Posts Tagged ‘self publishing’

Every Friday, mbStartups joins GalleyCat editor Jason Boog on the Morning Media Menu to discuss the week’s biggest headlines.

Now that indie bloggers can post alongside seasoned journalists on the Huffington Post and eBooks can pop up on Amazon next to bestsellers, the question becomes, which writers should be paid, and how much? Today on the Morning Media Menu, Kirkus Reviews lent us their indie editor Perry Crowe to weigh in on this week’s headlines and share advice with writers who are fed up with the publishing industry.

Kirkus is an 80-year-old book review publication that was purchased by Indiana Pacers’ owner Herb Simon after it was shut down at the end of 2009. Â  On Tuesday of this week, the company relaunched its website. “Kirkus is making a big push to own the area of book discovery,” said Crowe, “which is basically helping people find books that they’d like to read.” In response to the shift, Kirkus’ paid review service, Kirkus Discoveries, has been rebranded as Kirkus Indie, and Crowe said the reviews will be better integrated with the other verticals, such as fiction and nonfiction, to level the playing field for independent writers.

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AllFacebook Marketing Conference returns to San Francisco on June 28-29! Join us and get a how-to guide for marketing to Facebook’s 800 million users. A full agenda will be announced soon. Keep an eye on our event site for more information. Special early pricing is available for only $249 until this Wednesday, February 15, so register today.

Writing a book. It sounds like a daunting task, but it isn’t so bad once you break it down into smaller pieces and have a support system to help you. I know from personal experience, having co-authored the Twitter Survival Guide, that the mere act of staying motivated can make or break your writing project.

A new service called FastPencil aims to help you in every aspect of your book-writing process, from providing you with ways to communicate and collaborate with your support system to providing publishing tools to actually sell your book.

There are some basic tools that leverage the Fast Pencil community that can help you get started, such as templates for popular book formats like cookbooks. From there you can customize your book accordingly. Turn to fellow writers on the FastPencil site in order to get ideas and feedback, learning from the experiences of others. You can do this by inviting friends into your current project so they can offer that valuable feedback.

If you’d like, you can even gain some feedback from the FastPencil team itself, through their own publishing tools. It will cost you, but you’ll receive editing options, and more. For publishing through FastPencil, you’ll get your ISBN number, and distribution options through eBooks, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

There are two publishing plans through FastPencil, one of which is is basic and the other of which is premium. The prices range from $399 to $699, with features sets to match the prices. The plans and price points are fairly comparable to other services out there, such as BookSurge, which comes recommended directly through Amazon. It’s always a risk to try a new service such as this and pay hundreds of dollars for it, so it may take some time for FastPencil to fully establish itself as a viable alternative to existing publishing options out there.

If you’d like to try out the service and get something for free, however, FastPencil is offering SocialTimes readers a free copy of their book. Just be one of the first 10 readers to email FastPencil at FastPencil [@] fortythreepr.com.