BRAVE NEW WORLD

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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "GO CHECK OUT:":

It seems that there is a lot of discussion out there in cyberspace about the direction of publishing in general. To add to the argument there is self publishing and self promotion vs the publishing house contract... one author I know says that her experience of the contract was that apart from the initial interest in her book the publishing house soon forgot her and her book as they moved on to the next author in line... and even when she self promoted and got books sold she was giving the publishing house their cut for doing nothing... if you can afford the initial outlay of paper print and sell your book and yourself to any and every market ... you reap the rewards... ebooks is fine... but giving your work away has to be argued as a negative ... as an author you worked hard to write the stories you should be rewarded financially... my question is does ebooks create a culture of something for giving nothing... does this devalue the work of the author...

That is a story I have heard repeatedly. I watched 'Jen Bynre Presents' with Di Morrissey, Bryce Courtenay, Lee Child and Matthew Reilly who all STILL do most of their own promotion. Anything they can do, they do.

Here is a link which discusses some of the rationale in giving books away:
BAEN LIBRARY.

Yes, I do think digital delivery will mean a sizable loss for authors, as it has for musicians. But I am so tech illiterate, I don't even begin to question what the solutions are there.

Self publishing works, sometimes. For their faults, editors and publishers do tend to have a finger on the pulse of what is going to sell, after all, they rely on sales themselves. If a novel has a flaw which makes it unacceptable to publishers - and that does not neccessarily mean it is badly written - it may have a small audience or be too long or too short or too graphic etc, I fear for its chances of huge retail success.

People do it, though. They make up their costs and then some, and good on 'em. Whatever works.

If webficiton authors can broaden their genre preference, advertisze collectively, and work out some quality assurance criteria, they need not ever have to give the publishing companies a share.

I'm just not confident that the community is coherent enough to do that. Maybe I'm worng.

EDIT: Wrong. Wrong. Just plain wrong. Coherent as. Just couldn't co any more herently if it was glued with a big sticky glue thing.

L.
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