Writers, Your Biggest Market Is Only 3 Days Away From You

Learn a tool, know a community, get 10x reach

Photo by Rishikesh Sreehari on Unsplash

2 decades ago, when the blogosphere was still fledgling, I was amazed by POD (print-on-demand) self-publishing companies’ outreach. For $1000/book, they would provide book-formatting services.

I got sold to one of them.

A $1000 package, only to create a shiny looking PDF out of:

• My content in a well-formatted word document
• My bio
• My photograph (hard copies!)
• Cover image (purchased by me!)

After the book failed to garner any audience, I did the much-needed soul searching.

I could see the package was a total ripoff. Being a programmer myself, I should have thought better.

For example, I could have paid some audience-builder who would market it for me, while I could focus on the formatting that the POD firm did for $1000. It was a skill I already possessed.

If only Calibre existed at that time, which is usable by non-technical people too.

What is Calibre: