The economic failings of the Espresso Book Machine
In a series of previous posts about self-publishing, I touched on using the Espresso Book Machine to create bound proofs for a book proposal project. In this post, I go into more detail about the pros, cons, and costs of using the Espresso Book Machine. This post was first published by the now-defunct Appazoogle blog on July 16, 2012. I first encountered the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) during a visit to the Harvard Book Store during the spring of 2011. This technological wond
Working with the Evil Empire, part III: Kindle edition
This is the final segment of a series of posts about self-publishing through Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing. To learn more about my experiences, see the first and second installments of this series. This post was first published by the now-defunct Appazoogle blog on June 26, 2012. Almost immediately upon publication, several friends, mostly those overseas in the military, asked about the possibility of a digital edition. While I plan to take an ebook publis
Working with the Evil Empire, part II: Distribution, pricing, and royalties
This post was first published by the now-defunct Appazoogle blog on June 12, 2012. In my first post of this series, I talked you through how I decided to publish with CreateSpace, Amazon’s self-publishing platform. In this installment, we’re going to focus on a part of publishing that most readers don’t think much about—distribution—and a part of publishing that most authors do think about: royalties. Distribution through CreateSpace CreateSpace offers three distribution chan
Working with the Evil Empire, part I: Deciding to self-publish with Amazon
This is the first part of a series documenting my experiences using Amazon and CreateSpace, Amazon’s print-on-demand publishing platform, to self-publish BDKR1: The Unofficial Living Greyhawk Bandit Kingdoms Summary. This post was first published by the now-defunct Appazoogle blog on June 5, 2012. I published with Amazon. I admit it: I am a traitor to book publishing. Such an admission coming from a graduate student in Emerson College’s Publishing and Writing program may seem
