MetaFilter posts tagged with selfpublishing

The Cost of Self-Publication: Ebook vs. Print - One Person’s Story

Joe Beese — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:30:37 -0800

"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] related posts here, here, here, and here.

'zines v. 2.0?

FunkyHelix — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:13:49 -0800

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.

Books: increasing authorship and decreasing readership

stbalbach — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:26:15 -0800

You're an Author? Me too! The trend of increasing authorship and decreasing readership.

Borders self-publishing and in-store distribution service

stbalbach — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:43:43 -0800

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? If one reads Vershbow's piece (along with the many excellent comments therein with lots of great links), he is not actually saying it's vanity publishing, although it can be, the dialectic between traditional publishing and this new form inevitably brings up the comparison.

The Origin of Emotions

dontoine — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:32:51 -0800

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." Non-printing PDF available for your ~~edification~~ amusement, jam-packed with preposterous statements:
"Men only love a woman for 42 months, which covers 9 months of gestation and 33 months of post-natal care. Both sexes maximize reproduction by starting a new reproductive cycle with a new partner when a child can feed itself."
"When you maximize your happiness, you do what is best for the species."
As far as I can tell, he attended Harvard for an MBA.

CreateSpace, an Amazon on-demand self-publishing service, inks deal with National Archives for 100,000's of public domain films

stbalbach — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:57:22 -0800

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.

The Decision is Binding

WPW — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 03:29:59 -0800

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.

When even Dave Sim finds you weird...

Lentrohamsanin — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:12:35 -0800

Dave Sim gets a book proposal from a furry.

Let's see if THIS meets your needs at the present time

staggernation — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:18:33 -0800

Have your rejection letters printed onto toilet paper. Meanwhile, a small UK publisher has posted a thoughtful open rejection letter.

Truefire post

crunchburger — Fri, 24 Oct 2003 21:40:59 -0800

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.

Media Monopolies are bad, mmkay.

dobbs — Tue, 23 Sep 2003 13:52:29 -0800

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].

chicobangs — Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:07:18 -0800

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.