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I am going to say something which may ruffle a few feathers, both from traditionally published authors and authors who have self-published but are looking to break into mainstream publishing through their own endeavours.

Your prospective publisher declares ‘NO ADVANCE OR BE DAMNED’.

Would you politely decline the publisher’s contract offer without any advance and show yourself to the door? Perhaps you would if the offer came from ACME Publishing or some other publishing shack up the road. Let’s say the offer came from an imprint of Pan Macmillan or HarperCollins. Would you then stop and think twice?

I believe […]

The impulse about Amazon is to think that they’re a monolithic corporate entity that may be up to no good.  This is the root of a lot of the criticism of the Kindle, which people criticize as possibly monopolizing the ebook market: consumers will be forced to buy books from only the Amazon outlet.  This is what happens when a retailer enters the world of technology.  Given that Amazon allows Kindle books to be read on the iPhone, they are at least not forcing people into buying their own device.

On the whole, Amazon’s Kindle venture is positive.  Though there’s […]

The question of choosing to self-publish for an author is better understood if the question is turned on its head. An author should always ask themselves the question rhetorically.

‘Why do I want to self publish?’

I mean have you not heard all the bad press self publishing gets? That it is just pure vanity and any author solution service you choose will just take your cash, as much as they can wean out of you, then take you for a very short ride down the self-publishing boulevard of broken dreams. I have been researching author solution companies for my […]

Late 1990s.  December.  After three years, I write “The End” on the last page of my tough-guy, hard-boiled, noir crime thriller.  All I need now is a great agent – someone who will believe in me – someone who will champion my talent – get my book published.  Hope springs eternal . . .

And not in vain!  A couple of weeks later, I luck out!  Thomas Ganer, a hip, young, celebrated literary agent with a now-defunct agency in the DeNiro building in downtown NYC, takes me on!  Wow!  He takes me to lunch.  He cautions that the book will […]

Yes, there is a connection.  As I’ve been writing about recently, the impulse to criticize self-publishing seems seriously misguided.  At its core, self-publishing is a way for everyone – everyone – to be able to freely express themselves.  That the output is mostly bad (which you can’t determine unless you read thousands of books) is mostly a non-issue.  It may be unfortunate that self-published books get diluted by work that’s not very well-conceived, but self-publishing is a system where every single person has a voice, no one’s disenfranchised.  That is something to be celebrated – not repeatedly attacked.

“Star Trek” […]

The post about the ways that people criticize self-publishing brings up the idea that a traditionally published book has a stamp of approval and so traditionally published books are more reliable.  This is true.  Some amount of vetting does count for something, but in an age when it’s more difficult to get published, it is not the only measure of a book’s worth.

What’s also problematic is that writers may take this one step further and consider that their writing is indeed better because it has been accepted by an editor.  I don’t want to limit the idea that getting […]

Part of the reason I’m so attracted to self-publishing is that it’s so reviled.  It’s for misfits.  It truly is the publishing version of punk rock – something that anybody could do and something that people snubbed their noses at.  Something that inspired conservative outrage.  Really, when you boil it down, self-publishing is a very positive development: the ability for writers who were not able to get a book deal in a highly competitive industry to be able to find readers.  It’s totally democratic and a great example of free expression.  Why you’d want to crap over something that has […]