Self-Publishing Archives | Page 5 of 8

An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Do Publishers Still Need Authors?

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:October 28, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:19 Comments

Its a giant cupcake and Android! (@ Googleplex - B44) by David Recordon — It's a giant cupcake and Android! (@ Googleplex - B44) by David Recordon

Just as many entrepreneurs no longer need venture capitalists to launch their companies, authors no longer need publishers to publish.

Mark Coker, Do Authors Still Need Publishers?

Picture this: In the future, as the risks of publishing shift from the publisher to the author, publishers will be able to invest in technologies that allow them to bypass authors completely, developing sophisticated algorithms to scrape their content from the Internet, repurpose and repackage it for non-discriminating readers, and charge advertisers fistfuls of money for their wandering eyeballs!

It sounds even better if you say it out loud in Dr. Evil’s voice. Or Chris Anderson’s. Or Arianna Huffington’s.

Resistance is futile!

If Coker’s second linkbait advertorial for the Huffington Post didn’t add anything new to the conversation, it did at least spawn a new hashtag on Twitter, #publishersmatter, and generate some interesting discussion around the value publishers do, and don’t, offer authors nowadays.

My take?

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My Bookshelf (one of them)

Burning Down the House: True Story

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:October 22, 2009
Post category:Media Personal
Post comments:10 Comments

Arguably my "biggest" publishing credit is co-authoring Burning Down the House: Selected Poems from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe's National Poetry Slam Champions (Soft Skull Press, 2000), and while I am both proud of and eternally grateful for its publication, its existence has more to do with timing and opportunism than the quality of the work therein. Besides my own attempts at zines and chapbooks, it was my first real introduction to the world of publishing, and it left a permanent mark that partly explains my cynical passion and/or pragmatic idealism for the publishing industry.

Are Publishers Too White to Survive? Who Cares!

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:October 9, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:10 Comments

A recent meeting with two Caucasian well-respected literary agent friends of mine cemented that concern when one announced, “We’re all the same, [people the publishing industry]. We’re all white, we’re all over-educated, Ivy-leaguers, many of whom are trust fund babies.”

Jeff Rivera, Declining Book Sales?

WTF? Seriously?

This is apparently going to be remembered as Rant Week since I’ve been forced to emphasize the loud in loudpoet way more than usual, so bear with me a minute and don’t jump to any conclusions.

One of the few things I hate more than pundits are stereotypes, especially when they’re being used to make a point I might otherwise be inclined to agree with, but Rivera’s well-intentioned point in his GalleyCat op-ed so overshoots the mark that it’s kind of embarrassing, especially in light of his usual editorial role there as, well, the token guy of color.

Or so it felt for his first few months when the majority of his posts included the qualifier… “of Color“.

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8 Marketing Posts for Proactive Writers

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:October 7, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:2 Comments

There’s been a notable spike in new traffic here lately, partly from Twitter and partly from the blog being favorably cited recently by Editor Unleashed and ASMP’s Strictly Business Blog. (Thanks!) In light of my last two posts being a bit more ranty than usual, and my schedule next week being crazy, I thought it would be a good idea to pull together some of my favorite posts so far this year, starting with those focused on writers and marketing.

Developing a Platform

Tone Deaf Publishers Need Savvy Writers

After offering our individual takes on a variety of topics and looking into our crystal balls to speculate on where things were going — a unanimous vision of increased disintermediation and the power of writers to control their own careers — we took questions and what was most notable was that the majority in attendance were not terribly marketing savvy and something as simple as setting up a blog struck many of them as being a significant challenge. A few didn’t see the value of it at all, missing the forest for the trees, seemingly still believing that a writer’s only job is to write.

Platform 101 For Busy Writers: 3 Simple Steps

I’ve realized over the past several months that there’s a tendency to oversimplify things, to assume everyone has a certain level of web and marketing savvy (not to mention free time), starting discussions about writers’ platforms, curating communities and “free vs. freemium” way too far ahead of the curve. For a lot of writers. something as seemingly simple as setting up a blog can become a huge, time-consuming effort for which the long-term value isn’t always quite clear or worthwhile.

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Will eBook Exuberance Kill Publishing?

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:September 10, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:9 Comments

One iPhone Case To Rule Them All by Photo Giddy

“Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine. We started to market it that way, and it just took off.”

–Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs on Amazon and Ice Cream

There’s a particularly virulent meme running through the publishing industry that says the only thing keeping eBooks from supplanting print books tomorrow is a great eReader, and that Apple’s long-rumored Tablet is that killer device. Yesterday, another Apple event came and went and, as has happened every single time, there was neither an announcement of a Tablet, nor any mention of eBooks being a critical part of their plans for world domination.

Interestingly, Jobs specifically noted that eBooks weren’t a significant market yet, pointing to Amazon’s continued silence on the actual number of Kindles they’ve sold: “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”

Two other notable developments popped up yesterday that suggest the hype surrounding eBooks has hit an unwarranted level of “irrational exuberance”: the premature demise of Quartet Books (“there are very few industry best practices“), and Tor.com’s announcement of a POD-based imprint.

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Freemium for writers is two debates

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:September 3, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:35 Comments

[This is a guest post by Dan Holloway. His info is at the end of the post.]

The battle isn’t getting people to pay; it’s getting people to read. If they do read, they might not pay. If they don’t read, they’ll never pay.

Writers who use the “freemium” model face two distinct challenges, and the harder one isn’t always the one you think.

What a delightful piece of coincidence that I should be asked to write this blog the day before I headed off to the Reading Festival. My wife and I were going for the headline set by the most important band of the 1990s, Radiohead (sorry, Kurt), who propelled the issue of providing content for free into the public consciousness (sorry, Trent) when they released their album In Rainbows on a set-your-own-price basis; 60% of people chose, in the event, to pay nothing.

A delightful coincidence, but not actually that significant. Radiohead are still the most important band in the world; Trent Reznor is one of the most important figures in [re]shaping the music industry; Stephen King is about the most long-term successful writer on the planet. And Chris Anderson is, well, Chris Anderson. But these are the names that come up again and again in the freemium debate – “look how great they are; see what they did!” on the one hand; “it wasn’t a success, it was a disaster; and the free wasn’t properly free!” on the other.

I want to make two points. First, the exploits of established megastars have nothing to do with the relevance of the freemium debate to new writers. Second, they actually skew the debate rather dangerously, because they focus attention on the wrong challenge, not the one that’s most important to new writers.

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Get Serious About the Business of Publishing

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:August 5, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:2 Comments

A book’s success is too important to entrust to somebody who doesn’t have a stake in it. Editors are already fierce enough advocates to have persuaded their bosses to let them acquire the books in the first place; why not let them keep on advocating?

–Ron Hogan, “Hey Editors! Less Max Perkins, More Billy Mays“

Hogan, GalleyCat’s Senior Editor, makes a valid point — that an editor’s name should theoretically have some pull with readers — but it’s undermined by the tiresome meme that social media will be publishing’s savior, and a misguided sense of entitlement, implying that publishers are preventing editors from establishing an influential public voice of their own.

Social media are excellent tools for building personal brands — the jury’s still out on where they fit within the corporate picture — and their primary appeal is that they’re free for anyone to use. Just like authors are expected to build themselves a platform before seeking out a publishing deal, editors should be doing the exact same thing for themselves.

It’s not rocket science, it’s free, and no one’s permission is required.

No matter who your editor is, or what their influence (or lack thereof) with readers might be, though, when it comes down to it, the best, most passionate promoter of a book is going to be its author.

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