr. Seuss (actually P.D. Eastman, author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Are you my Mother? ) This pictorial dictionary for children was silly and mostly useless, but I regarded it as a serious dictionary until I came to the letter  Z. The Z section only had  4  Z words (zebra, zipper zoo), but the last Z word really threw me: Zyjgyduf. Unlike the other words, I had never heard of this one and couldn’t even pronounce it. What did it mean? A screenshot is unavailable, but  I can  describe the accompanying illustration (which was the largest in the entire book). It was a large nest filled with about 20 small birds with beaks open. Underneath was the caption: A Zyjgyduf of birds.

    I was only 7, but I went to the library and consulted several gigantic adult dictionaries to learn more about this  mysterious Zyjgyduf word.   Finally, with the librarian’s help, I found  Dr. Seuss’s  mailing address   and  wrote him a letter asking for a clearer  definition.

    But Dr. Seuss never wrote me back. That  stuck-up bastard.

  • Should we care about Sarah Palin’s autobiography?

    Literary critic Stanley Fish finds Sarah Palin’s autobiography to be authentic in its own way:

    Do I believe any of this? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she does, and that her readers feel they are hearing an authentic voice. I find the voice undeniably authentic (yes, I know the book was written “with the help” of Lynn Vincent, but many books, including my most recent one, are put together by an editor). It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety. It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustain us? And it also says, vote for me next time. For it is the voice of a politician, of the little girl who thought she could fly, tried it, scraped her knees, dusted herself off and “kept walking.”

    Later, in response to commenters, he adds:

    The distinction between biography and autobiography is really quite simple: the terms mark the difference between the effort of one person to get the details of another person’s life straight and the effort of one person to have her say about the kind of life she has led. In the writing of biography objectivity is both the goal and the standard for the biographer who stands at a distance from his subject. Autobiographers by definition have no distance from their subjects; they are in the business of expressing and revealing themselves, and while objectivity is often something they claim, failing to make good on that claim will not be regarded as fatal as it would be for a biographer. Instead it will be regarded as another piece of information about the personality whose portrait is being painted in words. To put in the simplest terms, a biographer is saying, “This is the way it was”; an autobiographer is saying, “This is the way I saw it and remember it.”

    …

    … the better course would be to interrogate the assumption that a book can be said to be an author’s only if he or she has written every word or at least written most of the words. Is it likely that Sarah Palin will disown the book’s statements or express surprise at them or stop saying in interviews, “As I wrote in my book . . . ”? I don’t think so. Her name is on it because, no matter how many of the words are literally hers, she is its presiding spirit. We must assume that, like a director who reviews the work of his editor, she had the right of approval at every moment and could have said (probably did say), “No, that’s not what I had in mind” or “Yes, that captures my sentiments and recollections entirely.”

    Timothy Teeter  replies:

    Yes, we can cut the autobiographer some slack. St Augustine’s friends might recall the pear stealing incident a bit differently. But we would indeed judge the Confessions differently if we discovered that the incident never happened, and we would judge it very differently if we discovered that St Augustine knew it never happened and just made it up to justify his theological convictions.

    In any case, if the presentation of the self in an autobiography is all that matters, then, for the reader, part of judging that self-presentation is discovering the autobiographer’s capacity for accuracy and self-honesty. That is the standard we apply, after all, in all of our daily relationships. If Dr. Fish discovered that his wife, after saying for years that she had been faithful, had in fact been carrying on an affair, would he say, well what matters is that she said she was faithful, or that she was truthful? I know what I would think.

    Is it relevant to our discussion about why the book was written and whether it was published at all?

    I don’t think we should be surprised that a publisher should make a book by Sarah Palin to be readable or true sounding. Isn’t that what editors (and ghost writers) are paid to do? In a way, it should be no surprise that a politician who received a handsome "makeover" during the election should seek a literary makeover as well.

    But does the commercial nature of the undertaking undermine the work’s value? I think we can assume that a public figure such as Palin would not normally spend the time to write an autobiography unless she received a generous offer. Publishers like Harper Collins are shaping the public perception of value; if people read (let’s say) 8 books a year, and 2 of them are heavily-promoted celebrity bios, how is that affecting the public’s attitude towards reading? Will the funding and production of these books bring a better understanding to future scholars about what this decade was all about?

    A little authorial jealousy is showing here. I am an unknown writer in my forties. I have not made more than a hundred dollars for anything I have written. Although I don’t write primarily memoir, at times I have experimented in that genre. I have spent the last 20 years trying to find my own voice. It seems infuriating to me when mainstream media injects into the public discourse a discussion of a memoir by someone who has barely spent the time to ponder the aspects of writing it has taken me years to do.

    As it happens I am writing a critical biography (sort of) about a distinguished but unknown fiction writer. The book is unlikely to have a wide audience (regardless of how much time and effort I spend on it). It is likely to be ignored by media sources overwhelmed with the triviality of celebritydom. The cynic in me says that I should ditch that project and instead pick the latest celebrity who has fallen out of grace and write about that. Such a project may not accomplish very much, but have a better chance of receiving the attention of today’s critics.

    To  Mr. Fish: I understand the need to grab aspects of popular culture in order to talk about textual issues. But how easily can you absolve yourself of your role in the  buzz-making machinery?

    To readers: I don’t read widely in the genre of memoir, but here are some texts that have grabbed me recently:

    1. Vivian Gornick’s Situation and the Story.
    2. Joy Castro’s The Truth Book
    3. Ted Solotaroff’s First Loves
    4. Travels with Lisbeth. by Lars Eighner
    5. R Crumb Coffee Table Art Book
    6. How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons by Frances Strand (for comic relief).