In this installment of PW Select, in addition to listings and reviews of new self-published books, we talk to two authors whose PW Select-listed titles were picked up by Amazon, look at a violin maker investing more than $1 million in a good self-publishing cause, and examine the beneficial relationship between e-books and self-publishing. Here's the complete package:
The Listings
Highlights from the 193 titles to be found here, our fifth PW Select, include: (trumpet please!) our first title to receive a starred review, Audrey Lynn’s novel about a Russian soldier returning from Afghanistan; an exciting medical thriller about illegal trafficking in venomous snakes; Vivian Yang’s fictional memoir about a Chinese teenager set during WWII and after; an important work by two pioneers in autism research and treatment; and many more that altogether reflect the diversity of interests and enthusiasms that find voice through self-publishing.
PW Select January 2012 Reviews
The fiction, nonfiction and kids' books we picked for review this round.
A Self-Publishing Veteran: Vivian Yang
A decade before self-publishing her second novel, Memoirs of a Eurasian, with Amazon’s CreateSpace—a chapter of which won an award in the 2007 WNYC Leonard Lopate Essay Contest—Vivian Yang released her debut, Shanghai Girl, with Xlibris.
Big Bet for A Good Cause
It’s self-publishing on a grand scale. It took Tom Wilder 10 years and a C$1.2 million investment to publish The Conservation, Restoration, and Repair of Stringed Instruments and Their Bows. The three-volume, 1,600-page bible on the subject sells for $1,395, but so far sales are going well, says Wilder.
When Amazon Calls: Two Self-Published Authors Reflect
Recently, two of the self-published titles reviewed in PW Select’s inaugural edition in December 2010 were picked up by the Amazon Encore publishing imprint. Both are memoirs: Laurel Saville’s Postmortem (which has been retitled Unraveling Anne) and Tim Anderson’s Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries. PW spoke with Saville and Anderson about their journeys from self-publishing to Amazon Publishing, and learned that their experiences—and reactions to them—were remarkably similar.
E-Book Boom Boosts Self-Publishers
Digital editions add to the segment’s explosive growth
In the December 2010 inaugural issue of PW Select, the heads of different self-publishing companies talked about the way e-books were becoming a bigger part of their business. That trend accelerated in 2011, helping to keep the number of titles produced at the major e-book vendors soaring.
