Moonshots Beyond the Cloud

Do you sell ebooks directly on Gumroad or on your website? Don't ship large ePub or Mobi files, they may make it impossible or impractical for readers to load the files in their favorite reading apps. Here's an example of an ebook I bought on Gumroad and available in PDF, ePub, and Mobi format. I'd like to read it on my Android phone and tablet. My ePub reading app, Google Play Books, is ubiquitous on Android. It can sideload files up to 100 MB, but the ePub version of that Gumroad book has a size of 105 MB. I can't use the Kindle Android app via Send to Kindle because the book's Mobi file is 33 MB. Gmail, along with most other email clients, can't send attachments over 25 MB. For larger files, Gmail sends download links that don't work with Amazon's automated Send to Kindle system, which can't click links. Also, Gumroad doesn't provide a Send to Kindle button for the file the author supplied. This leaves the PDF file. However, it’s a suboptimal...

Indie writer David Gaughran published the ebook Following: A Marketing Guide To Author Platform . It’s a free bonus you can download by subscribing to David’s weekly book marketing newsletter . David Gaughran’s Following ebook in Google Play Books on my Pixel 2 XL phone. The book brings clarity on the confusing issue of building an author platform writers and authors face, especially when going indie and self-publishing. Its greatest value is a concise and clear definition of what an author platform is and what it's supposed to do, along with a prioritized roadmap. Although you’ll find practical advice in Following , the book comes with an online resource section David keeps up to date with how-tos, step-by-step guides, videos, lists of service providers, and more. David presents a framework grounded on two pillars, an author website and a newsletter . You can add other activities and online presences modularly on top of those as your time and resources allow....

The members of OnEBoard interviewed me for their  On E Board Home series. I chatted with them about why my blog is my online home, how I started my newsletter , my space outreach activities, understanding and keeping up to date with the Google ecosystem, and more. Here's the preview of the interview . Watch also the full interview . OnEBoard is a network of creators who collaborate over the web. The group has its roots in projects they started on Google+. Thanks to Bob Danley, Peggy Kolm, Monika Schmidt, and Nina Trankova for having me as a guest and for their questions. Nina and Peggy are also fellow members of the Google Product Experts Program. These questions were an opportunity for thinking about and reflecting on my work and interests.

If you own an Internet domain, you can create subdomains for your properties such as a blog, a newsletter, and books. The URL of my blog starts with the blog subdomain of my domain. For example, my domain is paoloamoroso.com and my personal website is www.paoloamoroso.com  I set up the subdomains blog.paoloamoroso.com for my blog , newsletter.paoloamoroso.com for my newsletter , and books.paoloamoroso.com for a list of my books . blog points to my Blogger-hosted blog. newsletter and books are redirects. The former to my page on the Revue newsletter publishing platform, the latter to a page on my personal site. These URLs are good mnemonics and a branding opportunity . They are easy to remember and say when talking in person or in phone conversations. And you can include the URLs in business cards or promotional material. blog.paoloamoroso.com has another benefit as it allows to rename the blog without changing the domain, should I ever need to. The specifics o...

In January 2020 Leanpub announced the cancelation of the Conference Purchase Program . The program allowed conference and event organizers to buy at steep discounts multiple copies of ebooks to give away to attendees. Were eligible the ebooks for sale at the Leanpub self-publishing platform the authors enrolled in the program. It seemed like a good idea, especially considering the growing interest in swagless conferences. But it didn’t work well in practice. The announcement of the discontinuation of the Conference Purchase Program in the Leanpub Author Update newsletter. The program provided a self-serve tool. But it turns out conference organizers were looking for a different process . They wanted direct negotiations with authors and more extensive records, such as invoices, additional payment options, and transaction tracking. Given the accountability and transparency requirements of many organizations, this is understandable. The Conference Purchase Program wasn’...

The day I self-published my book Space Apps for Android I sent free coupons to 16 close friends. The Leanpub coupon generator. All of them share my interests and the topics the book covers. But none of the friends downloaded their free copy . Not a single one. Over the following days I sent free coupons to a few more friends who, again, didn’t download the book. It’s nothing personal. Aside from life and other distractions getting in the way, it’s just that my friends are likely not typical readers who actively seek content like my book. If you publish a book, don’t bother telling your friends and family. Aside from the lack of interest, there are other reasons not to have your friends download the book. If you publish on Amazon, your friend’s purchasing history may have a negative impact on the algorithmic recommendations and reduce the book’s visibility. Also, the feedback you can get from complete strangers is more candid than what friends or family will say not to sou...

Self-published book authors are supposed to have many skills. These skills draw on a diverse variety of fields such as marketing, book formatting and typesetting, business, audio and video production, social media management, intellectual property, software, and web design. All this on top of mastering writing and the domains the authors cover. Along with the books, these skills lead authors to produce additional content and artifacts like websites, email newsletters, ebooks files, podcasts, videos, and many more. But authors are strongly, very strongly discouraged from making their own book covers. To the point it’s a taboo. The recommended way is to hire a professional artist or cover designer. It’s sound advice as a bad cover can significantly reduce sales. But I don’t see why authors can’t learn to design covers the same way they can, and have to, learn to create the other content and artifacts. And, for some genres like non-fiction and technical works, a perfect cover ma...

Some bloggers write a book by putting together their posts, revising the content, and expanding it with new material. I always used Google+ as a blog and I did something similar by using my posts as an early draft of the book Space Apps for Android I self-published. In a video conversation with Nina Trankova , Monika Schmidt, and Bob Danley, a part of Nina’s "On e Board" series, I explained how I repurposed the posts of one of my Google+ collections as the backbone of the book. I also discussed the Lean Publishing workflow with which I produce the book.

The Carnival of the Indies  is a blog carnival for indie authors. Every month the blog The Book Designer posts a collection of links to selected posts by indie authors on industry-related topics such as book design and production, success stories, writing tools and tips, and more. I closely follow this resource packed with valuable information and now I’ve had the opportunity to contribute. Issue #107 (August 2019) of the Carnival of the Indies  includes (under Book Design and Production) a link to a post to my blog, Leanpub and Lean Publishing . It’s an overview for authors who are not familiar with the process and the platform.

Leanpub announced the Leanpub Conference Purchase Program , which allows conference and event organizers to buy at steep discounts multiple copies of ebooks to give away to attendees. The eligible ebooks for sale at Leanpub are the ones the authors enroll in the program. If you are an organizer see the instructions for buying ebooks to give away to attendees . Leanpub authors can learn more about the opportunities and risks of the Conference Purchase Program . Leanpub is a self-publishing platform with a storefront. It supports the Lean Publishing process for publishing works in progress. It’s a perfect fit for the way I work and I use Leanpub for publishing and selling my book Space Apps for Android . The Conference Purchase Program offers to organizers very low prices, such as $1.25 per book copy for 400 planned attendees, and Leanpub’s large selection of technical books on software development and tools, science and technology, and more. For authors the program is an opport...

I published my book Space Apps for Android to Leanpub , which, unlike other self-publishing platforms, focuses on works in progress rather than completed books. The Leanpub company logo. Credit: Leanpub, CC BY 4.0 . Source: Font Awesome . This is unusual and unique in the self-publishing space and, since Leanpub is less known than the major players like Amazon KDP and Apple Books, I often have to explain how Leanpub works when discussing it with other authors. Therefore, I decided to put together this overview I can refer to. Lean Publishing Leanpub bears its name from Lean Publishing , a process for publishing works in progress inspired by the Lean Startup methodology. A book is seen as the product of a startup, often a Minimum Viable Product . You write and release successive improved versions of the book, get feedback from readers, and iterate . Although Leanpub is genre-agnostic, the process is best suited to non-fiction and technical works on topics that change fre...

Len Epp, co-founder of Leanpub and host of Frontmatter: The Leanpub Author Stories Podcast , interviewed me in the May 22, 2019 episode . We talked about my background and interests, my work in astronomy and space popularization, Google+, the Google Product Experts Program, my book, and more. Leanpub is the self-publishing platform I use for my book Space Apps for Android . It provides a Markdown-based toolchain that gives its best for publishing books as works in progress , as well as a storefront for selling them. Many thanks to Len and Leanpub for the opportunity of chatting about me and my work.

Leanpub is the self-publishing platform I use for my book Space Apps for Android . It provides a toolchain and workflow for publishing works in progress , something similar to releasing new versions of a software package. Publishing a new version of a book in progress is a good opportunity for posting to my blog and social profiles a short note summarizing the changes or providing other updates. This lets readers know what’s new and helps spread the voice about the book. It’s also a good idea to add some visuals to the posts to make them stand out, especially in the busy feeds of social platforms. But what kind of image to use? The book’s cover is an obvious start but some variation may be appropriate, especially after a few updates of the same title. So another option is a screenshot of the cover opened in an ereading app, with a device frame around the edges of the screenshot. There are mockup generation apps (I have Screener ) and tools for inserting a screenshot into an imag...

In a post to the BookWorks blog Carla King discussed a Markdown-based book writing and publishing process and briefly reviewed a number of tools and platforms. The tools she covered range from specialized Markdown and text editors to full platforms like Leanpub. Leanpub provides both a Markdown-based self-publishing toolchain for works in progress or finished books, and an online storefront for selling these and other works like courses. The storefront is pretty flexible as it supports options such as a variable pricing scheme, bundling, and selling additional digital content. I use Leanpub to publish my book Space Apps for Android . I write the manuscript with Leanpub’s Markua Markdown flavor designed for formatting books and similar works.