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Should you self-publish or traditionally publish? This infographic will help you determine the best choice for you and your project.

This is an introductory guide to the major self-publishing options available to authors today, and how to choose the right service for you.

Primarily an indie published author, Aleatha Romig participates in Kindle Worlds, which allows other authors to write about the characters in her work.

Is a book's success all luck, even if 'luck' includes hitting the right subject matter at the right time, or is it marketing—and can an indie author in any way compete with a publisher?

Is it better to have a long or short book description on Amazon? What should go in the first line? How do you research appropriate categories and keywords? Learn principles and tools to master the power of descriptions and reach your target market.

Did you know Amazon’s print book sales grew by 15% in 2016—and the gain was primarily driven by Amazon's own discounting on print?

The most important thing any author needs to know about book distribution is that more than half of all book sales (regardless of format) take place online.

My industry newsletter for authors, The Hot Sheet, released a special (and free) issue last week with original reporting from Digital Book World.

In 2015, Kindle Press published about 90 novels. By the end of 2016, it had published a total of 218 books—all chosen through the Kindle Scout program.

Pronoun works with independent authors to distribute their ebooks to the five major online retailers: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play. Pronoun charges authors nothing upfront, and doesn't take a cut of ebook sales either.

There are advantages to selling ebooks only through Amazon, and makes most sense for authors who are just starting out or who are relatively unknown.

Every year, I share hundreds (even thousands) of articles and reports on book marketing. Here, I look back on the best of what I found in 2016.

Amazon offers two ways for authors to advertise ebooks at their site. Learn how to smartly set up and manage product display and sponsored product ads.

A round-up of important 2016 publishing news and trends that will affect authors in the years to come.

Traditional publishers are experiencing a slump, and the decline of Barnes & Noble isn't helping. A look at news and trends in book publishing in 2016.

I'm writing monthly for the IngramSpark blog, which is focused on the concerns of self-publishing authors and small presses.

Author Ken Brosky discusses his Kindle Scout book deal and his and Amazon's marketing plans for The Proving.

Author Barry Eisler discusses the pros and cons (where they exist) of legacy, Amazon, and self-publishing; research and editing; selling book rights; and more.

Helen Sedwick and Orna Ross discuss selling international rights to your book.

In conversation with Joanna Penn, I discuss digital publishing trends and what authors need to know as they head into 2016.

Author and editor C. S. Lakin offers guidelines on crafting your Amazon book description to maximize sales.

The most important publishing industry headlines and stories that every writer should keep an eye on in 2016.

As publishing becomes increasingly digital-driven, how are the business models for authorship changing?

The visionary independent publisher discusses how to make money from writing, why books are not culture, and why it isn’t Amazon’s fault.

Take a look at 5 charts that reflect current trends in the book publishing industry, and what they mean for authors.

Author Carol Bodensteiner answers the seven questions she gets most about working with Amazon Publishing.

Amazon's Kids' Book Creator allows the average Joe to create illustrated children's books for the Kindle and upload them directly to Amazon.

UK author Harry Bingham describes the four stages of his career, and why he's decided to self-publish after good experiences with traditional houses.

Nielsen offers specific figures on how ebook sales have affected print sales in adult fiction, adult nonfiction, and juvenile categories.

Amazon says that Kindle Select participation is healthy, and that the Kindle Unlimited ebook subscription service is leading to more reading and sales.

If you don't like the terms offered by Amazon's ACX for selling your audiobook, you do have an alternative. Author Lee Stephen explains the path he took.

My latest column at Writer Unboxed tackles serial fiction—and how it's changing writing, reading, and publishing. Here's a little snippet:

Much shorter and quicker to go over than the initial report, this edition takes into account information interpreted from approximately 11,000 titles in genre fiction; 900 in literary fiction; 30,000 in non-fiction; and some 10,000 in children's (not YA) fiction. Hugh Howey has, since the first report, adopted a more frequent use of the term "spider" for the software his still-unnamed associate is deploying.

You may be looking at the best chance ever encountered for authors—of all stripes, Ms. Rowling, as Hugh Howey tells us—to at last come together, to make common cause, and to speak as one with a force this industry has never known.

Table of Contents “To Call for Change Within the Publishing Community” “To Stand Up for Each Other” “A New Era

Table of Contents Is Publishing a Class System? Jane and Jason: “Inclusion of All Paths” Don and Doubt: “Not the

DBW’s producers at F+W Media may take their mission even more seriously than usual: this DBW takes place in a winter without a Tools of Change (TOC) conference from O’Reilly Media.

If we want to count all the self-publishing authors, then we need to survey and count every hapless no-income-from-writing would-be traditionally published author who gets nowhere and ends up at the bar next to me discussing the superb color that Milan puts into Campari. Our surveys are counting the self-publishing losers. Our surveys are counting only traditional publishers’ winners.

Table of Contents Notes Defensive Reading “Anything Except Readerly Books” “Print versus Digital” “Where I Get Unhappy” Those Lists Notes

So you want to find those raving fans, right? Awesome. We’re about to give you the most boring advice possible. You’re probably going to be disappointed that we’re not going to offer you a magic way to get a ton more readers, but unfortunately that’s not how it works. Ideal fans and readers are gained a few at a time, and it takes time to build that bond, even if you experience a sudden and serendipitous burst of exposure.

Michael Tamblyn of Kobo was The FutureBook's Most Inspiring Digital Dude of the Day and, I'm sure, of many days to come. In a finely arranged conference full of important and edifying detail and personality, Tamblyn seized that room's collective intelligence with gratifying honesty, pink lightning on a bare stage.

PubSmart 2014 may be creating something we've needed to see much more of: a conference in which not only business-conscious authors but also smaller publishing companies can start doing the logical networking they've needed: with each other.

Are we impatient for the "new books"? We are. Do we have to have them tomorrow? We don't. Will they be better "new books" if we take a little time to make sure everyone is accounted for, considered, even consulted and heard before we declare digital tools our icons and traditional publishing our new parking lot? They will.

Here at the 2013 Frankfurt Book Fair this week, if we're not actually walking past a couple of smoothly contoured bends, we may at least be able to peer around them. (1) Self-publishing. We may be seeing a widespread, collective nod of recognition going on; not a big "eureka!" moment, but a frank acknowledgment that the energies of the entrepreneurial-author community no longer can be dismissed as a faddish bubble of activity nor as negligible in their effect. Bowker has stepped in to add some new edge to this concept. (2) Amazon. Not only is there less time and energy wasted on bad-mouthing Seattle here in Frankfurt than in many such earlier gatherings, but one rant against the retailer has been met with stark derision in the publishing community, and, in a more signal moment, a major leader in the business has waved the closest thing we've seen yet to an olive branch.

Table of Contents Three Valuable Views A Word for the Publishers Humming the Bookstore And Just Write It Already View

Jonathan Franzen, in his essay at The Guardian, wants to tell us that Viennese fin-de-siècle essayist Karl Kraus has "a lot to say to us in our own media-saturated, technology-crazed, apocalypse-haunted historical moment."

Bestselling author Michael J. Sullivan proposes that publishers give authors permission to send free ebooks to readers who have purchased print editions.

As has happened in the past, Amazon seems to have some folks in the publishing world feeling that they didn’t get a chance to discuss things. “But…but…but…” If only we’d known the Amazonians’ Kindle MatchBook deal was coming, right?

Both from within the industry and from outside it, writerly advice flies at you, continually. Just as you sit down to write, it slams it into your inbox each day. Every time you think you've worked out the big kink in that chapter, you're pelted with new guidance by a rain of tweets. You're afraid to live without it (what if you miss something really smart and good?) but you can barely think your way through it—it awaits you in terse comments and it slaps you silly in starred rankings. We are an information economy. We're an advice culture.

In social reading, "How much of the author-reader intimacy are we talking about trading away?" Porter Anderson in Writing on the Ether at JaneFriedman.com