There was a time, when legacy publishing houses decided what the public read, that legacy review periodicals ruled the publishing marketplace. Then print on demand technologies happened and vanity press took a back seat when indie authors sought economic and environmental options for their publications. Lulu, CreateSpace, BookSurge and others burgeoned.
It’s been about a week since we uploaded our book list to Smashwords. It’s a decision I don’t regret.
A departure today in remembrance of those who have served, and those who have died serving, the countries they love. Whether that service was by choice or unwilling conscription makes little difference after the fact.
I’m not sure how many other authors are greatly influenced, or not, by music. For myself, music plays a very important role in helping me to visualize the environment I’m creating, as well as set the tone of a particular scene.
With the proliferation of social network services and instant gratification, it seems more and more questionable consultants have slithered out from the reefs, people willing to monetize your virtual socialization outreach, maximize the lateral and vertical interconnectivity of your website, and, if you’re involved in the arts, people willing to create blockbuster…
I’ve been schleping Five Rivers’ books now for a year and have discovered some rather startling facts about the retail book industry, the sort of thing that isn’t written in agreements or contracts, the insider sort of thing a person only learns through experience.
Sometime last year I signed on with Goodreads (www.goodreads.com), a virtual book club where people fill shelves with virtual books and more often than not rate and write reviews. These are not critically acclaimed reviews, and are often disparaged by legacy publishers and authors.
Recently a discussion came up among fellow writers about the legitimacy of self-publishing versus legacy publishers. Some of the comments from my colleagues left me, frankly, startled.
Here I am, two days before my reading/signing at Indigo in Burlington, Ontario, and you’d think by now this would be old hat. Well, it is. Sort of. Yet it remains that for several weeks before every gig I obsess: did the books arrive? I check the shipping confirmation for the 20th time.
Every writer gets them, those dreaded letters, forms, slips of paper or, more currently, emails that either cryptically or in detail describe why it is their work won’t be appearing on that publisher’s list.
It’s a ranting day for me. Today’s rant is aimed at the devolution of language, which is fine in and of itself. Language is fluid. It has evolved over millennia, adapting to societal changes, reflecting our beliefs and cultures, but always, always it has remained our primary method of communication, whether spoken or written.
Being a micro-publisher has its own caveats and hurdles, one of them being the ability to integrate your titles and business into the distribution stream, which is far more complex than one would expect. I’m not sure I fully understand the system as yet. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far.
I’ve been asked that by people I’ve met at book signings. I’ve watched them as they flip through one of my books, debating whether to purchase it, watch their expectation that I’m going to come up with something brilliant, pithy. That’s not my style. My style is more about blunt honesty, which sometimes borders on my inside voice becoming vocal.