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PW Select: A Wide World of Self-Published Titles--The Listings
From a lavishly illustrated volume on a Chicago architect, an exposé of D.B. Cooper, and a Ouija board–controlled family sojourn to Kabul, in nonfiction, to novels based in early Hollywood, the Depression-era Corn Belt, and a segregated rural community in Maryland, plus plenty of self-help books—about yoga, baking bread, moving households, training dogs, and an exploration of the lives of wolves: this installment of PW Select has something for everyone, and again shows the enormous breadth of stories people have—and are able—to tell.
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PW Select: Book Publishing Success Measured by More than Sales Alone
Publishing continues to evolve and change as digital readers and digital formats rule the day. Interactive, media-rich apps are changing the very definition of book. And online retail outlets like Amazon have forced bricks-and-mortar booksellers to rethink their business models, and in the case of Borders, to contract.
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PW Select: Agenting Gets Untraditional
For years agents have been grumbling about the death of the midlist author—those writers who are not bestsellers but consistently move tens of thousands of copies. Midlist authors, who once made up the core of major publishing houses, are now forced to take lower advances or head to smaller presses.
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PW Select: Self-Published Children's Books Thrive in the Mainstream
Tales of self-published kids' books that have become backlist staples for trade houses are familiar publishing lore. Two are titles written by young readers themselves: Christopher Paolini's Eragon, first published by his family, then found a home with Knopf in 2003, and Alec Greven's How to Talk to Girls, which grew out of a school report and was picked up by Collins in 2008.
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PW Select: Booksellers Reveal Secrets to Self-Published Success
If there was ever a stigma about selling self-published books, independent booksellers in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states have long since gotten over it. Self-published books sell well at most of the stores in the region contacted by PW. The Bookworm in Omaha, Neb., disclosed that two self-published books—Pleased but Not Satisfied by Berkshire Hathaway executive David Sokol, and Five Minute Talks on Life, Love, and Faith by Fr. James Schwertley, a retired Catholic priest—currently are their top-selling titles.
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Web Seminar Debates How Self-Publishing Will Lose Its Stigma
Thanks to the well-publicized success of authors like J.A. Konrath, Amanda Hocking, and Seth Godin, the stigma surrounding self-publishing is fading fast. Still, it’s far from gone, and a web seminar sponsored by PW and Digital Book World yesterday titled The Evolution of Self-Publishing covered the reasons for self-publishing’s stigma, how and why it’s losing that stigma, and what the industry and individual authors need to do in order to help self-publishing move even further into the mainstream.
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Two Originally Self-Published Picture Books Hit Their Strides
Self-publishing ventures turned into very different publishing experiences than expected for two first-time authors. Jennifer Fosberry and Cheryl Kilodavis, each inspired by one of their own children to pen a picture book, followed divergent paths to get their books into print, yet their publishing stories had similar happy endings when mainstream houses picked up their books. Fosberry's My Name Is Not Isabella was released by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky in September, and Aladdin published Kilodavis's My Princess Boy in late December. Here's a recap of the authors' respective publishing journeys.
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When Amazon Calls: Two Self-Published Authors Reflect
Recently, two of the self-published titles reviewed in PW Select’s inaugural edition in December 2010 were picked up by the Amazon Encore publishing imprint. Both are memoirs: Laurel Saville’s Postmortem (which has been retitled Unraveling Anne) and Tim Anderson’s Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries. PW spoke with Saville and Anderson about their journeys from self-publishing to Amazon Publishing, and learned that their experiences—and reactions to them—were remarkably similar.
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PW Select: Children's Book Reviews
Book reviews of children's books from PW Select.
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PW Select: Nonfiction Book Reviews
Reviews of Nonfiction books from PW Select.
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Introducing PW Select's Self-Publishing Listings
Our decision to cover and assess the self-publishing world's output on a quarterly basis is an acknowledgment of the burgeoning DIY field and the fact that technological advances and a widening array of author services are making it easier and easier for everyman to tell his own story, for everywoman to publish her own book.
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PW Select: Self Publishing Comes of Age
Writing, printing, and disseminating your own work has a varied past. A century or two ago, it was a noble activity, indulged in by such great figures as William Blake, Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, and James Joyce. It endured a long period of indignity, branded as "vanity publishing"—that is, self-publishing as a last resort for works not viable in the marketplace.
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PW Select: Fiction & Poetry Book Reviews
Reviews of fiction and poetry books from PW Select.
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PW Select: Made in Japan, An Author Profile
"The self-publishing world is certainly changing," Tim Anderson will tell you. "And it will continue to gain more respect [if] more quality self-published books are out there getting noticed."
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PW Select: Self-Publishing Payoffs
With self-publishing increasingly accessible and publishers always looking for a sure thing, the number of authors who start out by publishing their own books is on the upswing.
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Self-Pubbed Catholic Memoir Picked Up by Pocket
Pocket Books has acquired the rights to publish the paperback edition of Parish the Thought: An Inspirational Memoir of Growing Up Catholic in the 1960s by John Ruane.
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Success Revealed for Self-Pubbed Author
Evangelist David Nasser self-published his first book out of necessity, and, according to the experts, he did everything wrong.
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Sourcebooks Preempts Self-Pubbed Kids' Book
Sourcebooks has just acquired a children's hardcover title that has sold 179,000 copies since the authors self-published it in 2001.
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Routes to Success Vary for Self-Pubbed Authors
It's no small feat for a self-published book to garner five-figure sales and major media attention, but when two such books break out during the busiest retail season, it's especially noteworthy.
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Self-Pubbed Author Opens Doors for UP
Out here, light can be the raw calcium of old bone," writes Mary Sojourner in her first collection of essays, Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest (Univ. of Nevada Press, Mar.), which chronicles her transformation from tourist/observer to defender of the environment. But what makes Bonelight so unusual is not just the writing.
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