Comments on: Republishing My Indie Book: Not Just An Ego Trip

By: Susie

Susie — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 08:41:09 +0000

“creating typos were there were none”

Where. Not a great place for a typo! Well done on getting your book competently published in the end though!

By: Ruth Livingstone

Ruth Livingstone — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 09:33:17 +0000

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience with self publishing. For anyone else thinking of going down that route, I would strongly recommend joining the Alliance of Independent Authors (Alli) who offer friendly support and guidance. Alli also warn about well-known rogues and provide a list of reputable companies for independent authors to work with.

Best of luck with your rerelease. A story worth telling.

By: Emmanuelle de Maupassasnt

Emmanuelle de Maupassasnt — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 21:25:19 +0000

I agree with Sandra that self-publishing doesn’t need to be a horrendous experience. I love the control I have over the process.

There are some incredibly talented cover designers who’ll create custom covers for $150 or less. It can be trickier to find a great editor – so it’s good to ask for personal recommendations from author friends for that.

I use Vellum to format my books – but, again, you can pay others to format for you, at a reasonable cost.

I also like being in control of advertising/promotion, as I can direct funds where they’ll have most impact – such as towards Bookbub featured adverts and Amazon targeted ads.

I may consider working with a traditional publisher at some point, if I’m convinced that they can truly ‘add value’ but, at present, I’m happy to keep my hands on the reins.

By: Sandra Hutchison

Sandra Hutchison — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 15:14:03 +0000

iUniverse is considered a scam outfit by most indie authors. You don’t have to have that expensive, painful experience to self-publish. It’s not that hard to find reputable designers and so forth to do a lot of these things yourself, especially if you do your research carefully, but you can also work with BookBaby, Draft2Digital, Pronoun, and other operations that are not predatory in their practices. But even with any of those, research carefully first. Bad houses can buy good ones at any time. Even some of the Big Five have lent their good names to predatory vanity publishing operations. Please, people, check out sites like Victoria Strauss’s Writer Beware or KBoards Writer’s Cafe before you make any agreements! DON’T just rely on the first page of listings on Google.