Ever wonder why you should keep plugging along at social media? Think no one will notice you online? One of the many sites I visit and update is scribd.com.




And, Laura Novak found out that it really does pay. A former New York Times writer, TV news reporter  and now author of Finding Clarity:  A Mom, a Dwarf and a Posh Private School in the People’s Republic of Berkeley, she rose to the top on Scribd.com. As she says:

"In less than a year, I have become a top female author on Scribd.com, with 43,000 followers. As a result, the Scribd team invited me to read from Finding Clarity at this year’s Lit Quake festival in San Francisco. 

Read her full guest post here at Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents blog.

Learn about her work touring the book circuit and doing in-store readings BEFORE her book is even published.  Talk about a great way to build a following, and to improve her manuscript by reading live with an audience!!

Cheers,
Helen Gallagher

Library of Congress chooses POD to re-issue out-of-print books

As print-on-demand surges ahead of traditional publishing for authors, the U.S. Library of Congress is even using POD, through CreateSpace, to re-issue thousands of out-of-print titles. I chose CreateSpace for my newest book: Blog Power & Social Media Handbook, to have a fast and inexpensive blogging guide for my publishing clients and fans of my earlier book, Release Your Writing.

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Oct. 5th, 2010 – CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) group of companies, today announced an agreement with The Library of Congress to make at least 50,000 public books available through www.amazon.com. The Library of Congress also reached an agreement with Amazon Europe to make tens of thousands of books in the public domain available around the world to customers on www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de and www.amazon.fr using print on-demand technology, an inventory-free, cost-efficient publishing solution that only manufactures titles as customers order them.

"We are pleased to now give the public a way to enjoy print on-demand access to library collections around the world," said Dr. Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for Library Services, The Library of Congress.

With Createspace Print on-Demand, these national libraries will make a large selection of content available quickly and easily via CreateSpace's host of U.S. distribution channels, including www.amazon.com, ensuring wide public access with little economic investment. Since titles are only manufactured in response to customer demand, no inventory is needed and the titles will never go out of stock, making print on-demand an economic, convenient, and environmentally responsible public access solution for libraries.

Your books can receive the same good distribution at very low cost.

read full release here

Pub-It latest self-publishing service from Barnes & Noble

Publishers Weekly reports: "Barnes & Noble officially launched PubIt! today, its digital self-publishing platform for authors and independent publishers. Under the PubIt model, authors are charged no startup fee and will receive a royalty that ranges from 40% to 65%, depending on price of the e-book (or other digital content). Using a Web-based platform, publishers, upload their e-books, set the list price and track their sales and payments. Titles can be priced between 99 cents and $199.99. For e-books priced at or between $2.99 and $9.99, publishers receive 65% percent of the list price with B&N receiving the balance. For those priced at $2.98 or less, or $10.00 or more, publishers receive 40%."

So PubIt! joins Lulu and CreateSpace as great options to get your book produced and made available for sale online. Remember, though, no one will buy your book if they aren't aware of it. so, after the easy publishing process, put your energies into author marketing.