Book Cover Illustrations

Most people have never heard of BiblioBazaar. Yet it’s a company that has quietly been building a book catalog of hundreds of thousands of books — with 272,930 new titles last year. It coverts public domain titles into ebook and POD (print on demand) formats. BiblioBazaar’s strategy is to seel just a few of each […]

Professor Kathryn Sutherland (who teaches at Oxford University) recently studied over 1,000 original handwritten pages of Jane Austen’s writing and discovered the author was a poor speller, often misused punctuation, and committed a wealth of other “sins” that earn a beginning writer rejection letters from publishers. (For more about Austen’s writing problems, visit NPR.) Of […]

There’s a lot of confusion as to what a small publisher is and what constitutes self publishing. Part of the confusion results because many of these terms are used incorrectly (and I am guilty of this myself sometimes). But part of the problem is that publishing itself is in a flux with technology offering new […]

I like used books. Used books fill about half my office and many were bought at bargain prices. If my office ever sinks into the earth without warning, it will likely be the weight of these books that caused the disaster. For authors there is secret hardship that comes with each sale of a used […]

Making books collectible maximizes the amount earned on each book printed. It becomes possible to earn a lot of money with a very small print run.

Several yeasr ago I Ben Bova’s book about writing. As a professional and very successful sci-fi writer, Bova had some surprising advice: Never join a small writing group (unless it was being taught by a professional writer). Second, don’t allow your friends or family members give you advice unless they were really skilled writers themselves. […]

I’ve been getting emails warning of a coming “Government Censorship of the Internet” and threats of “Government Blacklisting.” Strong words there. After reading about the proposed US bill “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act,” I’m afraid I’m about 90 percent for the measure. Here’s why. The bill basically blocks US access to sites that are […]

It’s no secret: I prefer reading text with ebooks as opposed to reading print books. For me the ebook is easier to hold and read in all sorts of lighting conditions from sunlight to total darkness (my reader of choice is an old eBookwise “eBook Reading Device” that I picked up years ago for just […]

I recently saw a writer asking, “So how do you have book signings with ebooks?” Good question. You can only get so many signatures on an iPad, right? But that got me to wondering if an author might produce a different version of their book with “value added” features such as deleted scenes, alternate endings, […]

As some readers may know, I often alter typefaces, and sometimes even design new fonts. I’ve made one of these typefaces available (free for personal use) at dafont.com. I named it “Back In the USSR” due to its Russian influence on its design (and as a backhanded salute to the Beatles’ song by that title). […]