Over the last month, you have been submitting your questions. We now have your answers!
Opportunities in Self-Publishing
Self-publishing has always suffered from PR problems, but its days as the ugly duckling of the publishing world are numbered. Readers are showing a willingness to buy titles from no-name imprints, and it’s becoming more common to hear about traditionally published authors making the choice to go the self-publishing route.
The Conflict of Interest: Agents as Publishers
Is Self-Publishing the Book Equivalent of Demand Media?
Demand Media is what most would describe as a “content farm”: It’s the equivalent of factory-farmed chicken. The content is created and put out as cheaply and quickly as possible, but the welfare of those involved and the nutritional content is questionable. I don’t want advice from that kind of content source. And yet I have a hard time not getting these sorts of results in my web searches. Parallels can be drawn between what’s going on in publishing and Demand Media’s invasion of the web content world.
The Fight Over Formats: All or Nothing
Random House and the Jackal are going at it and I can’t blame them. They are fighting over some very valuable territory. We’ve all read lots about trying to claim backlist ebook rights, about the conflict of interest in becoming an agent-publisher, about single-channel exclusives being a bad idea, blah, blah, blah. This turf war has raised a bigger problem:
Does it make sense to separate ebook rights from print rights?
It doesn’t—at least not if you’re the one who only has print. Here’s why.
Slush Pile Onslaught Gives Publishers a Branding Opportunity
There is a lot to be afraid of when one considers the online book marketplace. When I read Laura Miller’s apocalyptic piece on the inundation of self-published slush pile submissions a couple of weeks back it made me incredibly depressed. The thought of the marketplace being full of subpar, unedited manuscripts turned into ebooks or printed on demand, thus making it impossible for readers to differentiate the good book from the bad, was a devastating one. Why? Well, we call it the slush pile for a reason.
FastPencil & Book Oven: Learning from Self-Publishing Models
Whether you consider all self-publishing a dismissable legacy of offline vanity publishing, the future of the book business or something in between, it’s worth paying attention to tools like FastPencil.
Self-Publishing: Harbinger of Doom or Puffy White Cloud of Hope?
I’ve recently done a spate of media interviews wherein the main topic was the “rise” of self-publishing. It’s an interesting media trend, founded largely by the appearance and development of innovative new web communities that are focusing on bringing together those interested in creating great books—who may or may not already consider themselves book professionals.
