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First off, I didn’t wade into the Penguin self-publishing controversy because I took some  days off work to work on my novel and I was keeping to that.  I agree that it’s a rip-off as illustrated by David Gaughran:

Book Country offer a range of options to self-publish your work, all vastly over-priced.

The premium package costs a whopping $549. To be clear: there is no editing or cover design included in this package (the two biggest expenses for self-publishers). There is also no marketing or promotion included in this package, aside from a “Publishing Kit” with “tips” and

There’s a really interesting note in a post about Kindle sales on the Self-Published Author’s Lounge:

First of all, free does attract a lot of negative reviews.  I’m not the only author who’s noticed it and neither is this author.  I have another author friend who is shying away from putting anything else out for free because she doesn’t want to get the negative reviews.  Free does attract a heavy dose of criticism.  I still use free, though, because my skin really has gotten thick enough where I honestly don’t care anymore (this takes time to develop) and because

I’ve had my problems with JA Konrath in the past (in the comments of that post). His position used to be that writers needed to be traditionally published in order to prove their mettle – the measure of a writer was if publishing professionals were willing to invest some money in a book. He’s obviously had a change of heart because now he advocates for self-publishing daily – also because of money changing hands: self-publishing is legit because writers can turn a profit. To be honest, I don’t find this the greatest endorsement either because it’s still saying money is […]

Really interesting post in The Millions about self-publishing – which to me is kind of watershed compared to yet another post about self-publishing in the Washington Post or New York Times. The Millions is an established litblog on the high-brow edge – the kind of site that might have never given self-publishing a second look 5 years ago, but now is finally seeing self-publishing as increasingly necessary for an increasing number of writers.

It also falls in line with the discussion we’ve been having about “indie” credibility. Self-publishing has already cemented its commercial credibility, but it has yet to […]

David Gaughran has a good post up on Indie Reader – The Future is Indie – which dovetails well with Tom Lichtenberg’s post about the meaning of indie.  The question has been why indie publishing doesn’t get the same respect as indie music and indie film.  The answer is pretty simple: they’re entirely different.  Though there are self-released CD’s and independently-financed movies that are attempts to be commercial, the main meaning of indie is “different than the mainstream.”  With independent publishing, this is also the case.  With indie publishing, it’s not the case at all.

I knew that readers

Henry Baum’s recent post (about foul language in self-published books) raised this issue, which has been on my mind for a while. What IS so “indie” about “indie writers.” Is it merely a fashionable term, wishful thinking? The term comes from the “indie” film and music trends of the late 20th century, but I think those artistic fields are fundamentally different in important ways from book publishing. Both music and film require much more equipment, technical expertise and money, and usually involve more people as well, whereas writers only need to type into a computer, save their files, and upload […]

I recently sent an old novel off to reviewers from the ginormous list of indie reviewers.  There are so many more reviewers than when the book was first released (in 2006) that I thought, why not?  Literally, there were 5 blogs devoted to self-publishing at that time.  Now, hundreds.  In the back of my mind I wondered if some of the reviewers would have a problem with the language, as this is an issue that I’ve seen come up frequently on review blogs.  And lo and behold, this was exactly the response the book got.  Some nice reviews, but […]