Michael Ashley, founder and Chief Technology Officer of e-book publishing service FastPencil, has an article on Gizmodo looking at publishing across the major e-book platforms—iBooks, Kindle, Nook, Kobo.

Not surprisingly, it comes to the conclusion that would-be self-publishers ought to “do it using online service providers like FastPencil.com who will manage everything for you” because “self-publishing is for workaholics.” In fact, the piece reads more like an ad for FastPencil than a helpful how-to, as Ashley takes pains to point out the advantages his service has over Lulu or CreateSpace. At least Gizmodo fully discloses Ashley’s connection to the service at the end.

Still, if you ignore the blatant plugs for FastPencil, Ashley does make a couple of good points. Authors should publish a format for every different e-book channel they possibly can, since each format will have its own devoted audience and you never can tell where a would-be customer will see your book. And authors should make it easy to find their book, linking from their blog posts, websites, etc.—though by now this should probably qualify as common sense.

Related: Gizmodo explains the E-Babel problem

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