This post by Dean Wesley Smith originally appeared on his site on 2/14/14.
It Has Officially Hit Myth Status
When some of the biggest supporters of indie publishing and indie writers start going on about how they are giving up paper books to New York, I finally just shook my head and assigned all the silliness to myth status.
So, since I have the book Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing now out in both paper and electronic and available, I suppose it’s time I start into the next book: Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing.
And Sacred Cow (myth) #1 is that indie writers, with their own press, CAN’T GET THEIR BOOKS INTO BOOKSTORES.
A complete myth.
Of course indie writers can get their books into bookstores. It’s not magic, it’s not hard, and it’s not even expensive.
Yet it gets repeated over and over like “You need an agent” phrase by traditional publishers. And indie writers buy right into it without question, the same writers who fight against all the crap that traditional publishers toss out.
That shows a flat, head-shaking lack-of-knowledge of how this system of paper book distribution works. Kris just banged her head on the same wall a couple weeks ago in her blog, and had all kinds of readers surprised that their books were already in bookstores when they went and looked.
Duh.
So this quick post is just a warning shot across the bow, folks. I recorded an entire detailed lecture on this topic tonight that will be ready next week, and I will be back here shortly (or after the Anthology Workshop that we are holding here at the coast is finished) with the first of the new indie sacred cows to be led to slaughter.
Click here to read the full post on Dean Wesley Smith’s site.