The gold standard for success as an author is to make the New York Times Best Seller list. That’s the big brand banner that publishers, authors and readers want to see on the front cover. It shouts “Read Me! I’m certified!” How does an author accomplish this feat? What does it take for a book [...]

There’s lots of excitement bubbling about new publishing opportunities for writers of short stories, essays, journalism and other less-than-book-length works. Both established authors and self-publishing newcomers with short-form pieces that once appeared only in places like literary and news magazines are finding brand new markets with Kindle Singles and other digital venues like Byliner and [...]

The author platform isn’t what it used to be. A new definition is emerging, based on the reality that in the 21st century, readers don’t depend on the Today Show or the feature pages of the New York Times to find a new book to read. Instead, they’re looking online and expecting to find a [...]

This is the best time ever to be a writer. Especially for those in the vanguard: the self-publishing writers at the cutting edge of the brave new turbulent world of literary art and commerce. I say that with some authority. As a worker bee from deep within the trenches of the book publishing industry, I [...]

If you’re an author of books that have gone out of print, you could be sitting on a goldmine. Savvy writers – especially those with an online following — are reveling in unexpected profits by self-publishing their defunct backlist titles as new e-books. “Today, my backlist has value to me” “In six weeks, I’ve made [...]

When Amanda Hocking, the 26-year-old poster girl for self-publishing, revealed her $2 million book contract with St. Martin’s Press, she defended the deal on her own blog to legions of fans and militant, mystified indie authors. “I only want to be a writer,” Hocking said. “I do not want to spend 40 hours a week [...]

The top dog at one of the most successful literary agencies in New York says he’s in hot pursuit of self-published books to represent to mainstream publishers. “Absolutely, yes!”  That was Jim Levine’s unequivocal answer when I asked him recently if he was accepting self-published submissions. Levine is a founding partner at Levine Greenberg Literary [...]

Mega publishers like Simon and Schuster and Random House could someday cede the midlist to a vast army of self-published authors. In that scenario, they’d focus instead just on blockbuster books by brand-name authors and celebrities. All the rest — the literary fiction, the cookbooks, the self-help books, the bread and butter midlist books that [...]

A successfully self-published book can propel you down the road to a book contract at a commercial publishing house. That’s the truth of the matter, despite the worries I hear from writers that self-publishing could doom their hopes of ever landing a real book deal. Don’t listen to those persistent rumors and urban myths that [...]

“It’s a contact sport.” That’s how one author summed up his experience in a refreshingly frank and illuminating first-person account of what it’s really like to publish your own novel. A minefield with roads forked in every direction David Carnoy started out with a literary agent and high hopes for placing his novel Knife Music [...]