I asked M. D. (Dorene) Meyer to write a guest blog on an area of writing that is very close to her heart, but not exactly in the mainstream of writing. As we look at changing the way publishing industry works, and in particular Canadian Christian publishing, we need to think of the many groups [Read more...]
Over the last few years, I've become very concerned about the rush to get books published by any means whatsoever – often vanity, of course. Many people are self-publishing, and it's becoming a huge business. Most are vanity published (they pay a company to publish them); others are what I call independent publishers, meaning they [Read more...]
Writers—especially those who aspire to write books—are currently being told on all sides that the publishing industry is undergoing a massive change. That they need to take control of their destinies. That publishers today expect them to sell up to 65% of the print run of their books. That it's only going to get worse. [Read more...]
There is money to be made from the publishing of books. But very little of that is normally made by the authors. Sure, you hear about the ones who sell vast numbers of books or sign contracts with huge advances. But the reason you hear about them is because they’re so rare. So who makes [Read more...]
As more and more books are self-published or published by companies who want the manuscript to be near-perfect when it arrives, the one thing that is less likely to happen is good editing. I'm talking about the kind of editing where someone who is an expert in the genre takes apart the manuscript and points [Read more...]
The following quotation is from The Idea Logical Company Blog . The title of the blog this quotation is taken from is "The digital transition really IS harder for trade publishers than for other publishers." "The Achilles heel of trade publishing has always been that publishers have to reach audiences as numerous as the books [Read more...]
We were talking to someone a few weeks ago who is now retired, but who was involved in publishing books for many, many years. And he said something I thought was worth repeating. Publishing a book used to mean everything involved in getting the book from the author to the public. In other words, the [Read more...]
(Note: Much of this post was written as a comment on MacGregor Literary’s blog.) My problem with Thomas Nelson’s entry into the self-publishing game is that there is already no lack of companies out there who are more than willing to take money to "make books" for authors. If Thomas Nelson could add some tangibles [Read more...]
The fact that Thomas Nelson Publishing has partnered with Author Solutions (who owns AuthorHouse, Xlibris, Trafford Publishing, etc.) has been big news this week. Below are just a few of the blogs about it. Should You Consider Self-Publishing? (blog by Thomas Nelson’s CEO) Thomas Nelson Forms Self-Publishing Partnership With Author Solutions Thomas Nelson Adds Self-publishing The [Read more...]
Other than the fact that she’s sold more books than I have, and made a lot more money, I totally get what "Jane Austen Doe" is saying in this article, and I most definitely feel the same pain. "Confessions of a semi-successful author". She alludes to but doesn’t specifically say that part of the problem is [Read more...]
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