Inspired more by friends like Chuck Wendig, Will Hindmarch and Jane Friedman than Joe Konrath, et al, and emboldened by everything I learned from working with Joshua Tallent while running Digital Book World, my goal for the project was two-fold: do enough of it myself to have hands-on experience of what it takes, what’s “easy” and what isn’t; and to get the monkey of finally publishing this particular book off my back!
Right now, the relative ease of digital publishing — not yet the equivalent of blogging, but getting closer every week — and the exceptional successes of a relative handful of authors masks the larger challenges ahead for authors and publishers alike, regardless of their business model: discoverability.
One of Godin’s running themes throughout Poke is to be an initiator, and that risking failure is the best road to achieving success, and by making Poke the Box the first offering from The Domino Project, he’s practicing what he preaches. He initiated, he shipped, and he pretty much failed to deliver a good book.
I find it somewhat ironic that, at the same time publishers are scrambling to fill ill-advised budget gaps left by their blind co-dependence on Borders, HarperCollins decides to play hardball with the one channel that offers the maximum combination of discoverability and NON-RETURNABILITY.
Brook’s worldbuilding skills are impressive, her Iron Seas setting rivaling Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century for potential stories, and I daresay its backstory is actually a bit more compelling, despite my general preference for American-flavored steampunk.
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