I Love Fotolia and iStockPhoto

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​Self-Publish Your Book Without Losing Your Shirt: business basics for self-publishing authors (now being revised) is aimed at writers who don't need help with writing or designing, but do need help with the business side of the publishing business. It's intended for writers who use self-publishing companies, as well as writers -- like me -- who decide to stay independent, and form their own small publishing companies. ​



Within three hours, I got the idea for the book, picked a title, did a rough design for the cover, assigned an ISBN, and wrote a list of chapters and some of the words that go between the covers.



The cover photo was taken by Piotr Marcinski and I got it at Fotolia.com. Fotolia is my first choice when I need photography. The selection is huge, quality the highest, and prices either reasonable or ridiculously low. I'm sure I would have paid over a thousand bucks to hire a model and a photographer to get a picture like this one, and it might have taken weeks to get it. I made the decision on the Fotolia site in less than ten minutes, and the price (for a big hi-rez image) was about $12.



One thing I particularly like about Fotolia is that I can download free low-rez trial pix to experiment with in layouts, before I decide to spend money. If I decide to spend the money, and later realize that I picked the wrong pic, I probably wasted less money than I would spend on a pizza -- and I may be able to use the photo in another project. (That has happened twice.)



Of course, when I use "stock" photography like this, it's not mine exclusively, so I check to see if any similar books have the same or similar illustrations. There is no guarantee that one won't go on sale in the future (there's also no guarantee that another book won't have the same title as mine), but I'm willing to take the risk. I'd have to sell many more books to pay for a $1000 photo than a $12 photo.



I also like iStockPhoto and ShutterStock.