Overview

Mark has been very involved in the indie publishing scene. He helped early on with Kobo Writing Life and has been part of the improvements at Draft 2 Digital.

He talks at conventions and has multiple books for writers, including his latest which he co-authored with Joanna Penn (Joanna's mother Jacqui was on episode 27 and gave me the idea to do a split podcast - https://www.discoveredwordsmiths.com/2020/11/24/episode-27a-penny-appleton-love-second-time-around/).

Book

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08Z38D9L7/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B08Z38D9L7&linkCode=as2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=adb3db77cabd8501941ab577ea320c78

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B094RBGNYM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B094RBGNYM&linkCode=as2&tag=saschneider-20&linkId=d3b855f702642ae735a2f067c691a7b6

YouTube

https://youtu.be/sDetjw740_M

Transcript

[00:00:00] Mark: Are you working on your author career, but struggling to get that first book published, does the goal of being an author seem too lofty or thoughts of having multiple books and making a full-time living are as fantastical as living in Cinderella's castle. Welcome to discovered wordsmiths a podcast where aspiring authors can be.

Join Stephen Schneider is he finds and talks to authors. You may not know, but authors that have gotten their book on the author career path here, what they've done to get there and where they want to go. Now, settle back. It's time for a bit of inspiration and advice. Come listen to today's discovered wordsmith.

[00:00:48] Stephen: All right, so we'll just roll it. I'll edit here. We'll talk a little bit author stuff and some eat 2d and all that, but

[00:00:54] Mark: whatever. Should I dress up for that? Should I put on a

[00:00:57] Stephen: sports coat? I do most things. Casual listening [00:01:00] that expects sport coats. Come on. I did a whole podcast with something in my teeth, so

[00:01:05] Mark: I can just quickly do this.

There

[00:01:07] Stephen: you go. The transformation

[00:01:09] Mark: there, dress

[00:01:09] Stephen: it up a little. Now you're more dressed than. Uh, all right. So mark, now that you're ready for the important business side of things, let's talk a little bit about your writing in that. So when you write what services and software do you like to use? So

[00:01:23] Mark: at the core, basic, I start with word that's.

How, where I compose most of my manuscripts, I will then use a combination of services. I am familiar enough with book layouts. When I do it myself, I ended up getting it into the. I use InDesign. My book covers will come from typically a professional designer who does the front cover, but I can design the rest of it myself, because I used to run it in service.

I know how to do this. And I do the interior in, through Adobe as well for the layout when I'm not working with. And yeah, I will publish direct Kendall. Um, when I'm doing it myself, I go to Kindle direct publishing. I will [00:02:00] go to Kobo writing life. Having helped create that platform. I'm a little bit partial to it, right.

And I've long been using draft to digital for distribution and even my conversion.