- Joined
- Jul 3, 2006
- Messages
- 9,709
- Reaction score
- 2,053
- Age
- 46
- Location
- uk
- Website
- www.lukewalkerwriter.com
I keep thinking about an Ebook myself.
You mean a self published ebook.
I keep thinking about an Ebook myself.
I don't think it's being "behind the times" to acknowledge that many really bad books are self-published, or that many books are self-published because they couldn't find a home with any trade publishers.
It's very behind the times. Music started out being controlled by a small few and is now universally accessible. Indie Comics and Indie Film are not far behind. Indie Pubbing is.
If you think all this is true, then you have a very poor understanding of the processes involved in trade publishing and a naive and inflated belief in the design capabilities of your average writer, and a very skewed understanding of copyright law.
I stated an easy and cheap alternative that doesn't rely on the writer to make their own cover or advertisements. Most covers are garbage though. They're a boring photograph with simple filters, a cheesy symbolic representation or words with no image. There are few that strike me as genuine, on it's own art. This isn't true for every book, no, but it's true for most.
That was actually a typo, I meant contracts, not copyrights. Mah bad.
Writers who are published by trade publishers don't pay anyone anything. They are paid by their publishers. And their publishers do a huge amount to "help their story" and all sorts of other things besides--much of which writers can't do for themselves, at least, not easily or cheaply. If it were as easy as you seem to think, more self-published writers would have been more successful by now.You pay a lot of people who don't do anything to help your story that you can't do yourself. Most novels have lousy cover art. You can go on deviantart and find a good artist or you can make your own cover art (if you're artistic enough) and go punk rock DIY style. No paying an agent, no paying a publishing house, no paying lawyers for their retainer, no confusing copyrights.
A rapper I did artwork for a few years ago was once signed to a major label ... Then, the label canned him. Said they were going to sit on his project. Because his project wasn't making money, he had to pay them back the advance ....
Obviously, this is a different situation than what a writer would face but corporations, especially the biggest ones, are essentially out for nothing more than the bottom line and will screw you over.
Selling your book through a main stream publisher might be the right thing for YOU but it isn't right for everybody and anybody who belittles the choices other writers make are the ones with narrow, naive views on publishing.
I want respect, fame, and money.
So.. you know. Big 6 or Bust.
Indie publishing is not self-publishing.
I don't understand why the literary world is so behind the times with indie publishing
Dinosaurs fairy dust INDIE!1!! etc. etc.
I was already losing my religion in that regard; Lionel Shriver sealed the deal for me.
I don't know what, if anything, I'm going to do about it. But I find it really hard to pray to gods I can no longer believe in.
Thirty-nine agents picked up a book I could not put down, read the first several pages or more, and said "Nah .... I can't possibly sell this."
Thank you. I'm glad I'm not the only one.ahyup. When I first came to AW, I was firmly in the 'never self-publish' camp.
Now? Seriously considering it as an option which is why I'm curious enough to try it with a project or two of my own.
I'm not at the point I'm giving up because I haven't gotten that far with my own writing efforts. I do believe that it is worth consideration, though. Like I said, it's actually an exciting time to be a writer. At least for me.
I get that. It's all about whether an agent thinks she can sell a book given her contacts and what she thinks the market is looking for. I have read agent blogs where they say they've passed up great books because for whatever reason, they didn't believe they could sell it. And they should turn those books down, too. The last thing anyone wants is to be agented by someone who can't sell their book, have it shopped all over and then it's dead in the water.The confidence in one's ability to successfully sell a book is, imo, unrelated to how good a book is.
It's mainly the bald fact that dozens of agents looked at We Need To Talk About Kevin and deemed it unsaleable and unworthy of their time. Tell me this, and tell me how agents really know good literature and good literature can always get agented, then piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.