"I don’t know for certain what big publishers are doing to make their prices so high, or what they think they’ll get out of it. I only know that I made a deliberate pricing decision to discourage Amazon and Kindle sales because I needed Amazon’s visibility but I didn’t want to lose my shirt, bra, AND panties." [some language may be NSFW] [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Feb 3, 2009 - 36 comments

MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and they take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.
posted by FunkyHelix on Jun 23, 2008 - 43 comments

You're an Author? Me too! The trend of increasing authorship and decreasing readership.
posted by stbalbach on Apr 26, 2008 - 61 comments

Borders and Lulu.com have teamed up to create Border's Lifestyle, a new service allowing anyone to design and publish their own book and have it distributed through Borders stores, even including your own book tour and in-store readings. Is it, according to Ben Vershbow of if:book, "bringing vanity publishing to a whole new level of fantasy role-playing,"¹ or a real innovation in book distribution, bypassing the professional gatekeepers? [more inside]
posted by stbalbach on Feb 21, 2008 - 35 comments

The Origin of Emotions by Mark Devon “I began thinking about emotions while studying evolutionary theory at Harvard University. Learning that adaptations do not evolve unless they help survival, I reasoned that each emotion must have a purpose that helped survival. If I could identify an emotion’s trigger, I could also identify its purpose." [more inside]
posted by dontoine on Jan 22, 2008 - 38 comments

CreateSpace is the new name of Amazon's on-demand self-publishing service for the super long tail of books, audio CD's and film DVD/Blue-ray. Products automatically get an ISBN number and are listed on Amazon.com, including "Search Inside" for books. The National Archives and CreateSpace will be publishing movies from its collection of over 200,000 public domain films, raising some provocative copyright issues.
posted by stbalbach on Aug 8, 2007 - 34 comments

NoMediaKings.org will tell you how to hand-bind books in a variety of ways. Then you can make the movie of the book. As a bonus: Time Management for Anarchists.
posted by WPW on Jul 8, 2007 - 10 comments

Dave Sim gets a book proposal from a furry.
posted by Lentrohamsanin on Feb 23, 2007 - 79 comments

Have your rejection letters printed onto toilet paper. Meanwhile, a small UK publisher has posted a thoughtful open rejection letter.
posted by staggernation on Jun 13, 2006 - 25 comments

Truefire TrueFire is a self-publishing tool and open marketplace for authors and artists wishing to promote and distribute their original poetry, guitar lessons, novels, music, reference material, photography and artwork.
posted by crunchburger on Oct 24, 2003 - 4 comments

Jim Munroe, author of Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask [free e-book here] and other books, is also the creator of No Media Kings, an anti-media monopoly site where you can learn to make your own books (why & how). Jim also makes movies/cdroms and recently co-created The Perpetual Roadshow [careful, sound].
posted by dobbs on Sep 23, 2003 - 3 comments

Jim Munroe is a zine publisher in Toronto who wrote a couple of small novels, got one ("Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask") picked up by Harper Collins, and got out of his contract to self-release his latest book. I don't know if it surprises anyone that the mainstream book scene is about as non-lucrative and power-consolidated as the music world is, but he's posted all the gory details, as well as a detailed and friendly how-to for self-publishing.
posted by chicobangs on Sep 10, 2000 - 4 comments