About Freelance Writing Blog Carnival – June 19, 2006

Looks like our carnival will be every other week rather than weekly. Can you tell I’m new at this?

We’ve got two submissions this week:

1. inkthinker Kristen King has some excellent marketing tips for freelance writers – a total of nine of them. As a read through the list, I discovered three ideas that are new to me. The best part is each one is easy and most of them are free.
2. Joe Kissell who writes Interesting Things of the Day every day takes on self-publishing in an article called On-Demand Publishing. It’s subtitled “Revenge of the vanity press.” It’s a pretty good overview of self-publishing, with one exception. He doesn’t understand the difference between a true vanity press – one that charges a ton to publish a few hundred books while making specious claims to market the book and true self-publishing.

   This is a distinction that many fail to make, which isn’t surprising. Vanity press outfits tend to advertise in literary magazines and prey on the unwary. Self-publishing, on the other hand, is a now and recently legitimate alternative to working with traditional trade publishers.

   How do you tell the difference? It’s not always clear, but price is one good indicator. You can actually self-publish for free through lulu.com (although to take full advantage of their program you’ll need to spend some money on an ISBN number and on cover design. Other outfits charge varying amounts, but it’s usually considerably less than $1,000. Businesses that offer self-publishing through print on demand or on-demand publishing may offer a bit of marketing though their website, up-sell with things like press releases, etc. But they make no pretense that they handle the bulk of the marketing of your book – that’s up to you.

   None-the-less, if you’re new to self-publishing, Joe’s article is worth reading.

You can be part of this blog carnival – just submit the blog post you’d like featured here.

Write well and often,



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