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...]
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...]
I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m guessing the answer to my question may be very simple: we don’t approach writing as a business. We typically see our book as inspired art, a handcrafted masterpiece made from parts of our soul, or perhaps our best chance to minister to others. And we become focused on getting this marvelous creation into print so that as many other people as possible can enjoy it with us and benefit from what it says. What we don’t do, either because we just don’t see it or because we don’t even want o go there, is to see our book as a product, and publishing as a business.
Jan Burke, who is a very well-known American mystery writer, has some excellent posts on her blog about getting an agent and self-publishing. I would urge anyone who is self-publishing or considering self-publishing to read them. http://janburke.com/blog.html Look for: Saturday, March 31, 2007 – The Business Side of Writing: the Agent Hunt Monday, April 02, [Read more...]
You’ve heard the statement, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Well, maybe we shouldn’t, but the reality is we do! All the time! Because of my work with writers, I see a lot of covers. And I have to say that while some of them are good, far too many of them are not. [Read more...]
One of the workshops I teach is "So You Want to Write a Book." In it, I strongly urge and implore people not to self-publish, especially a novel, at least until they’ve considered all ramifications so they can go into it knowing the facts. My reasons are as follows. 1. Distribution Even if you can [Read more...]
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