ACX, or the “Audiobook Creation Exchange”, is a company dedicated to the production of audiobooks. …Or perhaps “production” is the wrong word. But it wouldn’t look as smooth for the marketing copy to say “a crowdsourced program that puts authors in touch with audiobook readers, and vice versa, and provides a low-cost way of doing [...]
Archive for Writing
Self-published video marketing: Make cheap and free video ads with Animoto
Animoto is a video creation service: Pick a theme, a few pictures, music and text. The service will take your preferences and blend them together into a video. You can download the video (as an MP4 or DVD image) and upload that to services like YouTube. Which is exactly what I did. It’s a subscription [...]
DIY authors self-publishing tools, services and marketing recommendations
At this point I’ve cranked two books through a full self-publishing process and have a third on the way with a traditional publisher. I’ve learned a few things and can justify a few opinions about the self-publishing process. Here’s the detail. My current self-publishing status Since publishing with a traditional publisher takes a VERY long [...]
“Waking the Dreamer” cover project featured on crowdSPRING
If you’re a self-published author, you may be using Amazon’s CreateSpace to publish your book. During the book build process, you have a section for your book cover. You can choose from being able to create a book cover using built-in templates, or you can work with other advanced options. One option is crowdSPRING, which [...]
Transhuman #1: “Waking the Dreamer” is now available!
It’s done. The book was written. The costs were financed. The cover art was created. And as of today, the book was published and is available for purchase on Amazon. Get the paper book or ebook “Waking the Dreamer” now:
Book cover complete: My experience with crowdSPRING
Now that I have money to pay for a designer to craft a quality book cover (thanks to Kickstarter – see this post for detail), I was ready to get an artist. Artists are expensive. This is not a complaint – people should get paid what they’re worth. I just mean that book cover design [...]
Funding a book cover: My experience with Kickstarter
As it relates to my latest book, I’m trying something very new to me: Crowdsourcing and (for a lack of a better term) Crowdcreating. This post is about the former. My next post will cover the latter. What is Kickstarter? My situation is that I need help to cover the up-front costs of paying for [...]
Transhuman #1 update: Ready for the cover art. Kickstarter is live.
The book is complete and proofed and ready to print. I even have a title: Transhuman #1: Waking the Dreamer What’s needed next is a cover to put around it! Astute readers may remember a previous post, about how I’m trying a service called Kickstarter to fund the book cover costs. I’ve created my campaign and [...]
Dev and Transhuman update
I’m very thankful for weekends. I’ve got multiple projects going right now: Transhuman #1 is in the second round of editing. Multiple people (who are not me, or one of my alternate personalities) have the book in their hands and are hopefully, frantically, excitedly marking it up as I type this. The Kickstarter cover art [...]
How to be a good writer: Writing resources from great writers
Here are the writing resources that have helped me the most. These are not only “how to write” books and expert recommendations on storytelling technique, but some detail the process of writing and storytelling, which is another thing altogether. Beyond the obvious “write more” recommendation that everyone uses, I’m not worthy of injecting my own [...]
