FastPencil is another self-publishing service company that plans to rival Lulu with its simplicity. For instance, you don’t have to wade through pages and pages of material to figure out how to self-publish your book or ebook. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing yet. I’ll know once I finish the final draft of Shades of Evil and start their process.
Four Big Reasons Why I Signed Up at FastPencil
1. Ebook Conversion and Distribution: Writers can publish their books in ePub or PDF format with or without DRM. Kindle formatting is available, once you buy the distribution package. You can also download their app for the iPhone. As of this date, Lulu does not offer Kindle formatting, which is very stupid on their part.
2. Convert Your Blog into a Book: You can import your blog directly by entering your user information or use the RSS feed. I’ve wanted to do this for several years but couldn’t find a program to work correctly. There are some glitches, which I will discuss in another post.
3. Social Network Interface: This feature allows writers to invite their colleagues and/or readers to their project via Twitter or FaceBook, whether it is to collaborate on a project or ask for feedback.
4. Their customer service is friendly and knowledgeable.
Pros
- Write your book directly on their site. Not only that, but you can collaborate with other authors on the same project. They also offer outlining, feedback, and automatic versioning tools.
- The FastPencil system formats your book for you, complete with a Table of Contents and copyright page. You can also move chapters around with the drag-and-drop interface.
- Publish your book traditionally and electronically, with or without DRM.
- Turn your blog into a book by direct import or use the RSS feed.
- Interact with other writers, editors, designers, etc.
- Ebooks cost $9.99.
- Book Publishing Interface: Drop-dead simple to use. You can write your book directly on their site and customize it so the pages go where you want them to go.
- Book designers and editors can post their services.
Cons
- Price: Multi-format distribution costs $199. Print distribution costs $149. Then there is the yearly $19.95 renewal fee for ISBN listings, which Lulu doesn’t enforce.
- Marketplace: Pitifully small at the moment, but that may change.
- Book Publishing Interface: The word processing feature is too basic. For instance, I’ll have to find the HTML code in order to make a first-line indent on my paragraphs. Images are a pain to format. The good news is that you can format your pages in Word or InDesign and upload the file as a PDF.
Conclusion
Although their service costs more, I like what FastPencil has to offer. The site isn’t bloated like Lulu, and I hope they keep it that way. I’ll be watching this company close over the next year. They still have things to iron out, but they show a lot of promise.
