Laurie McLean wears many hats. She is the Director of the San Francisco Writers Conference, a literary agent, Founder of Fuse Literary, and a former Silicon Valley marketing and PR professional. I asked her to talk about the February 2019 conference and the return on investment for the money and the time for this or any conference. You’ll learn what makes the San Francisco conference different and how to get the most of it. How to organize your time between the sessions, exhibitors, and the agents, getting to know some of the 500 other participants, not to mention the opportunities for deeper learning in the pre- and post-conference workshops. There are over 100 presenters in the various tracks: Fiction, Non-Fiction, YA and Children’s, Self-Publishing and Technology (my track), Business and Marketing, and an Etc. track that includes sessions on audiobooks and book to screen to name just a couple. I hope you enjoy this discussion and that it encourages you to attend a conference here or wherever you are. Listen and find out why.

#14: Laurie McLean, San Francisco Writers Conference

Learn about IngramSpark, the professional publishing tool from Ingram and its evolution from Lightning Source. You'll find out about free resources on the site for cover design templates, standard trim sizes, and a publisher compensation calculator to find out what your costs and profits will be when you distribute with IS. My talk is with&nbsp;Robin Cutler, Director of&nbsp;IngramSpark&nbsp;at Ingram Content Group. She is the former&nbsp;Assistant Director of USC Press and founder and CEO of Summerhouse Press. She helped develop BookSurge, an early self-publishing tool that was acquired by Amazon, and then became Vendor Manager for Amazon/CreateSpace. When she is not traveling to represent IngramSpark at writing and publishing events worldwide, she works, writes, reads and lives in beautiful New Mexico.&nbsp; We talk about trim size standards for novels, children's books, and coffee table books. How to choose paper color (creme or white?) and weight (50, 60, and up) and the additional costs incurred with heavier paper weight. You'll also learn about creating books "spot" color vs "full" color books. Should you pay POD prices "as you go" or order a large number of books to save money? Where are the price breaks for high-quality digital POD copies of your book? If you're considering a hardback book—and we think you should—what are your choices? When do you choose case laminate or a jacket? We talk about setup fees and change charges, which don't apply to metadata changes and you'll find out why. (Hint: We love experimenting with metadata and we think you should, too.) This is just the first half of my talk with Robin. Next week, in part two, we talk all about distribution.&nbsp;

#17: Robin Cutler, IngramSpark Part 1

This is Part 2 of my talk with Robin Cutler, Director of IngramSpark, the professional publishing and distribution platform for independent authors. In this episode, we focus on distribution. IngramSpark has the widest distribution in the world, but we also talk about why you'd want to go direct with Amazon KDP Print (formerly CreateSpace) and how to make that happen without any problems.&nbsp; You'll also learn how long it takes the stores to populate your book information - not every store is the same - and how this affects your book launch plan. Find out what bookstores expect and how to attract your local independent bookstore with the right discounting and, of course, a professionally produced book. Robin Cutler began her publishing career as Assistant Director of USC Press and than&nbsp;became founder and CEO of Summerhouse Press. She helped develop BookSurge, an early self-publishing tool that was acquired by Amazon&nbsp;and became Vendor Manager for Amazon/CreateSpace. When she is not traveling to represent IngramSpark at writing and publishing events worldwide, she works, writes, reads and lives in beautiful New Mexico.&nbsp;

#18: Robin Cutler, IngramSpark (Part 2)

This episode with Pub Site is for you if you don’t have an author website yet or if you’re struggling with your website. Even if you have a great website you'll learn some things. Promise! Pub Site is a super easy-to-use website builder just for authors and it only cost $20 a month. Husband and wife author and publisher marketing team John and Fauzia Burke developed it after 20 years of creating author websites. Among the big names they’ve designed websites for are Alan Alda, Clive Cussler, and Tom Clancy. They showed me Pub Site last year and I‘ve been enthusiastic about sharing it with authors ever since. John and I talk through a few sites that Pub Site authors have created and the different customizations they’ve chosen and why. I’ve linked to them in the show notes.&nbsp; We also talk about how to configure your email newsletter, create header images for your site, how the BUY buttons work (a particular pain point they solved nicely), getting a domain name (John recommends GoDaddy and so do I) and why you need to keep your domain name separate from your hosting account. Author and book websites are not like other product sites and, though builders like Wix and Squarespace are pretty and easy to use you’ll learn about their weaknesses as author site builders. And the weaknesses and difficulties of Wordpress sites, too. Finally, we get into mistakes authors make with their websites and top tips for creating an effective website and what’s important to Google. It’s a lot to pack into a half an hour, and subscribers get a link to some bonus content from this and other episodes. You can subscribe at SelfPubBootCamp.com and that way you can also let you know when I publish a new episode.

#19: John Burke, Pub Site

Rob Price is a self-published author turned publisher who founded Gatekeeper Press to level the playing field of the book-publishing industry. The company provides full-service publishing and a la carte services for authors. Gatekeeper is run by Rob and his wife Takako along with a staff of editors, designers and data entry people. They offer a wide and varied distribution network to protect you against possible distribution outages. They also offer lowest-cost printing I’ve seen in an on-demand service, and you’ll learn why. In this episode, we walk through the publishing process from editing, design, and distribution. You’ll learn how long each step takes so you can schedule your book launch. I met Rob at the IBPA conference when he was Chairman of the IBPA, and have gotten to know him in my role as self-publishing and tech track leader at the San Francisco Writers Conference. Authors I know who have used Gatekeeper rave about the service.

#20: Rob Price, Gatekeeper Press for full-service publishing

In this addendum to my interview with D2D Marketing Director Kevin Tumlinson (episode 12), he announces D2D Print.

#12a: Draft2Digital Announces D2D Print

Steven Spatz, President of BookBaby is also a published writer, marketer, BookBaby&nbsp;Blog contributor and, even though he's long since moved to New Jersey, remains an avid Oregon Ducks fan. You'll learn about BookBaby's a la carte self-publishing services and their complete do-it-for-you packages. About their in-house printing on the latest equipment, how printing is done and why the self-publishing industry is plagued with variance in print quality. You'll find out how they solved that problem, too. (It's complicated!) We discuss paper quality, trim sizes and all things printing. And though they print a lot of plain text books like novels and business books, they are printing more full-color children’s books, cookbooks, travel books, and textbooks than ever. We also delve into ebook creation and how fixed layout ebook creation differs for the Apple and Kindle devices. They don't design for the Kindle Fire. Find out why. BookBaby created book websites with their BookShop service for anyone who distributes with them, which is an interesting solution to holiday printing shortages.&nbsp; BookBaby sets a 55% trade discount with the returns program the bookstores require&nbsp;instead of the minimum 30% that the online retailers expect.

#21: Steven Spatz, BookBaby for full-service publishing

Carla King is an adventure travel writer, writes the Misadventures Media blog at CarlaKing.com, is the editor of MotoSFO.com, author of the Motorcycle Misadventures series of books and websites, founder of Self-Publishing Boot Camp, and self-publishing columnist for PBS MediaShift.

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