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This January illustration was sent in by illustrator Louise C Bergeron.  Her work always makes me smile.

In the past month, I have gotten a number of requests for self-publishing information, thus the reason for sharing this information with you.  The one important piece of advice I can personally share is not to rush your book out, because you are excited and can’t wait.  If you want your self-published book to stand up to the big boys, you need to cross every “t” and dot every “i”. We’ll talk more about that over the weeks. 

Digital Book Wired reported:

Responding to a changing self-publishing landscape, including Pearson’s acquisition of leading self-publishing services provider Author Solutions, Penguin’s Book Country workshopping and self-publishing community has made some changes and added new features, including a free ebook creation, publication and distribution tool. It has also raised the royalty rate that it offers authors to 85% of net sales, up from 70%.

Book Country had taken criticism from self-published authors for charging authors for publishing services and for the percent of revenues that it takes after the book goes on sale. Author Solutions, now a sister company to Book Country, has also faced similar criticism.

The writer community and self-publishing platform will also now offer an online editor service that will help authors with their ebook formatting issues. The self-publishing tool will now also be open to all kinds of writers, not just writers of genre fiction, which the tool was focused on before. The writing community, however, will still be limited to genre work. Book Country will now distribute to more retailers and also be abandoning its print self-publishing capabilities.

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Since its April launch, www.BookCountry.com has nearly 4,000 members who have posted 500 pieces of fiction, according to the company.

The self-publishing tool is integrated with Book Country’s “genre map,” a detailed classification system of many genres and sub-genres, offering authors fairly sophisticated marketing capabilities, including use of BISAC codes that help readers find books in their area of interest. Users are also given an online marketing guide and advice on pricing through a pricing calculator. Revenues from books sold are to be split between Penguin and the authors, depending on the price the author selects for the book and the distribution method.

“You don’t have to drive around with books in the back of your Subaru anymore”, said Penguin global digital director Barton.

Users can opt for professional print- and e-book production through outsourced firms for $549, produce it themselves for print and digital distribution for $299 or produce it themselves for e-book-only distribution for $99.

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Random House sold 11.2 million ebook units; Hachette 8.7 million; Harper UK 7.2 million, and Pan Macmillan 4.5 million. Some of those units were driven by the deep-discount 20-pence promotional bestsellers that have roiled the UK market in recent months.

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ePublisher Premier Digital announced a strategic alliance with Ingram in a lengthy press release that doesn’t really explain the business relationship, except to say that it covers “the management and distribution of print and digital content” though Ingram’s “integrated print, digital, and full-service distribution services.”

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy