As many of you already know, I wrote and self-published The Indie Author Guide in 2008. Last year, I contracted with Writer’s Digest Books to release the book in a revised and updated edition. I also decided to build a companion website for the book, to contain all the links and resources referenced in the book, along with some supplemental material.
Companion websites are a good fit for any book containing information that is subject to change, such as hyperlinks or references to specific websites. Since The Indie Author Guide was first published, for example, its chapters on POD publishing through Createspace and Kindle publishing have been rendered inaccurate due to site and procedural changes on the Createspace and Amazon DTP sites. I wanted to include an author guide to Facebook in the revised edition too, but as anyone who uses Facebook knows, that site is subject to sudden and dramatic changes at any time, with no advance notice, so that’s another area that’s fairly pointless to cover in a hard copy book.
Enter The Indie Author Guide companion website. On it, I’ve included a page for each of the book’s twelve chapters. Each page contains resources, links, errata and addenda for its respective chapter. The site’s layout will make the most sense to people who go there after having bought and perused the book, but it’s fairly bursting at the virtual seams with links and resources of interest to any indie author, so it’s worth a visit whether you’ve bought the book or not.
In addition to what’s already there, two more features are in the works.
First, I’ll be adding a free, downloadable pdf containing tracking and number-crunching worksheets which are contained in an Appendix of the book as soon as the pdf is released to me from the publisher.
Second, when the book starts shipping I’ll be inviting anyone who buys a copy to send me a digital picture of my book side-by-side with their own book (or in the case of an ebook, a printed image of the ebook’s cover), along with a link to be embedded in the image (e.g., a link to the author’s website or book product page on Amazon). I’ll be setting up a rotating gallery of these images with embedded links to run on the front page of the site, with the aim of getting those authors some extra exposure for their books.
For the time being, just feel free to peruse the links and resources. Be sure to check the page for Chapter 11; it’s the most jam-packed of the entire site!
And if you’ve pre-ordered The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use