David Gaughran's Blog, page 19

The Hilarious Hypocrisy of Jonathan Franzen

Photo by David Shankbone, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Jonathan Franzen’s Guardian article – What’s Wrong With The Modern World – was such a monumental act of self-parody that I was surprised it wasn’t published in The Onion. Even his failures (to have sex with an “unbelievably pretty girl” in Munich) aren’t failures, but a decision he makes, right before shoehorning in mention of his Fulbright scholarship. Classic Franzen, you might say.

Franzen likes to think of himself as a “lefty” but he’s...

Author Solutions Takes Signing Scam To Miami Book Fair

Another day, another Author Solutions scam in my inbox. Remember the Author Solutionsbook signing scamplanned for The Word on the Street Festival in Toronto next month (to which the organizers are turning a blind eye)?

I suspected that the Word on the Street Festival wasn’t the only literary event that Author Solutions would be targeting, given that Author Solutions made $297,000 from the 2012 Word on the Street Festival. I was right.

The Miami Book Fair is a long-established, reputable literar...

Choosing The Right Distributor: Smashwords vs Draft2Digital

Since I started self-publishing in 2011, Smashwords has been the overwhelming favorite for savvy self-publishers who wanted or needed a distributor to reach non-Amazon e-bookstores.However, a new competitor called Draft2Digital launched a beta version of their service earlier this year and has been gaining popularity. In July, they hit 1,000 users, 10,000 titles, and 1,000,000 books sold.

I’ve been getting lots of questions about Draft2Digital, and experimenting with them myself, so I thought...

Word on the Street Festival Doesn’t Care About Author Scam

I wrote a post last month about Author Solutions’ relationshipswith The Bookseller magazine in the UK, and The Word on the Street Festival in Canada.

Since then I’ve been in touch with the editor of The Bookseller. I’ll share more about that when I can, but suffice to say that the discussion has been encouraging. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about my exchange with The Word on the Street Festival.

To recap, last month I discovered a new Author Solutions scam – using their booth at a Canad...

Giving It All Away – An Interview with Ted Oswald

Back in April, I stumbled across a wonderful novel calledBecause We Are: A Novel of Haiti by Ted Oswald. I think I was only half-way through when I started hunting him down on the internet to tell him how much I liked it.

I don’t usually chase people across cyberspace to give them a review, but this was a remarkable book.

I also knew that once you guys heard the backstory, you would want to know more.After a soupçonof cajoling, Ted agreed to be interviewed…

First of all I’d like to thank Ted for...

Penguin Random House Merger Helps Author Solutions Exploit Writers

Penguin and Random House officially merged on July 1 creating the largest trade publisher in the world. This merger has given fresh impetus to one of their subsidiaries to scam unsuspecting writers – Author Solutions, the largest vanity press in the world.

One of my blog readers, who will remain nameless, has forwarded me emails from an AuthorHouse sales rep touting that company as the “self-publishing wing” of Penguin Random House (AuthorHouse is one of the many brands of Author Solutions, a...

5 Book Marketing Myths You Need To Forget – Guest Post by Joanna Penn

Anyone familiar with Joanna Penn’s blog – The Creative Penn – will know what an excellent resource it is for writers, particularly on marketing, where she regularly offers no-nonsense advice that actually works.

When I heard she was writing a book on marketing, I was eager to see what she would come up with, and managed to wangle an advance copy.

How To Market A Bookis a comprehensive guide to book marketing, with a much wider scope than something like my ownLet’s Get Visible. I can see it bein...

How To Avoid Publishing-Assisted Suicide

An Amazon Top 100 with 25,000 sales in the first 6 weeks after its release in Oct 2012. Also a B&N Top 100 in May 2013. A brand new book by international bestselling author Jennifer Blake, first published by Steel Magnolia Press

I regularly take aim at “assisted self-publishing” because it often results in a shoddy product, a serious price-tag and/or a big chunk of the author’s royalties going to a middleman that is doing little more than uploading (which is the easiest part of the process).

Ho...

The Alliance of Independent Authors – a Q&A with Orna Ross

When I cover publishers behaving badly, self-publishing scams, or authors’ rights, I always get asked if there is an organization which advocates for self-publishers.

The general feeling seems to be that we are particularly ill-served by the status quo, given that the pre-existing writers’ organizations either don’t let us in, don’t care about the issues that matter to us, or take up positions contrary to our interests.

Lately I’ve been pointing people towardsthe Alliance of Independent Authors...

The Bookseller Hires Author Solutions Exec To Spout Propaganda

Author Solutions is like a Bizarro version of King Midas. Everything they touch turns to shit.

One frustrating aspect of this is their history of co-opting supposedly independent organizations, which then silence critical voices.

This week,The Booksellerwent one step further, and has hired a former Author Solutions executive called Tim Davies to write for their digital offshootFutureBook.

Davies used his debut FutureBook post tovomit up some Author Solutions PR, interspersed with gushing praise...