John T. Reed’s self-publishing blog

This article is about a near universal disease I observe in Americans. Odd, considering this is the land of rugged individualism. It’s about a powerful lesson in my books Succeeding and How to Write, Publish, and Sell Your Own How-To Book. Permanently damaged by middle school and high school K-12 school, especially middle and high school, is a formative experience for almost all Americans. My wife was in Ethiopia for high school. Since there was no American high school there, she acquired a G.E.D. by independent home-self-study via correspondence school with the University of Nebraska. She was anxious to go...

Copyright by John T. ReedI have been a “published author.” My first book was published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.And I have been a self-publisher of 105 books. As a self-publisher, I was distributed to book stores by Publishers Group West (PGW) and Ingram. And I was distributed by Amazon.And I have been a self-publish-distributor where I distributed all my own books direct to retail customers. If I may paraphrase Sophie Tucker, I been distributed and I been self-distributed and believe me, honey, self-distribution is better. 10% The royalty of an author is about 10% of the retail sale price of the...

I am a self-publisher. I don’t sell through either Wal-Mart or Amazon. I used to sell through both. But the following article is instructive for all in the author-publishng world.   Wal-Mart announced on 10/15/09 that it would begin selling the hottest best-selling books on line for $10 each. Amazon instantly matched that price. Wal-Mart responded by lowering the price to $9.The public has generally welcomed this. “Cheap books!? Sounds great!”Top authors like Dean Koontz are also welcoming it, but they’re not sure. That vague discomfort is much warranted. Brands versus commodities A basic principle I learned at Harvard Business...

Writing is easy. If you can talk, you can write. Almost everyone can talk . I have written and self-published over 100 books if you count editions. But in spite of how easy it is, most beginners seem to screw it up. Here are the most common mistakes they make. 1. Wrong topic— Topic choice is about 90% of writing well. If you pick the right topic, it’s hard for you not to write well. If you pick the wrong topic, it’s hard to produce good work no matter what else you do. The great and long-running Dale Carnegie public...

I often hear the comment, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, write.” Or something like, “If this is such good advice, why aren’t you doing it instead of writing about it?” Or, “I only want to read stuff written by guys who are actively investing.”These comments are generally made with much smugness, as if the speaker were the first to ask such a rhetorical question.Although these comments seem logical, they are quite wrong. The correct version is that a how-to writer ought to have some pertinent experience, but current active investing is almost irrelevant. Actually, current investing has both...