Can you self-publish a movie?

When releasing Upstream Color this month, director and writer  Shane Carruth opted to to take the DIY distribution route. The film opened in theaters in 20 markets around the country, followed by a wide range of platforms from iTunes to YouTube to Netflix to DVD. Carruth explained his choice:

As a filmmaker you try to make a compelling case for an audience to stick around minute by minute with what is on the screen … By also crafting the marketing we’re still doing that, still storytelling, but we’re trying to make a case for an audience to show up. Hopefully for viewers, framing the film this way and staying true to the film’s intent makes it a bit more of an intimate relationship.

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One bestselling self-published author urged other writers to avoid reading reviews online. Do you agree?

Novelist Paige Weaver has spent five weeks on our Self-Published Bestsellers List with Promise Me Darkness, but she stopped reading reviews as her book spread online.  Here is her simple advice:

My policy is DO NOT READ YOUR REVIEWS. Good or bad. I’ve heard this from other authors so that is my new motto. The first few days after “Promise Me Darkness” was released, I read all the reviews and they were good but I knew that the bad ones were coming. Every book has had bad reviews. It is just human nature. We can’t all agree on everything … I do not read reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, or anywhere else. I’m too scared. I haven’t developed that thick skin so many authors told me I had to have in this business. My hubby and friends tell me what the good reviews say and sometimes they tell me what the bad reviews say if they think it might be helpful for my writing. Knowing there are some bad reviews does hurt, I’ll admit, but then I think of that childhood saying – “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”

Novelist Barbara Freethy leads our Self Published Bestsellers List this week with her romantic suspense title, Don’t Say a Word.

To help GalleyCat readers discover self-published authors, we compile weekly lists of the top eBooks in four major marketplaces for self-published digital books: Amazon, B&N, Apple iBookstore and Smashwords. You can read all the lists below, complete with links to each book.

If you want more resources as an author, try our Free Sites to Promote Your eBook post, How To Sell Your Self-Published Book in Bookstores post and our How to Pitch Your Book to Online Outlets post.

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Looking for a good mystery or thriller this weekend? Find more independently published mysteries and thrillers in our monthly list below…

Our weekly self-published bestsellers list is often dominated by the popular genres of romance and erotica. In an effort to help GalleyCat readers find other kinds of independent authors, we will offer regular genre-focused bestseller lists–highlighting three top books from four different marketplaces.

If you want more resources as an author, try our Free Sites to Promote Your eBook post, How To Sell Your Self-Published Book in Bookstores post and our How to Pitch Your Book to Online Outlets post.

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Self-published novelist R.L. Mathewson initially published Playing for Keeps with a plain blue and white cover, but saw a significant sales spike in the iBookstore once she added a steamy Shutterstock photo to her cover (embedded below).

Smashwords founder Mark Coker outlined the sales spike in a chart in his second annual Money Money Money presentation about Smashwords sales (complete slideshow embedded above). We caught up with Mathewson to get some cover design advice from the independent author:

The new covers caught the readers eye and it helped clear up any confusion they may have had about the books. The new cover along with the price helped the books sell. I would say that you should avoid covers that cause confusion, are horrible to look at, too plain, or too over the top. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to get a good cover, but you do need something that can help draw attention to your book and intrigue someone to take a chance on your work.

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A mysterious writer named Seinfeld 2000 has steadily climbed our Self-Published Bestsellers List these past few weeks with a Smashwords eBook that picks up where the Seinfeld show ended–The Apple Store.

To help GalleyCat readers discover self-published authors, we compile weekly lists of the top eBooks in four major marketplaces for self-published digital books: Amazon, B&N, Apple iBookstore and Smashwords. You can read all the lists below, complete with links to each book.

If you are an independent author looking for support, check out our free directory of people looking for writers groups.

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Do you love Dan Brown‘s literary puzzles?

You can download two free eBooks by J.F. Penn to play an online game created by Kobo. The winner gets $5,000 and an eReader signed by Brown himself. AppNewser has all the details:

Kobo has created an augmented reality game to promote eReading. The game is called The Descent and is inspired by Dante’s Inferno, Dan Brown’s upcoming book Inferno and the works of the self-published author J.F. Penn, which are themed around Dante’s Inferno and the nine circles of hell. The promotion encourages readers to download and read two free eBooks by Penn – Sins of Temptation and Sins of Violence (both of which are Kobo exclusives)– in order to look for clues to crack the code of the online game. The author’s third book in the series, Sins of Treachery, comes out in September.

GalleyCat readers constantly ask us: how many copies does it take to get on the Self Published Bestsellers List?

This is not an easy question to answer since all the major marketplaces for indie books carefully guard their sales figures. However, in Behind the Story: Interviews From 20 Self-Published Authors Who Made it BIG, author Denise Kim Wy managed to get sales figures from six different self-published authors.

We’ve included those sales figures below, complete with some quotes from the book. If you are an indie author and want to share how many copies you’ve sold, feel free to email GalleyCat a photograph to be included on this list.

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We spend a lot of time covering independent authors on GalleyCat, bringing news from the self-publishing world every week.

In an effort to consolidate our reporting, we will release a monthly Self-Publishing Intelligence Report that links to all of our resources for indie authors. Below, we’ve linked to our bestseller lists and the top news stories about this booming corner of the publishing industry.

If you are an author, find some support in our directory of writers looking for writing groups.

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Novelist J. S. Scott topped the Barnes & Noble section of our our Self-Published Bestsellers List this week with a boxed set about a sexy billionaire.

To help GalleyCat readers discover self-published authors, we compile weekly lists of the top eBooks in four major marketplaces for self-published digital books: Amazon, B&N, Apple iBookstore and Smashwords. You can read all the lists below, complete with links to each book.

If you are an independent author looking for support, check out our free directory of people looking for writers groups.

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