There has been much discussion between publishers and between pundits about DRM: digital rights management. DRM allows “copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work, either to maintain artistic integrity or to ensure continued revenue streams.” (Wikipedia) A book with DRM on it controls where an eBook can be read, how many copies — [...]

In an attempt to get the eBook version of Lifeliner out to more markets without paying iUniverse a fortune, especially since they are non-responsive to author concerns other than filling up the inbox with marketing e-mail, I’ve decided to use Smashwords. Smashwords will take your MS Word document and convert it to many eBook formats, [...]

I wrote my second book — my first novel She — during National Novel Writing Month last November, revised it and got reader feedback and revised it again during Christmas and January, and then I had to decide: head down the traditional road this time and seek an agent or go back to iUniverse? It [...]

You may remember I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the lack of sales information from iUniverse. Well, today the sales reporting software worked, and I just about choked on my hot chocolate. I called up iUniverse to see if I’d misread the figures, but nope, they were right. To backtrack a bit, so [...]

Terry Fallis, a fellow Publisher’s Choice and iUniverse author, has won the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, which includes a cash prize. I’d like to point out that he beat traditionally published — and well-known — authors like Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson to win this coveted prize.

Just when you think selling books couldn’t get any harder, along comes the wonderful news that Amazon is using its hefty muscle to force POD publishers to use BookSurge (which it owns) to print their print-on-demand (POD) books else risk having the Buy button for their authors’ books turned off. Sure, you can still purchase [...]

Contrary to what I’ve been telling everybody, Lifeliner is not being stocked at Indigo at Bay and Bloor, but at the World’s Biggest Bookstore on Edward Street near Yonge and Dundas. You will find it either on the Hot and New Nonfiction display at the front of the store or upstairs in the Biography section. [...]

iUniverse and Chapters Indigo have an arrangement whereby Publisher’s Choice authors have their books stocked on the “Hot and New” table at the front of an Indigo or Chapters store in the author’s hometown for a limited period of time. The author has 8 weeks to prove that he or she can sell the book. [...]

Well, apparently Christmas has put a hitch into the Indigo roll-out schedule. Since bookstores, like all retailers, are drowning at this time of year in orders and sales, iUniverse is holding off submitting fall-release Publisher’s Choice titles to the Chapters Indigo buyer until after the madness ends. In my case, January. That means my book [...]