Saturday, July 21, 2012

Self Publishing Websites


On this blog, I've laid out an idea for a website that would be a central place to facility publishing high quality books - or at least books people like to read. I call it Crowdsourced Publishing.


Honestly, I haven't gotten a lot of love on the idea, but there are a lot of sites out there which seem to be groping towards parts of the idea and look useful to aspiring authors and self-publishers.  I'm just creating a list here, sometime in the future, I hope to do a more in depth analysis of these sites. These are in no particular order, I just needed to get them down somewhere.  If you have a favorite site, let me know and I'll add it here.  Or, if you know of a better resource for listing this stuff, let me know and I'll post it too.


Book enthusiast sites with access to authors
  1. http://www.GoodReads.com - this is THE place for book fans to congregate, segregate and evaluate books they like.
  2. http://www.librarything.com - competition for GoodReads with some interesting changes in emphasis.
Author support


  1. http://allianceindependentauthors.org - professional organization for independent author's. I belong to this.
  2. http://www.bookCountry.com - site where authors can critique one and others writing. Small, limited, but full of potential if they improve the interface.
  3. http://www.writing.com - site for people who just want to write.  Huge, a little hard to get your arms around.
  4. http://www.Authonomy.com - (Harper Collins) Site to promote authors works and rank their work. They are a community writing site where everyone is enthusiastic and very responsive.
  5. http://www.libboo.com  - the closest thing to a complete crowdsourced solution, but seems to be done part time bye the owners and waiting for funding.  I haven't checked in a while so this might have changed.
Publishing Sites 
  1. Kindle Direct Publishing - the first site for self publishers.
  2. http://www.smashwords.com - great site for easy ebook publishing - distributes your books everywhere
  3. https://writinglife.kobobooks.com - new kid on the block for self publishers. Feeds Kobo.com
Money Raising Sites
  1. http://www.kickstarter.com - funding for just about everything. The king of crowdsourced
  2. http://www.pubslush.com - kickstarter for books. from their site: Pubslush is a global publishing platform for authors funding.to raise funds and gauge market viability for new book ideas.
  3. http://www.unbound.co.uk/  - Seems like pubslush.  Kickstarter for books. from their site: Unbound puts the power of publishing in the hands of authors and readers. Authors pitch their book ideas directly to you
Review Sites
  1. http://www.selfpublishingreview.com - site for paid reviews. I've used them and gotten my money's worth. Not biased.
  2. http://www.thebookplex.com - paid for reviews, much cheaper than selfpublishingreview, I got 10 reviews for the price of one from SPR.  They were reasonable and not biased.
  3. http://indiereader.com/ - Magazine for and about independant authors and their works
Promotion Sites - there are a large number of these, all clamoring to get some of the money desperate authors have to spend on their babies.  (very incomplete at this time)
  1. http://www.fictionfactor.com/ - online magazine for authors of fiction
Traditional Publishing Support
  1. http://querytracker.net/ - awesome site for people looking for support in writing queries to agents and publishers.  Very responsive and active membership

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