Guy Kawasaki's latest offering, APE: How to Publish a Book, is the "how-to" guide I've been waiting for. Guy's been down the traditional publishing road many times, but a few snafus with the eBook crossover of his book Enchantment led him to consider the self-publishing route. He teamed up with Shawn Welch and their experience of creating his next self-published book What the Plus! provided the fodder for APE.
By the way, APE stands for Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur, because as Guy points out, a successful self-publisher needs to be all three. APE allows us, as aspiring self-publishers, to learn from the mistakes, hurdles and road-blocks Guy faced on his initial self-publishing journey. It lays out a clear path through writing, editing, and design—all the way to pricing, selling and marketing.
The book is well written, in a friendly and easy voice. In addition, it takes advantage of all that eBooks have to offer with plenty of hyperlinks that take us directly to the resources that helped Guy along the way. I plan to recommend this book to all my life writing students in hopes that they'll be more likely to self-publish their stories with a guidebook like APE in hand.
Personally, I'm following Guy's advice to "blast through APE the first time to see the big picture...and return to APE as a reference."
New and upcoming bloggers should follow Guy Kawasaki in Linkedin as his status updates can be really helpful for those who are starting out in blogging.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sean! Great idea.
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