Features

Moxie Mezcal on Tom Lichtenberg’s blog:

What the e-book thing and the self-publishing thing have shown us is that what’s commercial and marketable will still be what’s commercial and marketable whether it’s self-published or traditionally published. The people who are going to make money off self-publishing are those working in identifiable genres and telling stories that appeal to a broad audience. And I don’t say this with any bitterness or resentment at all, I wish these people all the success and happiness in the world. I’d only caution those budding writers out there who are thinking about self-publishing their

Jane Friedman makes this very interesting point:

Right now, Author Solutions is the biggest self-publishing/POD service company in the world. Over the last decade, they’ve bought up the most significant competitors, such as iUniverse, Xlibris, and Trafford. Their growth has been astronomical and reported on by outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Inc. magazine.

To keep growing their business, they’ve been soliciting and establishing partnerships with traditional publishers, to set up new self-publishing brands that they exclusively service, such as Harlequin’s Horizons and Thomas Nelson’s West Bow. They’ve also started an author education arm.

It used to be the refrain about self-publishing that to do it right you needed to hire a professional book-cover designer and a professional editor. While there is no doubt that self-publishers should do this, it doesn’t really seem to be the case that this entirely matters anymore. Plainly, we’re entering a new phase where people approach writing differently. People will forgive problems for a cheap read.

Roxanne Gay has a post on HTML Giant which repeats the age-old mantra about gatekeepers:

Quality is certainly very subjective but even with that, given the self-published work I’ve read (admittedly not an

The New York Times list for bestselling ebooks is letting self-publishers in, resulting in stories like this one.

Currently, Victorine E. Lieske is not on the list, but another self-released book is:

Both books sell for $.99. What’s interesting, and sort of odd, is that the list mimics Amazon’s bestseller list, but not entirely. Popular self-published writers Amanda Hocking and John Locke are missing from the Times. As the Times footnotes:

Rankings reflect weekly sales for books sold in both print and electronic formats as reported by vendors offering a wide range of general interest titles.

So this […]