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As someone who’s been critical of JA Konrath, who basically sees the only good self-publishers are the ones who make a living at it, it’s somewhat strange to come to his defense for this Publisher’s Weekly piece about his recent deal with Amazon Encore (covered here on SPR).  Nevermind the number crunching in the post, which is debunked in Konrath’s post, Publisher’s Weekly Epic Fail, what really irks me is this paragraph:

Ira Silverberg, at Sterling Lord, was more blunt about how uneventful Konrath’s move was. “Certain authors will feel they’re doing well in schemes like this,” he said.

Over the past few weeks I have refined my opinions on the paid-publishing model offered by mainstream publishers in light of its newest entity, Balboa Press from Hay House Publishing. So far, three of the paid-publishing imprints we have looked at in the past year had one common denominator—Author Solutions (ASI). I do not believe any of the three ASI-powered paid-publishing imprints will prove successes—and certainly not generate the kind of revenue that AuthorHouse, Xlibris, Trafford or iUniverse generate for ASI.

There are two other publishers we have looked at operating paid-publishing models—AmazonEncore and Troubador Publishing. A third one, Cold […]

Over on Pimp my novel: Prithee Convince Me, The blog poster wants self-published authors to “convince him” that self-publishing is a viable alternative to trad publishing. Now this is not the first time this blogger has declared open season on the self-publishing industry and self-published authors, but I can’t really understand why, since the blogger’s bio states that he works for a traditional publisher. He’s got his nice little job in the “real” publishing world, so why does he care so much about what we are doing?

This topic has generated some interesting discussion, and I decided to chime […]

There’s a fascinating post by author Daniel Pinchbeck at Reality Sandwich about new independent media. He’s currently my favorite writer in any medium – non-fiction or fiction – for his willingness to take on far-out ideas with some well-reasoned sobriety. He manages to be both eloquent and concise. All in all, his writing is a huge influence on my own novel. The piece basically condenses my own worldview and why I think self-publishing is so dynamic and important.

In the piece, he talks about releasing an independent film in this new climate:

In the new model that is still

Okay so on “pimp my novel”: Prithee Convince Me: Self-Publishing the blog poster wants self-publishing authors to “convince him” that self-publishing is a viable alternative to trad publishing. According to his blog bio, he works in the sales department of a publishing house.

What’s most interesting is in the comments section, almost all of the people commenting are trad publishing hopefuls. NOT indie authors. I tried to make a post but I got one of those ridiculous blogger errors (I HATE blogger. I don’t know why anyone uses the foul thing.) And it wouldn’t let me post. So I am […]

There are a couple of things here that you may think are unrelated but I’ll try to bridge the gap and make a coherent argument in support of my thesis. I contend that the history and very institution of publishing has lent itself to a culture of a lack of ownership by authors and artists, resulting in today’s hysterical clamoring on privacy issues.

You all have a better sense of the publishing industry since Gutenberg than I do, so there’s no need to retread. So just think about how difficult it is to turn that Titanic of a beast around […]

Experiment: Internet flash mob for digital content known as Drummer Boy

Hypothesis: A concentrated cluster of sales can stimulate a book’s Amazon rankings and lead to more sales

First, this wasn’t a calculated, well-organized campaign. While I spent a year planning the launch for release of The Red Church in mass-market paperback, I got the flash mob idea about a week ago. The marketing was mostly limited to my Twitter account (178 followers), Myspace (10,000 friends), Facebook (1,300 friends), and the forums at Kindleboards, Mobilereads, and, to a limited extent, Amazon. The biggest megaphone was J.A. Konrath’s Newbie’s […]

A lot of the nay-sayers keep saying (ad nauseum) that writers make more money with the traditional/commercial route.  We’re apparently all ripping ourselves off and selling ourselves short by going the indie route…and that we’d be better off “trying and trying…and trying again” with traditional publishers before jumping into the icy cold water that some view self-publishing.

What some of these pro-traditional types are blind to is how a short story author and/or poet can benefit from self-publishing. Poets (published traditionally) make virtually nothing.  My first contributors fee for poetry was $10.00 and that was for 2 poems published by […]