Henry Baum

On Pimp my Novel, there was a very terrible post called Self-Publishing: Great Idea… or Worst Idea Ever? I have reached a point where I no longer feel the need to defend self-publishing any longer. And recently I’ve had some pretty long dialogues on the subject – I figure that’s my last word on the subject. The detractors are just so wrong, it’s not even worth arguing. Eric, who says he works in “the sales department of a major trade book publisher,” wrote age-old criticisms such as,

99%+ of the time, however, these books are either written by the functionally

There’s an interesting discussion at Frank Daniels’ review of No Mad by Sam Moffie. The review is scathingly critical and some of Moffie’s fans have come to his defense. I added the – perhaps unwise – comment that you could only like Sam Moffie’s book if you didn’t really care about “good” writing. Frank was called an “elitist” for not liking what “average” people will like.

A commenter said:

I read the book and loved it! A book the average person can enjoy. This review is just one of many examples of why those from the self titled publishing

Hugh McGuire of Book Oven – interviewed here on SPR – has a provocative post titled, Cloud-publishing; or, “Self-publishing” Is Meaningless. He says,

The key here is: cloud-publishing (and Book Oven) will provide the tools to allow groups of people to easily coalesce around the production, distribution and sale of a particular book or books. How those groups organize themselves will look different from book to book. But Book Oven’s tools will mean that book makers can focus on the important thing, the content, and not worry about the technical hurdles of making, printing & distributing books…

So

One of the issues brought up in the comments of this post is about overconfidence in writers – especially self-published writers.  Part of what fuels the amount of poorly-conceived self-published books is a sense of overconfidence and misunderstanding the role of an editor.  Because “editor” has become synonymous with “gatekeeper,” it’s possible some writers do not think the editorial process is necessary and think the freedom of being your own publisher means you have the freedom to avoid the editorial process.

They’re wrong.  For one thing, if you are trying to get a book deal via the traditional route, it’s […]