An article about the surprising advantages of self-publishiong, by Jessica Park.
Bestselling trad-to-indie-author Barry Eisler, famous for turning down a six figure deal from St. Martins Press to go out on his own, took a lot of heat for having compared an author’s relationship with a big publisher to Stockholm syndrome*. The truth is that it’s not a bad comparison at all. Snarky, funny, and exaggerated, perhaps, but there is more than one grain of truth there, and I just know that authors across the country were nodding so violently that we had collective whiplash.
* Stockholm Syndrome: the tendency of long-term hostages to start to sympathize with their emprisoners.
That is a very interesting and informative article EO. Thanks for sharing it. I sent it along to a friend that is currently writing about his VERY fascinating life and I'm trying give him a shove to print it, not just have it on his web site as it is now.
ReplyDeleteWell done. People are not linkly to read a very long web site, but they might if they can buy it as an ebook for less than five bucks.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, a very interesting article.
ReplyDeleteLately I have read a few e-books self-published on Amazon. I appreciate the price and saving trees, but I do wish the authors would get proof-readers who can check grammar and spelling before pushing their baby out into the world to fend for itself. 'Spell check' only works if you can accept the wrong word is correctly spelled.
That is one problem with self-publishing, the lack of an editor. Someone who is self-publishing needs to either become good at doing this themselves, find friends who are or pay a professional.
ReplyDeleteIn the academic world generally a book isn't considered worthwhile unless it is published by a serious academic publisher. I can't even require my students to buy something that I self-publish, in case I'm just trying to flog off my lecture notes. If I do want to I can just give all the profits to the university. So I could publish a book for $100, get $10 and be lucky if a few students bought it. Instead I could self-publish. Sell at $15 and get $10.50 per copy and sell lots.
ReplyDeleteYes, most people need an editor and a designer. I hope a decent system will grow up, where you can find these services at reasonable prices and still be pretty sure of a professional job.
Surely there are already ways of finding them, but if one is dominant, I haven't heard of it.
I guess to ask around at writer's forum's is what I'd do for now.