PublishDrive Blog: Interviews, News and Tips from the World of Self-Publishing

Top 3 Ways of Boosting Your Author Career Through Writing Conferences

Posted by Kinga Jentetics / book fairs, publishing industry, self-publishing, writing

You’ve probably heard that conferences are essential to your writing career development, but do you know why?

The PublishDrive team attended several conferences this fall where we either gave a talk or simply had the chance to mingle with writers. As the number of author-related conferences grows rapidly year by year, you may be wondering which ones are best for you. In this article, I summarize various types of author-related conferences and my personal takeaways.

To sum up, I’ve attended the following conferences: Digital Book World (Nashville), Romance Con (Richmond), National Writers Union Conference (New York), Las Vegas Book Festival (Las Vegas), 20booksto50k (Las Vegas), YALLfest (Charleston), and Miami Book Fair (Miami) – I’ve definitely compiled a list of thoughts!

Here are my top three recommendations for leveraging the power of conferences in the publishing industry:

Attend the conference that fits your publishing journey.
Learn from other writers and attendees and collaborate with them.
Prepare for conferences accordingly and have fun! 🙂

07
Dec

PublishDrive Now Offers Ebook Distribution to Bibliotheca

Posted by Monica Dube / ebook partnership, self-publishing

At PublishDrive, we’re always seeking new opportunities for indie authors to access global sales channels and increase their readership. As our list of 400+ online stores continues to grow, we’re excited to announce our newest distribution channel: Bibliotheca.

What Is Bibliotheca?

Bibliotheca operates a lending platform called cloudLibrary™, which targets the library market in different countries around the world, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia.

30
Nov

We Now Offer Ebook Marketing Options Directly Through the PublishDrive Platform!

Posted by Monica Dube / ebook marketing, self-publishing

As the holidays approach, we have an early gift we’d like to share: ebook marketing features are now available directly on the PublishDrive platform!

Many of our users have been requesting marketing features like these, and we’ve been listening. Our developers have taken your feedback and created some powerful ways to manage ebook marketing and publishing on a single platform. We can’t wait for authors to take advantage of these new marketing options, so we wanted to quickly explain the benefits.

26
Nov

We’re Back from the 20Booksto50k Conference, and We Can’t Wait to Tell You About It

Posted by Monica Dube / publishing industry, self-publishing

The PublishDrive team just wrapped up an incredible three days at the recent 20Booksto50k conference, which was held in Las Vegas from November 6 – 8, 2018.

Frankly, we did so much and spoke to so many amazing authors that it’s impossible to fit into a single blog post. But, we wanted to share a recap for those of you who couldn’t make it this year. Here’s what we were up to and learn why attending conferences is crucial for any indie author.

What is the 20Booksto50k Conference?

Before we dig in, you might be wondering: “What is 20Booksto50k?”

20Booksto50k is a Facebook group that was started by self-published author, Michael Anderle, back in 2015. At the time, he realized he could make a sustainable income of about $50,000 a year by publishing 20 books that sold at least a few copies per day. After his first $12,000 month, he knew that his strategy could help other authors succeed and wanted to share his insight.

Since then, the 20Booksto50k Facebook group has amassed a following of over 26,000 members who’ve come together to share tips about self-publishing and make connections. Members include best-selling indie authors and those who are just starting out.

20Booksto50k held their first conference in 2017, which was a huge success. This year’s event was likewise a hit, drawing hundreds of attendees from all over the world. Continue Reading…

19
Nov

Meet Monica Dubé, PublishDrive’s New Content Strategist!

Posted by Monica Dube / business, interview, self-publishing

Hi there! My name is Monica and I’m super excited to be joining the PublishDrive team. I’m the new content strategist, which is a fancy way of saying that I’ll be handling everything from writing blogs to overseeing all of the content for PublishDrive.

After wrapping up my first whirlwind week at the 20Booksto50k conference, I’m settling in for my second week and having a blast getting to know the amazing people I work with.

05
Nov

How to Become a Ghostwriter: Perks and Benefits

Posted by Zsofia Macho / writing

Are you a writer if you are not writing your own book? And, are you an author if you are not the author of the book you wrote? The topic of ghostwriters is the hot potato of the literary world and ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. This article aims to clarify what ghostwriting is and isn’t, and give some advice on how to become a ghostwriter yourself.

What is ghostwriting?

A ghostwriter is somebody who’s hired to write a book, article or another piece of writing. While they are paid for their contribution, more often than not, they are not publicly acknowledged. The content is credited under somebody else’s name – if they are lucky enough, they might get listed as “assistant” or “researcher.”

Is ghostwriting plagiarism?

This is a difficult question; this great article on PlagiarismToday goes into it in depth. To summarize: it depends on the context and the readership’s expectations of authorship. For example, while it is widely accepted and known that celebrity books are not written by the stars themselves, college professors not crediting their students’ contributions accordingly are a different case entirely.

31
Oct

Self-Publishing Dictionary: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted by Zsofia Macho / self-publishing

Authors tend to sum up their experiences regarding self-publishing somewhat like this: “I had no idea what I was getting into.” While completing a book is one of the best feelings a writer can experience, self-publishing can be quite scary. Even from the very beginning, you are showered with acronyms and abbreviations you have no idea about. If you’re one of those who simply don’t get the “lingo”, this article is for you! Our self-publishing dictionary is here to help with definitions of most common expressions in publishing and self-publishing.

18
Oct

How to Write a Book Description that Sells

Posted by Guest author / ebook marketing, Ebook production

Any quick online search will give you slews of experts sharing how to write a book description that sells. However, most people fail to address the primary element to creating ad copy that attracts your reader to even buy your book. Just because you wrote enticing ad copy doesn’t mean people will see it. That’s why you’re going to need to have a basic understanding of search engine optimization and how it can make or break the long-term success of your books.

But, before we jump into how to optimize your publication for better discoverability, you need to have a basic understanding of the key elements to an enticing book description. Similar to having an unsearchable book description with the perfect ad copy, a poorly crafted yet discoverable book description won’t do you any favors.

12
Oct

The story behind subscription pricing of PublishDrive

Posted by Kinga Jentetics / book fairs, business

Bradley Matrock from Score Publishing and Digital Book World asks Kinga Jentetics, CEO of PublishDrive about PublishDrive’s new pricing model.

PublishDrive announced three new features at this year’s Digital Book World: a new ebook conversion tool, a categorization tool with AI, and a new pricing option that allows authors to keep all of their royalties.

Kinga Jentetics shares how the new pricing option works and the inspiration behind it.
Continue Reading…

10
Oct

Book categorization AI: Interview with the developer

Posted by Zsofia Macho / innovation, interview, metadata, startup

We released our category recommendation AI last week, and it has been a huge success. Just to recap if you missed it: Savant is able to “read” your content file (epub or docx) upon upload, and guess the most relevant BISAC categories. The task of finding the most relevant BISAC categories is one of the most daunting beginner authors face. There are several hundreds of available options, and it feels like you need to know them all to make a relevant choice. (Read more about BISAC categories here.) This is where Savant comes in the picture. But how does our book categorization AI work? We asked data scientist Mór Kapronczay to explain us the background processes and tell us more about how he built this feature that is truly unique in the ebook market.

Congratulations on your achievement! Where did the idea of a book categorization AI come from?

Thank you very much! Actually, the idea is not mine: I was hired for this particular job, almost exactly a year ago. It was Róbert Csizmár, our CTO who thought that an AI could be built for this purpose. I agreed and got to work.

What is your background? Are you a developer?

No, I am in fact an economist, with specialization in empirical finance. I have a Finance & Accounting BA, and a Finance MA with a Specialisation in Investment Analysis from Corvinus University of Budapest. I learned a lot of statistics and econometrics there. In addition to that, I had the opportunity to be a part of Rajk College for Advanced Studies, where I could learn programming and algorithm design, and Machine Learning. I instantly fell in love with both.