Features

The interview with Nathan Bransford @ Alan Rinzler’s blog has a couple of very fascinating comments. The first is a comment from someone who goes by AE, without a link to a homepage:

The statement about agents becoming the tastemakers is hopeful, at best, and obviously smeared in self interest. No agent wants to accept their demise. What is more likely is that editors will simply band together and form a brand of their own and through this brand the electronic works will be siphoned and accordingly, stamped with approval.

This is inevitable because the publishing houses will disappear as

Fact: It’s incredibly hard to sell a self-published book, especially self-published fiction.  Opinion: this doesn’t matter.

There’s a post on Janet Reid’s blog today calling out writers who mention they’ve been published by AuthorHouse, iUniverse, etc. because this implies that they haven’t sold a lot of books.  The point I make there in the comments section is that sales figures shouldn’t be the main determining factor in taking on a writer, but unfortunately it is.  As I write about in this blog post, a self-published writer shouldn’t be judged on the ability to sell 5000 books via Lulu.  The […]

If you haven’t been following this story, there’s been a minor dust up at South by Southwest in a panel about publishing.  The basic gist: publishers are holding onto the past model of publishing, while there are new ways to determine if a writer will find a readership.  William Aicher, a self-published writer, has one of the best posts and discussions on the topic.

The  ultimate “New Think” for the publishing industry that I’ve been pushing both in book publishing, as well as in the music publishing industry is to change the mindset that publishers are in charge and

In March 2008, I delivered a lecture on Print on Demand publication to a creative writing class at the University of Newcastle in Australia. Adjusting for scale and for regional habits of reading and writing, much of what I said applies to the United States, England, and others of the more literate and technologically-advanced countries of the world. Here, updated, is that lecture.

The Declining Value of the Traditional Book

In June, 2007, my wife and I spent a day in the New York offices of McGraw-Hill, the publisher of a university textbook that we have edited for thirty-five years. […]

In life, certain things have a way of happening just at the right time. This week’s book publishing news was no exception. I have two quotes below from two senior principles from very diverse areas of the book publishing world, who in their own right believe they are making a difference. Here are the quotes. Follow the theme.

Quote One:

“We regard ourselves as independent in the sense of independence of third-party corporate ownership and feel at home with the other members.”

Quote Two:

“Now, through indie book publishing companies like AuthorHouse and iUniverse, authors can let the readers decide […]

Dear SPR,

No matter how much positivity surrounds self-publishing today (it’s a growing trend, more “good” writers are self-publishing their work, etc.), it still has a long way to go before people are able to overlook the stigma that invariably goes along with it .

I agree that it can be rewarding to self-publish. I’ve enjoyed having worked to sell my book, I’ve enjoyed the reviews it’s received absent of a big-name publisher logo often required to get people to read past the cover, and I’ve enjoyed knowing that, even without that publisher, many have been able to enjoy my […]

Podpeep links to an interesting article about the DIY music phenomenon and why self-released music gets so much more respect than self-released writing.  The article quotes the editor of Paste Magazine as saying: “In the book world, it’s so fragmented, with so many publishing houses out there, that somebody doing something on their own has more of a stigma because it suggests that everybody else passed on it.”

That hardly seems to be the problem.  I have no firm numbers, but I would imagine there are more small indie labels than there are publishers – especially when you factor in […]