Hugh Howey: “Our purpose is to gather and share information so that writers can make informed decisions. Our secondary mission is to call for change within the publishing community for better pay and fairer terms in all contracts. This is a website by authors and for authors.” Read More
Is Publishing a Class System?
What if we’re moving from what one revered observer calls an effort to transcend the idea of two classes of authors — to what another highly respected commentator says is a three–class system? Read More
Publishing, Between Revolution and Revolt
Follow that burning fuse. It runs between these two curiously different words. We may need to think about which of them is closer to us. Revolution. Pretty comfortable. Thanks to Madison Avenue, we nowadays say “revolution” for every change, from geopolitical alliances to bathroom tissue. Revolt. Not so comfortable. More acute. Something or someone feels out of control. It’s an uprising, not a downfalling. Dangerous. Read More
Is the "Publishers' Monopoly" Broken?
Dana Beth Weinberg at Digital Book World 2014: “Should traditional publishers feel threatened by the potential of self-publishing? Of course they should.” Read More
Now Arriving at #BEA14: AUTHOR HUB
If some saw a failure in BEA last year to offer entrepreneurial authors a place at the publishing table like that LBF had provided, Rosato and his team saw the experience as an opportunity to rethink, revise, and renew. Read More
#DBW14 – The Biz of Books
As Digital Book World has moved to capitalize on its survivor status since O’Reilly Media closed TOC, one of the first headliners announced was Tim O’Reilly, himself, who’ll be onstage on Tuesday morning (10:40 a.m. ET) with a presentation titled “The Real Book Revolution is Just Beginning.” Read More
New Year's Restitutions
In everyone’s defense: we’re being driven to this stark-staring fixation on word counts by the Digital Enablement. Nobody dast blame us. This is Boom Town, baby. Everybody can publish, publish, publish. Who cares if you have nothing to say? Write a book, anyway. No, write four. Per year. If you don’t, you’re a wuss. Five-hundred words…I told you that part already, right? Okay. Happy new year. Read More
Men Don't Read Fiction? BULL!
I’d like to try the reverse of a new year resolution: instead of resolving to do something, I’d like to see folks resolve not to do it—or say it—ever again. If I could choose one and only one publishing industry myth to leave behind in 2013, it would be the one that says “men don’t read fiction.” Read More
Where Publishing Surveys Cannot Go
Bomb out as a traditionally aspiring author, and there’s no effect on surveys of author income.
Bomb out as a self-publishing author, and your flat-line is counted against the overall self-publishing earnings track record.
Author Hugh Howey wants us to understand that this is a double standard. He is not wrong. We cannot count the dollars made by traditional authors only if they get published, but count those made by all the self-publishing authors, no matter how they fare in the open market. Read More
Defensive Reading
Author Maria Konnikova’s New Yorker story on why we love lists captures the issue: “The more we know about something — including precisely how much time it will consume — the greater the chance we will commit to it.” Read More