Self-publishing is getting easier.
The New York Times is a little behind, though, I wrote about this phenomenon 8 years ago.
In the article I mention Dune as a book which had a hard time finding a publisher. Well, there are many stories like that. One particularly intense one is that Harry Potter was turned down by twelve publishers! Can you imagine how those twelve editors must still be kicking themselves to sleep each night?
I wouldn't have the patience to send a manuscript to more than twelve publishers. I would figure after half of that, that the Universe was sending me a message.
But I would have the patience to self-publish.
... This is the first I hear of Amazon CreateSpace. Interesting.
10 comments:
Eolake:
I tagged your blog. Lucky you (sorry). It's because I love to check in to see what you're up to every now and then. Visit mine to see what to do...
Sharon
"kicking themselves to sleep each night"
INCREDIBLE! I had no idea there were Earth humans with such bendable bodies. Being able to kick your own behind, that's amazing physical fitness.
I didn't know it was good relaxation for sleeping better at night, either. Very odd biology you have in the Galactic suburbs.
Nanoo-nanoo, Mork out.
Imagine the feeling of her idiot ex, who left her alone and jobless with a baby, prompting her to write fairy tales...
Sometimes there IS such a thing as Justice from Above. :-)
This story was not mentioned on her page on Wikipedia.
I remember reading somewhere that J.K.R. found her agent very quickly, and that it is he who did all the work to get her published. It appears that those people are not all worthless parasites, after all...
Form her Wikipedia page (edited):
"Rowling then moved to Porto, Portugal... While there she married Jorge Arantes. Their child Jessica was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal. They separated in November 1993. In December 1994, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near her sister in Edinburgh. During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression. It was the feeling of her illness which brought her the idea of Dementors, soulless creatures featured in Harry Potter. Unemployed and living on state benefits, she completed her first novel."
Doesn't sound like he cared much for a family. Like Pascal, I would love to see his face today. Must be the laughingstock of the neighborhood.
Eolake said: "I wouldn't have the patience to send a manuscript to more than twelve publishers. I would figure after half of that, that the Universe was sending me a message.
But I would have the patience to self-publish."
Interesting idea. I think it depends partly on what type of work you're trying to get out there. Imagine, for example, Eolake, that you'd like to publish some of your course materials or your philosophical adumbrations on the nature of aesthetics and art, in book form. I think your publication could very easily reside as a PDF for paid download at the entry pages to your websites, and there it would receive adequate access to appropriate readership.
But imagine if your manuscript were more along the lines of a historical commentary on the nature of teaching art. Say you went another step, got interested in what types of documents that are similar to yours existed in the Renaissance or the Roman Empire. For your work to find people who could adequately assess whether or not you really had anything worth reading, you'd have to find a different reading public. You would want an "imprimatur" -- that is to say, the respect and weight that comes with an imprint, which can only be afforded to you if some organization, which itself bears its own weight and respect. You need a publishing house, probably an academic art-history one. In the absence of that, you're just another crackpot with weird ideas, and even if your ideas are valid, they're unlikely to be read.
I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, this arrangement. It's just the way that readers currently behave. Maybe they'll change in the future. As far as pictures of pretty naked girls go, "self publishing" seems pretty reasonable, and already accepted readily by the targeted "reading public."
There's a self-published book that's doing pretty well in a field I'm interested in. It's linked here:
http://shavemyface.com/
The community which visits that website, will see and purchase the book. Unfortunately for another author, a better and more thorough guide to all the aspects of the "gourmet shave" is also available, but this second author doesn't run the website where gourmet shavers congregate. Does the second author need a publisher? His work is distributed as a PDF by Lulu as well, just like the first author. There's no animosity between them; they're quite gentlemanly to one another; but one gets free advertising.
The second fellow has other avenues he might consider. I keep trying to convince the other, that he needs to find all the fancy men's barber shops in the country and get them to display six copies of his book on consignment. Rather than one-for-one printing (as Lulu tends to do), making one copy only when one is ordered and paid for, the barber shops would actually have copies which are NOT paid for, standing in wait of a customer. This more traditional method of distribution could more easily be accomplished by a publishing house. The author, alone, can't find barber shops, approach each proprietor (and not come off like a crack-pot to the more wary, skeptical of them), extend credit to each barber, pay out of his own pocket for the hundreds of advance copies necessary, and then wait for the inevitable but slow-arriving profits. The author as an individual doesn't have the deep pockets, in terms of money or staff time, for that sort of endeavor.
So, his book rests on the internet largely unplumbed, regardless of a wide potential audience. I'd say there are literally 500 potential customers at my local fancy gentleman's barber shop, alone; and he has a tourist-district shop in another neighborhood as well, where a new 500 a week come through and browse. But none of them will ever see the book. Self-publishing has met its limit with him -- Lulu's not enough.
He could have an affiliate relationship with the popular web site. They get a cut of sales originating from their site, everybody wins.
Sure, but that presumes the website will let him. And it still doesn't connect him with the real bulk of customers, who never think to go on line to read about shaving. Most of the guys at the barber shop would be delighted to see that a book exists about how to improve their required miserable daily ritual, but most won't ever see it.
"You need a publishing house, probably an academic art-history one. In the absence of that, you're just another crackpot with weird ideas"
I've just started reading an article about a crackpot with weird ideas who has the scientific world today standing like one man, either in admiration or in rejection.
He's published on the web (no imprint) his Theory of the Whole, possibly unifying the Laws of Physics if the ongoing verification finds no flaws in his 10 year-long work.
My feeling is, it'll turn out to be the genuine stuff. And my intuitions are usually very reliable. (Check my blog for a list of recent ones for 2008.)
"http://shavemyface.com/"
It's funny... in Syrian vernacular, "shave from here" means "beat it, buster!".
Not exactly a good name if you want to ATTRACT people to your site! :-D
(I bet R.A.F. will never forgive me for beating him to that one...)
"I'd say there are literally 500 potential customers at my local fancy gentleman's barber shop, alone"
Then what are you waiting for, man, start spreading word about him around you and on the internet!
Oh, wait a sec: you are!
:-+
(Sticky tape on mouth)
P.S.: A personal thank you to Eolake for the links in this post. Might be very useful to me one day.
So there, it's said in advance.
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