Tag: Publishing

Yet More On The Death Throes of Legacy Publishing

On By Dan HarrisIn Self-Publishing, WritingLeave a comment

There were a couple of great blog posts today from two of the heavyweights.

Here Joe Konrath talks about the fallacy of the slippery slope argument that Amazon is out to destroy the publishing industry, so they can then jack up prices and start ripping everyone off.

“A lot of bookstores might blame Amazon for putting them out of business, or competing unfairly. Welcome to capitalism, kids. That’s like saying, ‘My girlfriend left me for another guy who is more attractive and treats her better.'”

And here Dean Wesley Smith writes about the many myths of indie publishing versus traditional.

“You are guaranteed to sell more copies through a traditional publisher. Let me just try not to choke with laughter. Folks, I have sold books to traditional publishers that sold exactly 625 copies at last royalty statement. I have had books go out of print and the publisher still hold them at less than 2,000 copies. Some of those books I got advances beyond thirty grand. Trust me, selling to a traditional publisher doesn’t mean numbers of copies.”

‘The End of The World as We Know It’

On By Dan HarrisIn Reading, Self-Publishing, WritingLeave a comment

Kris Rusch gives the legacy publishing doom-mongers an absolute skewering on her blog here, using only the power of actual facts and figures.

“For many in traditional publishing, the world is ending. Their clout is vanishing and their ability to understand what is going on is vanishing with it. They’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, wondering why it has suddenly gotten so cold. Yeah, they may survive in the future, but they’ll always remember the night they hit that iceberg—and the surprise they felt.”

Bob Mayer on Self-Publishing

On By Dan HarrisIn Self-Publishing, WritingLeave a comment

Another quick link – there’s a great guest post from Bob Mayer on Live Write Thrive here.

The key lesson for me, as a writer just getting started:

“The #1 mistake I see new writers making are slapping their first book up on Kindle and then running around trying to promote the hell out of it. No. Write first book. Start writing second book. Finish. Start writing third book. When you have at least three good books, then you can start promoting. It’s a learning curve. Also, how many are willing to put that sweat equity into it? It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

From an ‘author of more than fifty books all available in eBook that have sold over four million copies’, I think I’ll pay attention.

Successful Self-Published Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Self-Publishing, Writing4 Comments

More mainstream media analysis of the self-publishing phenomenon from io9 here.

While the headline is the big sellers’ numbers, though vaguely interesting they’re not really relevant. They aren’t what any new author could practically aim for – except maybe “B.V. Larson, who writes both sci-fi and fantasy, has sold some 250,000 copies of his 25 titles“. The key element there being twenty-five titles – if you stick at it, and write that many novels which are that good, you’ll sell a lot of books.

I also take issue with a couple of things in the article.  Read more…

On By Dan HarrisIn Self-Publishing, WritingLeave a comment

I know I’ve been abusing the reblog button in the last few days, but this is a very well-thought out piece on how authors really need to consider all of their options.

Amanda's avatarMad Genius Club

I asked Sarah if I could have the blog today because, frankly, I’ve been sitting on my hands and biting my tongue most of the week. What started as a simple and heart-felt response on Sarah’s part to a non-fiction author’s blog post turned into a war between fiction and non-fiction with a troll to-boot. The non-fiction author couldn’t understand why Sarah had seen fit to post about what she’d said on her own blog. All she’d done, you see, was lament the state of publishing and how those of us who are predicting the end of the industry just don’t understand what that will mean to non-fiction authors or readers. Okay, I can understand the fear. It’s the same fear many authors on the fiction side of the equation have been feeling. But what this author didn’t get — or wouldn’t get — is that in the process of…

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More on Self-Publishing versus Legacy Publishing

On By Dan HarrisIn Self-Publishing, Writing8 Comments

I’ve been reading a lot about the pros and cons of self-pub versus traditional (legacy) publishing in the last couple of days. I finished David Gaughran‘s excellent Let’s Get Digital, then ploughed through a couple of hundred articles, trying to find a balance.

And it’s looking like self-publishing might well be the winner for me, folks. But why?

Read more…

Let’s Get Digital? Quite Possibly…

On By Dan HarrisIn Self-Publishing, Writing2 Comments

I just downloaded Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran. This week David has made it available for free on both Amazon UK and US, so there’s no excuse not to pick it up. You can also get the PDF version for free on David’s marvellous site here (and in my blogroll on the right).

I’ve just finished reading the first part of the book, which deals with why authors should self-publish. David makes a very compelling case for doing so, and I’m surprised to say that I’ve quickly gone from planning to go the agent-legacy publisher route once my novel is ready to pitch, with self-publishing as a backup if that didn’t work out, to being (almost) completely decided that self-pub is the best primary option.

Read more…