The Business of Publishing: The Good Trouble Blog Tour
Joe’s on a blog tour right now to support his new book, Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life and Business with Asperger’s. He’s scribing guest posts for blogs of all kinds all over the Internet. His main theme is one of great interest to all of us: the business aspects of publishing, and the unconventional (or at times shockingly conventional) methods that have helped Microcosm survive and succeed over the years.
Here’s a list of Joe’s blog tour posts so far:
The Publishing House of my Dreams: Joe writes on Powells.com about building Microcosm and bringing the company back from the brink.
How to Pitch Your Book: Sage advice posted to Mindbuck Media for pitching your books to publishers of all sizes. (tl;dr: follow the instructions)
What a Fair Contract Looks Like: Tips for unraveling publishing contracts, posted at Cave Art Press
How Can a Small Press increase Ebook Sales?: Joe asks this question in earnest on popular ebook blog Teleread, sparking fierce debate and even an indignant editorial in response!
And a podcast interview about Good Trouble and the history of Microcosm with the always wonderful Sprocket Podcast
And check out the tags on the Microcosm blog about Good Trouble and the business of publishing.
And here are the Business of Publishing posts that we’ve posted so far on our own blogs:
These posts are particularly written for anyone who is starting a small press, is in the beginning stages of self-publishing and realizing that they’ve effectively started a small press and all the work that entails, or who are trying to decide what route to take with their manuscript.
Title Development: This was the original post on Joe’s original Business of Publishing series on Elly’s Taking the Lane blog back in the day. It’s hands-down the most important piece of the publishing puzzle. If you read nothing else, read this!
The Economic Case for Traditional Format Offset Printing: As opposed to ebook-only or print-on-demand publishing. It depends on your goals, but in most cases you’re best off going old-school
Formatting for Print: And in case you do decide to go with old-school offset printing, here are some pointers for formatting your files.
Working with the Printer: …and for working with the book manufacturer.
The Distribution Question (with infographic): One of the most common questions we get from self-published folks are how to get broader distribution for your book. Honestly, we don’t usually recommend going that route until you’ve reached a certain size. Here are the considerations to take into account.
Organizing a book tour: The classic book tour format where a publisher flies you around and you do signings at bookstores is waning. Here’s the alternative we’ve developed.
Self-Promotion for Authors: We know, it’s hard. Especially if you’re shy/modest/terrified/suffering the old imposter syndrome. Here are some helpful ways to think about self-promotion.
Social Media for Authors: “Do I *have* to use Twitter?” Maybe. Maybe not. Here are some framing ideas for approaching social media promotion without getting in too far over your head.
What a Publisher Does: Well, this is more like what *we* do. Hopefully clearing up some myths and mysteries.
What to Expect when Submitting your Work: A guest post from an author who has kept careful data on her five years of seeking publication, with some successes.
Paralleling the Dinosaurs: Why we stay small-ish and independent in an era where the larger publishing houses are growing unwieldy.
An overview: We rounded a bunch of the Taking the Lane series posts up here, with some commentary, back at the beginning of 2015.
Got a publishing question you’d like to see us write about? Ask and we’ll do our best!