(click the image to
jump to the live article on the Writers Digest site)
The March / April edition of Writer’s
Digest contains a great selection of articles on self-publishing.
The articles cover, literally, pretty much everything an author
must know before beginning their self publishing journey. Dog
Ear is represented well in one of the articles on resources for
self publishers.
The articles take a very straight
forward approach to defining what authors need to know before
choosing to self publish their book – no punches are pulled
in any way, but conversely very little negative prejudice shows
in ANY of the articles. I couldn’t actually find ANY myself,
but a few other readers I surveyed felt that some of the writing
was ‘too honest’ about the chances of self published
works ending up in the traditional market… I tend to believe
that reality is uncomfortable for many folks – especially
when it’s fairly applied to their dreams and wishes –
so I was pretty comfortable that everything I read was pretty
much just grounded in the realities of our market.
Jane Friedman –
publisher and editorial director of Writer’s Digest –
opens the discussion with an article titled “Straight
Expectations.” This is a quick intro to the 5 key items
authors should consider… not that any one of the items would
dissuade a potential author from self publishing, but each is
a critical item for review.
Contributor Andrea Hurst
– president of Andrea Hurst Literary Management –
is next with “The Stark Reality of Self-Publishing: An Agent’s
Perspective” – and tough medicine that authors looking
to self publish their book need to take in large doses. Even though
self-publishing seems to be a logical first step in getting your
book into a traditional house, the chances of success don’t
really seem to be much better than if you’d just sent a
query letter and sample chapter – and with good reason.
The self-published books that fail to find an audience do so not
because they are self-published, but because of some other mitigating
factor (such as quality of writing; lack of marketing by the author
– yes, even as a traditionally published author you’ll
be asked to help out to a large degree; or often times –
just no market for the book on a broader basis…). Even with
all the ‘medicine’ Ms. Hurst’s piece is an amazing
perspective from one of the significant gatekeepers of the traditional
publishing world.
Joe Wikert –
you’ll know him from my comments about him our our self
publishing blog – he’s one of the gurus I read
on a daily basis because his take on technology in our industry
is amazing. His article The Changing Landscape of Self-Publishing
highlights this in great detail – and highlights how little
so many of us really understand about what is going on ‘out
there’ – our industry (if you can even call it ‘our
industry’ any more…) looks nothing like what any of
us expected even a single year ago – let alone 10 or 15
years ago.
Click here
to see more information about various self-publishing companies,
as it was discussed in Writer's Digest.
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