Features

OK, not really. But in the tradition of Cheryl Anne Gardner’s What a Pod Peep Reads, here’s what I’ve been reading:

and

The trajectory of underground comics is somewhat similar to that of self-publishing – something that no one took seriously, and now is given art exhibitions. From an interview with Dan Clowes:

Early in your career, did you find that people had a difficult time labeling you? The type of work you produced wasn’t your typical style of comic.

They still have a difficult time. I’ve been called everything from a “graphic novelist” to a “comic-strip novelist”

Editor’s Note: This post is in response to the discussion in this post.

I can understand why you’d rather publish yourself. I can understand not wanting to wait to be noticed. I can understand why you might think traditional publishing is elitist or backwards–or even stupid.

I am personally hostile to a number of what have become standard practices in traditional publishing. I am even hostile toward individual traditional publishers and even individuals in traditional publishing. At least I have had the dubious pleasure of working within or somewhat within the system for decades, having come by my hostility […]

When this site started up in December 2008, self-publishing was still something you didn’t really talk about in polite company.  It was really big news in January 2009 when the New York Times published a piece called Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab.  There were detractors to the rosy picture of that article, but it seemed like a breakthrough.

Now, in 2010, self-publishing is everywhere, rightfully so.  It’s not always flattering – but even when it’s being criticized, it’s seen as inevitable, and that inevitability isn’t seen as a bad thing.  Recently, there was an epic post in […]

A while back, I had a debate with fellow Indie author, self-publishing zealot and Year Zero Writer, Jenn Topper, on the issue of distribution. Ever since, it’s been something that’s gnawed away at me.

This piece came partly out of Marc Horne’s fantastic article about Feedbooks; partly it’s a crystallization of many of the articles I wrote at the end of last year; and partly it’s come out of the increasing comments I’ve had about putting my work on Amazon.

What I want to say in this article may only apply word for word to “indie or die” […]

Most observers and even some authors believe the major publishing industry has been slow to respond to the electronic-book era. True, the industry is struggling with pricing while trying to protect hardcover sales and has not been especially welcoming of digital books, especially those that compete with their higher-priced versions. But they have not been putting their heads in the sand, either.

Publishing contracts of this century almost universally grant publishers the electronic rights to the content, and those clauses may have seemed innocuous even two years ago, when e-book sales were negligible. The clauses that were afterthoughts returned the […]

I’m probably not the first to write about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, because there were several self-published books entered in it.

Including mine, God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilanates of Montana.

I entered it, although it has already won the 2009 Spur from Western Writers of America, as an experiment. In the first ABNA contest, it didn’t make the first cut. I dropped the “prologue” on the advice of an experienced, published author, and made some more editing changes, none of which materially altered the writing or the story.

This year, with the contest open to self-published books, I thought, […]

Nathan Bransford has a good post about the future of agenting/publishing in the digital world. As someone under 40 (I’m guessing) the bulk of his career as an agent is going to be in the age of ebooks, so he’s more progressive about how the agent process is going to be restructured. About digital publishing, he has this very good point:

No one sits around thinking, “You know what the problem with the Internet is? Too many web pages.” Would you even notice if suddenly there were a million more sites on the Internet? How would you even know?