Business End – Page 115

Self-Publishing And Quality: Mutually Exclusive Terms?

January 3, 2016March 1, 2009 by Publetariat

Self-publishing your book, like everything else, has its pros and cons. In my view, the biggest of the pros is that you have complete control over your work; the worst of the cons is that no mainstream reviewer – someone who might really be able to help get your book in front of a lot of people – will touch your work with a ten-foot pole.

Some self-published authors may claim that there’s an evil cabal led by the major publishers that’s dedicated to keeping out the little guys. There may be some truth to that, even if it’s in the form of momentum in the relationships between the publishers, bookstores, and so forth. The big houses have been doing this for a long time, and they’ve certainly got the inside track, not to mention big bucks to spend on marketing and promotion (not that they’ll necessarily spend it on any given author).

But let’s set that argument aside for a moment. You see, before we – as self-published authors or even small press publishers – can throw stones at the big publishers’ glass houses, we need to take a close look at our own.

To do that, let’s start with looking at self-published books from a reviewer’s perspective, because they’re generally seen as a critical factor in spreading the word about your book. If your book is self-published, virtually every major reviewer (and by “major,” I mean someone who has a following of thousands of people, if not more) won’t even consider looking at it. Even many blog reviewers – and there are lots of them across the different genres – with much smaller (but collectively significant) followings won’t look at self-published books. Why?

The answer, my friend, is that the quality of much of what we self-published authors put out is – to use that highly technical publishing term – crap. Many reviewers have gotten tons of self-published books, only to be repeatedly disappointed and disgusted by them. Many reviewers have a stated policy up front that they won’t review self-published (or small press) books. Others will accept them, but send them to the bottom of the review pile. Still others happily accept them, and then expose all their flaws (to the author’s dismay – but what did the author expect?).

The fact is that we can’t expect to have our work viewed in the same light as the major houses unless we can polish the inches-thick tarnish from the term “self-published” and stop producing reams of crap.

Before your head explodes with righteous indignation, let’s go over a quick check list to see if we can further define “crap” in this context, starting from the outside of your book and working our way in:

Would the cover (front, back, and spine) of your book stand out – in a bad way – on the shelves of a bookstore?
Is it outrageously priced compared to similar books (genre, length, etc.)?
Do the first pages leading into the main body of the text – the title page(s), copyright page, etc. – follow the general norms for “real” books? Do you even have any of those pages?
Are the margins, font face and size, leading, and headers/footers consistent with the norms for “real” books?
If someone were to flip to a random place in the text, would they find a typo or grammatical error in the first five minutes of reading? The first thirty seconds?
Assuming we’re talking about a work of fiction, is the story good? That’s something that only folks who don’t have a vested interest in your ego can properly answer.
And if the story is good overall, are there any major breaks in logic, sequence, etc. – anything that jars the reader’s experience and kills suspension of disbelief?

Now, I will stand here and tell you face to face (in a very virtual sort of way) that I’m not going to claim that my first novel or any of my other writing is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or that I’ve “passed” all of the tests above with the proverbial flying colors. This is not about me saying, “Hey, I know what I’m doing, bub, how about you?”

No. This is about stepping back and critiquing ourselves to improve the standards of our work, with the end objective being to make our books indistinguishable from those by major publishers.

Let me repeat/rephrase that: we want our self-published books to look just like “real” books. We want them to read just like “real” books (is my use of “real” annoying you?), or maybe even better (hey, I don’t know about you, but I’ve read my share of books from the big houses that were stinkers with bad stories, typos and bloopers, etc.).

As self-published authors and small press publishers – independents (indies!) – we have a lot of things standing against us (anybody remember David and Goliath?), but we also have some significant advantages over the big boys. We have complete control of our work, and we have the freedom to explore fresh ideas that offer readers something more than the same-old, same-old (which essentially is another form of “crap”) churned out by the big houses. Technology – primarily print-on-demand (POD) and ebook platforms such as the Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket Reader – is our friend, and allows us to get into the game with at least the major on-line retailers wth almost no out of pocket cost and, for the most part, reasonable pricing for our books.

Quality. It’s all about quality, and remaking the term “self-published” into something that’s sought after – or at least respected – and not shunned.

How do we do that? I don’t claim to have any magic bullets, but we’ll take a look at some ideas in the next post on this topic, so stay tuned!

Michael R. Hicks is the author of In Her Name. You can learn more about Michael and his work at his blog.

Advertisements For Yourself: Can, and Should, Book Authors Become Brands?

January 3, 2016February 26, 2009 by Publetariat

This piece, by Jill Prulick, originally appeared on The Big Money on 1/28/09.

People in the book business rarely agree on much, but no one disputes that the long-suffering industry is slogging through one of its worst periods ever. Editors are freezing their acquisition budgets; publishing houses are shrinking; booksellers are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Paradoxically, the proliferation of digital media that is arguably the biggest threat to traditional publishing also offers authors more opportunities than ever to distribute and promote their work. The catch: In order to do that effectively, authors increasingly must transcend their words and become brands.

What does that mean? It depends. In the book world, where the word "brand" is either sacrosanct or dirty, there’s little consensus. Is there a difference between a best-selling author and a brand? What is the process by which an author becomes a brand—and is it a good thing?

The answers are as varied as weather in New England: A brand goes beyond one format into television or film; a brand is someone you would read regardless of the subject. For every theory ("All best-sellers are brands, but not all brands are best-sellers"), there’s a near converse ("You need to achieve best-seller status to launch a brand"). And some shun brands entirely. "Authors of best-selling books are not brands," insisted former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman.

There are even more contradictions. Traditional branding—a mix of ads, media appearances, and book tours-is dying. Marketing departments are being slashed. Authors are pushed to promote their own books, while reviews-and their accompanying ad space-are shrinking. Independent advertiser Verso, which recently launched targeted online advertising, now spends about $2,000 to $3,000 per book on marketing, a fraction of its budget a year ago. And yet publishers, agents, and editors all say that recognition, dependability, and longevity sell books.

No one questions that James Patterson, author of 45 New York Times best-sellers and subject of a case study in brand management at Harvard Business School, is a brand, thanks to an army of consultants. Patterson’s books, which have grossed more than $1 billion and have filled the author’s coffers to the tune of more than $100 million, are practically encoded with unifying, Patterson DNA—from the title to the packaging to the hook and hanging cliffhanger.

The clear lines end there. Five percent to 10 percent of publishers’ lists, the so-called blockbusters, are top-performing authors with built-in, expanding audiences—i.e., brands. Tom Clancy. Patricia Cornwell. Suze Orman. Mitch Albom. Or are they? "I don’t really look at him as a brand," said Albom’s agent, David Black, who recently negotiated the deal to release an Albom commencement speech on the Kindle to extend the author’s reach. "Whatever we can do to expand his audience we will do."

Brands are often the elephant in the room no one wants to confront. Some authors consider it unwise to be branded as, er, brands; it’s a signpost for low-brow, mass-market sensibility. And it’s also the case that the vast majority of fiction writers, even today’s best-sellers, did not begin their lives as brands. Many were unknowns whom publishers rejected. Believe it or not, there was a time when few had heard of John Grisham. He sold his first book from the back of a car and no one was interested. Then came The Firm. "I took John to bookstores, and, at every turn, clerks were putting his book into the hands of customers," said Ellen Archer, president of Hyperion Books. It became a hit and launched the author into a brand name.

In today’s fickle marketplace, the Internet—with blogs, videos, Twitter, and other promotional tools like Amazon’s Author Stores—is the modern-day equivalent to hand-selling. Thomas Friedman even posted a chapter of Hot, Flat and Crowded on LinkedIn and asked members to weigh in. (Disclosure: I was part of Friedman’s publishing team.) In a way, authors are empowered in this new model, provided they can leverage their networks into living, breathing communities who have a stake in—and benefit from—an author’s ballooning platform.

But it comes with a price. When authors are beholden to a brand, they ally themselves, almost like actors and athletes, with agendas and meanings that are well beyond their control. In their desire to fulfill the dictates of a brand, authors can compromise their integrity as writers, especially if they cubbyhole themselves.

The Chick Lit genre provides numerous examples. The Nanny Diaries, published in 2002, sold more than 1.5 million copies and was made into a film starring Scarlett Johansson. But the author’s 2004 follow-up, Citizen Girl, pitched as social satire—male bosses filled in for Park Avenue socialites—was a flop. The authors, who reportedly were unable to sell their idea to Random House, settled on Simon & Schuster’s Atria—and satisfied the beast that was the brand. Lauren Weisberger, "Bridget Jones," and Melissa Bank suffered similar trajectories—some worse than others—and their careers as writers have waned.

Read the rest of the article at The Big Money.

Andrew Keen Could Learn A Thing Or Two From Us Monkeys

January 3, 2016February 26, 2009 by Publetariat

In his book, The Cult of the Amateur: how today’s internet is killing our culture, author Andrew Keen argues that Web 2.0 (content for media consumers created by media consumers) will soon spell the death of Western media culture as we know it. I don’t disagree with him, but unlike Mr. Keen, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Mr. Keen likens the worldwide community of bloggers and indie artists to "infinite monkeys…typing away". He says that where the web and media are concerned:

"…democratization, despite its lofty idealization, is undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience and talent…it is threatening the very future of our cultural institutions."

"Moreover, the free, user-generated content spawned and extolled by the Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers, as professional critics, journalists, editors, musicians, moviemakers, and other purveyors of expert information are being replaced (‘disintermediated’, to use [an O’Reilly] term) by amateur bloggers, hack reviewers, homespun moviemakers, and attic recording artists. Meanwhile, the radically new business models based on user-generated material suck the economic value out of traditional media and cultural content."

Mr. Keen is apparently unaware of the possibility that the public at large doesn’t feel our culture, or access to it, requires “gatekeepers”. He also fails to acknowledge the reality that those “gatekeepers” have abused our collective trust with such regularity, we no longer recognize their status as arbiters of anything other than what stands to make their industries and corporate backers the maximum quantities of money in a minimum quantity of time. Whether we’re talking about big publishers with their ‘celebrity novels’, journalists with their ‘infotainment’, or TV executives with their so-called reality programming, the gatekeepers are now known to us primarily as experts in misdirection, hype and obfuscation.

It goes without saying that there are many honest, hardworking people in all branches of media who are doing their level best to deliver accurate, incisive content, but these are the minority voices in the cacophony of a vocal majority with less lofty goals.

Keen says, "The value once placed on a book by a great author is being challenged by the dream of a collective hyperlinked community of authors who endlessly annotate and revise it, forever conversing with each other in a never-ending loop of self-references."

And the problem here is…what? As an author of both fiction and nonfiction, I would be very happy to have an audience so engaged in what I’ve written that they’re moved to discuss it in groups. Isn’t that what literary study and criticism is all about? Keen seems to be suggesting that once a manuscript is bound between two covers, it should be laid to rest with no further analysis or study on the part of its readership. But isn’t it—and hasn’t it always been—the mission of great literature and nonfiction to spark thought, public discourse and debate?

Keen implies the author should always have the final word where his work is concerned, but I disagree. In my view, the author gets to open the discussion, but readers get to have the discussion. And that’s not a bad thing.

Keen goes on to talk about how free online content is stealing the very money out of the pockets of hardworking businesses and corporations. For example, Encyclopedia Brittanica has steadily lost marketshare to online compendia such as Wikipedia. But lest we feel little sympathy toward corporate behemoths like Brittanica that have been slow to get on the technology bus, or perhaps even feel some of those behemoths are about due for extinction, Keen trots out the story of the archetypal ‘little guy’:

"Then there’s Guy Kawasaki, author of one of the fifty most popular blogs on the internet…And how much did Kawasaki earn in ad revenue in 2006 off this hot media property? Just $3,350. If this is [Wired founder] Anderson’s long tail, it is a tail that offers no one a job. At best, it will provide the monkeys with peanuts and beer."

As it turns out, Guy Kawasaki is no ‘little guy’ at all. Keen neglects to mention the fact that Kawasaki has 10 bestselling nonfiction books in print. Hmmm…you don’t suppose Mr. Kawasaki’s blog has increased his book sales at all, do you?

The central failure of Mr. Keen’s book is his base assumption: that our culture needs gatekeepers and professional arbiters of quality in media, that people need to have their tastes, thoughts and opinions carefully formulated and shaped for them, that we lack the ability to make intelligent choices for ourselves. In addition to the snobbery inherent in his arguments, Keen’s scorn for the common man is evidenced by his repeated references to bloggers and indie artists as “monkeys”.

If Mr. Keen and his compatriots among the media elite knew anything about history, they’d know that every major step forward in human culture has been brought about by the dismantling of—wait for it—the then-powerful media elite. From the French Revolution to the American Revolution, from Martin Luther pinning a note on a church door to Martin Luther King Jr. leading a march on Washington D.C., from the literature and art of The Age of Enlightenment to the Cinema Verite movement of the 1970’s, whenever the controlling forces in our culture overreach or come to scorn the very public they claim to serve, that public will rise up in an overthrow and the outcome will be cultural progress.

Mr. Keen, the cheese has moved. You are welcome to join the cheese in its new location or to seek out new cheese on your own, but it’s pointless to keep demanding that all the people you think are beneath you bring the cheese back to you, because they are all quite happy with the cheese in its current location and you haven’t done anything to earn their affection or respect. Your whining diatribe of a book may be very popular among your peers in the media elite however; you might be able to launch a cheese-finding expedition with them, were it not for the fact that they have no idea how the cheese got away either, and like you, are not terribly welcome in the monkey house.

Mur Lafferty and "New Media"

January 3, 2016February 26, 2009 by Publetariat

This post, by Edmund Schubert, originally appeared on his Side-Show Freaks blog, and features a guest post from author Mur Lafferty.

A few weeks ago I posted an essay about achieving success in the publishing industry that included a link to an article posted on Time Magazine’s website. One of the people quoted in that Time article was a friend of mine named Mur Lafferty, a fiction and non-fiction author who has built her career on using new and open media.

She can be found on Suicide Girls as a regular columnist, on Tor.com as a blogger, or on her home page, murverse.com. Her first novel, Playing For Keeps, is available via print and free audio podcast (and was reviewed on IGMS by James Maxey). She graciously agreed to write more about the subject of new media, for which I am grateful. I’ll let her take it from here…

Edmund posted recently on this blog about podcasters getting publishing contracts. He then invited me to guest blog here, and I wanted to discuss this in more detail.

I am a podcaster who built an audience of over 40,000 via free giveaways of audio podcasts and PDF podcasts, so you can guess I’m rather gung-ho about new media. Podcasting my book led directly to it being picked up by a small press and released in print.

Yes, print publication, or "old media" is my ultimate goal. Giving work away for free is not a way to directly make money, obviously. But new media allowed me to connect to an audience, make them care about my work, and then ask them to help me with the marketing of the small press book. Many bought copies of the book for themselves and to give as gifts. I received one email from a woman who appreciated the free podcast so much that she promised to buy several copies for Christmas gifts.

I’m never clear on what number makes a small press book a success, but I earned out my advance and had a strong showing on Amazon for several weeks after the release, so I’m pretty pleased with the sales numbers of a book that never hit the bookshelves.

New media is not a fad or a gimmick. It’s not a pipe dream or a crazy idea. It’s a way to connect directly to an audience in a way that just a website will not do. Established authors with existing audiences can afford to look down on new media, but new authors with no audience would do well to consider audio or ebook releases of their work.

The relationship with the community is what it’s all about. What I’ve discovered from the listeners who hear my voice talking to them in intros and read me on blogs and Twitter, is that they want me to succeed. I’m not an author in an ivory tower to them, I’m a person trying to climb a pretty big mountain and can’t do it alone. (Yeah. Sometimes I mix metaphors.) When these people see my book, they don’t think, "Oh, a superhero novel by that author I heard of once." They think, "Mur’s book came out! Awesome!"

I had a man approach me at DragonCon last year. The conversation went something like this:

Read the rest of the post at the Side-Show Freaks blog.

Social Pressure Can Solve The 'Copying' Problem Even Without Copyright

January 3, 2016February 24, 2009 by Publetariat

This article, by Mike Masnick, originally appeared on techdirt on 2/23/09.

from the reputation-is-a-scarce-good dept

Whenever we talk about a world without copyright, people chime in about how awful it would be because someone can just "take" someone else’s content and pretend it’s their own. However, that’s not nearly as easy as people make it out to be.

As we’ve pointed out before, in many such cases, it won’t take people long to figure out where the content really originated from, and the end result is that the "copyist" (especially if it’s blatant, and they do little to improve the content) has their reputation slammed. And, since your reputation is a scarce good (often one of the most important in any business model), there is strong social pressure to stop any such copying.

Two recent examples demonstrate this in a very clear manner.

First, MAKE Magazine noted that publishers Klutz/Scholastic were publishing a book on BristleBots, small robots made out of toothbrush heads, and failed to credit the folks who had originally created BristleBots, a group called Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, as an example of a simple, do-it-yourself, robot making system. It was a pretty blatant copy, from both the name to the design. And, while Klutz/Scholastic at first tried to claim that it was independently created, the similarities between the two made that difficult to believe. This resulted in a public outcry from many different sites, and Klutz/Scholastic finally agreed to back down and will credit the Evil Mad Scientists in all future releases. Notice that this didn’t involve any copyright claims or lawsuits — but pure public pressure, and the potential (serious) damage to Klutz/Scholatic’s brand and reputation. Already, the reputation is damaged, and the company will likely be much more careful in the future.

Meanwhile, angry jonny points us to another example. The community over at the excellent website Metafilter discovered that the author of the webcomic User Friendly has been blatantly copying punchlines to his comics from the Metafilter community.

Read the rest of the article at techdirt. Publetariat editor’s note: since the piece was written, the creator of the User Friendly comic strip has taken down the strips at the center of the controversy. Therefore, links to those strips in the second half of this article will not display the comics in question.

Where to Submit Your Book for Review

January 3, 2016February 24, 2009 by Publetariat

Book reviews can be a powerful marketing tool for books of all types. Potential customers learn about books by reading reviews in newspapers, consumer magazines, professional journals, newsletters, ezines, book review websites, and other websites and blogs. In addition to bringing books to their attention, well-crafted reviews also help the reader determine if a book is a good fit for them.

Submitting books for review can be time consuming and the costs can add up quickly, but the selling power of reviews is well worth the effort. You can save time and money by planning in advance and being selective about where you send review copies.

When submitting review copies to publications, make sure your book’s subject matches the audience and the book meets the publication’s review guidelines. Some publications only review certain types of books and some only review prior to or within a certain time after publication. For example, The New York Times only reviews books available in retail bookstores.

Book reviews in newspapers are getting harder to come by, but many special interest magazines and newsletters do book reviews or mention books in articles related to the book’s topic. Publishing expert Dan Poynter sells lists off special interest publications in dozens of subject areas for a modest fee.

Bookstore buyers and librarians base many of their ordering decisions on reviews in the major book review journals. Eligibility and submission instructions vary by publication, so be sure to read the requirements carefully.

Online reviews can also be a great book marketing tool. Having lots of good reviews on Amazon.com can boost sales, especially for nonfiction books where customers are comparing several different books on a particular topic. There are numerous other websites that feature book reviews.

For a list of online book review sites, along with tips on getting reviews on Amazon.com and other websites, read Annette Fix’s article about online book reviews at the WOW! Women on Writing website. Yvonne Perry at Writers in the Sky has also compiled a list of people and organizations that do book reviews.

Use caution when sending review copies to individuals who request them. Some people have good intentions, but simply won’t find the time to write a review, while others offer to write reviews mainly as a way to get free books. If you don’t know much about the reviewer, it might be a good idea to politely inquire what other book reviews they have done and where they were published.

"I sent copies of my book to book bloggers who responded to my email that they indeed wanted to review the book, but who never reviewed it. I later realized that I wasn’t anyone to them, so my book got buried in the avalanche of books they receive," says Phyllis Zimbler Miller of MillerMosaic.com. "I found that bloggers on my virtual book tour and book reviewers whom I connected with through social media were much more committed to actually reviewing my book." For more tips from Phyllis, see this book review article.

Several services, including Kirkus Discoveries and Clarion, offer paid review services. The practice of paying for book reviews is controversial. Some people think that paid reviews are biased since they are done for a fee and that it’s a waste of money. Others maintain that paid reviews are just as fair as other reviews and that reviewers need to be compensated for their time.

Librarians and booksellers know which publications do paid reviews, so reviews from those sources won’t carry much weight with them. Paid reviews could generate good quotes for consumer marketing purposes, but there are so many places to get free book reviews that it’s generally not necessary to pay for reviews.

Wherever you choose to send your galleys and review copies, plan ahead and get them out as quickly as possible. And, whenever customers give you good feedback on your book, be sure to ask for permission to add their quote to your testimonial list and ask if they would be willing to post their comments on Amazon.com.

Book marketing coach Dana Lynn Smith is the author of the Savvy Book Marketer Guides, a series of book marketing ebooks that are available at http://www.SavvyBookMarketer.com. For free book marketing tips, visit http://www.BookMarketingMaven.com.

From Little Ventures Small Wonders Emerge

January 3, 2016February 23, 2009 by Publetariat

This piece was originally posted on The Age on 1/24/09.

If you want to publish stylish and unique books, you don’t have to be a big concern, writes Simon Caterson.

IF SMALL is beautiful, as the economist E. F. Schumacher asserted, then Melbourne may boast of having a micro-publishing scene that is very attractive. Dozens of tiny publishers are producing everything from handmade recipe books, fiction and poetry to popular non-fiction and even book-like objects that defy classification.

According to the publishers, the diversity and eclecticism are just the points. Micro-publishing, they say, is all about the freedom to publish anything you want, whenever you want, in any form you like. There are as many different approaches to micro-publishing as there are publishers themselves, though the freedom gained via low overheads and small print runs does not exclude the possibility of producing books that appeal to a wide range of readers.

At the more entrepreneurial end of the micro-publishing spectrum is Arcade Publications, which has identified a gap in the market for short, inexpensive, carefully designed books covering aspects of Melbourne’s hitherto unexplored history.

Arcade made its publishing debut in 2007 with Lisa Lang’s pocket-sized biography of eccentric millionaire and philanthropist E. W. Cole and its next book, due in March, is about the equally colourful figure of Madame Brussels, the notorious brothel-keeper who accommodated the rich and powerful during the era of Marvellous Melbourne.

Arcade’s Rose Michael says that "the whole enterprise is a very close-knit ‘familial’ affair", which means that publishing decisions can be made quickly and that each person involved has a say in all aspects of the publishing process.

"Having worked in larger companies, you have so many decisions made by committee, and things are owned by so many different areas. In micro-publishing, you are able to just kind of do stuff around an island bench."

For Michael and her business partners, Dale Campisi and Michael Brady, publishing is just one aspect of the firm’s expanding operations. Arcade also produces walking tours with Hidden Secrets Tours, including the popular Melbourne by the Book walking tour of literary Melbourne.

Campisi regards literary events and communication as complementing one another. "We all love a good event, and the purpose of our public activities is mostly about creating community around our publishing output. Storytelling is not a solitary activity."

Less straightforwardly commercial, though no less dedicated, is the group made up of food writer Rachel Pitts, designer and illustrator Katherine Bird and photographer Leah Holscher, who publish collectively as the Hungry Girls. The Hungry Girls’ Cookbook began life as a collection of recipes originally put together by the three friends as a Christmas present. Two years later, it is available in bookstores throughout Australia and in Britain and has been joined by a second volume of recipes.

Pitts explains the success of The Hungry Girls’ Cookbook in terms of its accessibility and the care that goes into the production of each copy. "I think the core thing about the Hungry Girls books is that they’re not intimidating and the people behind it aren’t celebrities. The books really make people think, hey, I could do something like this and it could be beautiful."

While micro-publishing lends itself to collaboration and a pooling of complementary skills, it may also take the form of a solo venture. Novelist Antoni Jach runs Modern Writing Press, which is soon to release The Fable of Arachne, a collection of poems by Sallie Muirden, and has previously published The Bird, The Belltower, a book by Peter Lyssiotis combining text and images. Jach says that micro-publishing in essence is "an act of optimism — to bring words out into the light of day rather than remaining in the bottom drawer. It’s a gift of sorts."

Jach says that micro-publishing "is usually not for profit, which means more can be spent on the look and the feel of the book". Jach cites The Bird, The Belltower, which has no title or author’s name on the cover, only an image, is printed on 120 gsm art paper, with 16 pages of colour plates, and has endpapers.

Such features, he says, all add to the lasting artistic value and beauty of the book but none of them could be included if there was a commercial imperative. Distributed through launches and other local means, Jach says the entire print run of 300 copies of The Bird, The Belltower was sold and he was able to recoup his costs.

A sign that small-scale publishing in Melbourne has reached critical mass came last year with the establishment of the Small Press Underground Networking Community (SPUNC). According to general manager John Hunter, micro-publishing could not flourish without the support of Victoria’s independent booksellers, a sentiment endorsed wholeheartedly by micro-publishers themselves.

While modern print technology and online communities obviously assist micro-publishers enormously in getting the word out, physical distribution of books through established channels remains a significant cost factor. Hence, in part, the impetus for SPUNC.

Hunter likens the vitality and dynamism of micro-publishing to that of the indie music scene. "They both grow out of a local scene that is unique to Melbourne yet has connections with similar scenes around the world — rather than out of ‘the industry’ per se. At a commercial level, neither local bands nor authors have much chance of being stocked in major chain stores, or, for that matter, supported in mainstream media, so their natural and shared affinity is with independent shops and independent media. This leads to cross-pollination which produces beautiful hybrids.

"It’s an exciting blossoming that, like a lot of organic processes, spreads quickly across ground that is so much broader than the narrow, specialised demarcations that the industry tries to impose."

Read the second half of the article here.

The Problem With Self-Publishing

January 3, 2016February 22, 2009 by Publetariat

by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

[A version of this article originally appeared on loudpoet.com]

Unless you’re a traditional publisher with a vested interest in the status quo, or an insecure writer who puts a lot of stock in the name of one’s publisher, there’s really nothing wrong with self-publishing that’s not a problem for the publishing industry in general:

Too many mediocre books being published? Check!
Minimal marketing support for the vast majority of books being published? Check!
Too much up-front money being put towards vanity projects? Check!
Lackluster editing and/or pedestrian design? Check!
Huge, out-of-control egos in need of a reality check? Checkity check check!

Except for Marvel and DC Comics, very few publishers have the kind of brand recognition that can influence sales at the retail level. Their strength is primarily on the backend, their ability to get books onto bookstore shelves and into influential critics’ hands. Ask 100 people in a bookstore who publishes Stephen King, or Stephenie Meyer, or the “For Dummies” series, though, and you’ll likely get a blank stare and a shrug from 75% of them.

Most people would say their decision to read a book comes from some combination of three criteria: personal interest in topic/genre, recommendations, and sampling.

Only the latter point is really influenced by a traditional publisher, as theirs are the books most likely to be on a bookshelf available to browse and sample, but between Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, free samples via the Kindle and iPhone, and smartly designed and optimized author (or publisher) websites, even that isn’t an obstacle for any book, self-published or not, that hits someone’s radar via the other two, significantly more important criteria. In fact, the ability to sample a book digitally opens it up to a much wider audience than having 1-2 copies in a bookstore, buried in alphabetical order between a bunch of similarly unknown authors’ names and unimaginative titles.

Distribution and visibility aside, the most commonly noted “problem” with self-publishing, of course, is that self-published books mostly suck and there’s so many of them being cranked out every year that finding a good one is a near impossible and not terribly worthwhile task. While literally true, it ignores the larger reality that taking a stroll through any Barnes & Noble or Borders in search of a good book can be a similarly frustrating and unfruitful undertaking.

The fact of the matter is that writing a book is hard; writing an objectively good book is even harder; and writing one that can survive the subjective tastes of influential critics, well, that’s practically impossible.

Just ask Stephenie Meyer, best-selling author of the Twilight series, who got ripped by Stephen King in USA Today a while back: “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.” I’ve never read any Potter or Twilight novels, but King’s criticism of Meyer’s writing is one I’ve seen made many times, in a variety of places, of both of them.

It’s true that the vast majority of self-published books are vanity projects, most by authors who never bothered to attempt to go the traditional route because their primary goal was getting the finished product into their own hands, not the “validation” and “legitimization” so many tend to associate with a traditional publisher. As a result, the closest they’ve come to being edited is a cursory reading by a couple of friends or family members followed by compliments and encouragement to pursue their dreams. It’s like a poetry slam where 10s are mandatory; most of it is self-indulgent dreck with a narrowly defined audience of one.

Less typical, but often lumped in the same category, is the wannabe author whose work probably wouldn’t get past the critical eye of an editor or agent without a revision or three, and goes the self-publishing route of out of frustration (or pride), usually in hopes of landing a copy on an influential someone’s desk to become the next one-in-a-million success story who nails a lucrative publishing deal after proving their worth. While this certainly does happen, it’s rare because of the stereotypical stigma that still defines self-publishing for those on the inside of the industry.

Finally, and for whom Publetariat was primarily created for, is the ambitious author who understands that, no matter who their publisher is, they’re going to have to bust their ass to market their book and hand-sell it to as many people as possible, one copy at a time, in person and online. These are most often non-fiction writers with a niche expertise and poets — and to a lesser degree, REALLY ambitious comic book creators and fiction writers — who have the ability, innate or developed, to perform in front of a crowd of tens or hundreds (or online, millions), able to schmooze just as comfortably on a one-on-one level as on Twitter.

These savvy authors tend to have built a platform for themselves over time — something almost every traditional publisher pretty much requires these days — and know how to use it, attracting a loyal tribe and continually nurturing it.

For these entrepeneurial authors, there aren’t any problems with self-publishing at all, as they stand to reap significantly greater rewards for their greater effort. If anything, it’s traditional publishing that has the problem, with expectations for the same level of author effort in return for minimal marketing support and a much smaller cut of the sales of each book.

For these authors, self-publishing is ultimately a question of independence, and for them, Publetariat is a community where that independence is encouraged and honored, while also serving as a much-needed support system.

Nope, no problems here!

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Spindle Magazine. He’s won some poetry slams, founded a reading series, co-authored a book of poetry, and still writes when the mood hits him and he has the time. Follow him on Twitter: @glecharles

Interview with Indie Author Norman Savage

January 3, 2016February 18, 2009 by Publetariat

Just a few short months ago, Greenwich Village author Norman Savage was on the verge of earning a book deal with a large New York publisher for his memoir, Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrolled Diabetic.

Then in October, the market crashed, consumer spending seized, and the publishing industry was suddenly less willing to take risks on unproven authors. The deal disappeared.

It’s a story we’ll likely see played out over and over again as talented authors learn they no longer have a home in the highest caste of authordom.

Norman Savage is an author who deserves to be published. His storytelling is vivid, raw and unforgettable. In Junk Sick, he chronicles a life of addiction, diabetes and hard living that at age 62 has left him with deteriorating health, the scars of quadruple bypass surgery and four amputated toes.

But Savage doesn’t want our sympathy. No, he wants something else.

I’m proud to present an interview with Norman Savage, who last week published Junk Sick on Smashwords. In our interview, Savage spoke openly about a life lived teetering on the edge of euphoria and oblivion.

Warning: This interview contains mature language and subject matter not suitable for children.

[Mark Coker] – Describe your new book, Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrolled Diabetic.

[Norman Savage] – Junk Sick is my attempt to bring all that was fractured in my life–family, diabetes, drug addiction, alcoholism, women, jobs, madness, mayhem, ecstasy and suicide ramblings–into a coherent and readable whole. It tries to explain how and why I married two different conditions–diabetes and addiction–into one unitary structure, me. Both acts–the taking of insulin and the injecting of dope or the drinking of booze–implies intent and desperation, each of them uses a syringe to bridge one world into another and all the substances are short-acting.

[Mark Coker] – How long did it take you to write the book?

[Norman Savage] – About 20 years, though I’ve been writing most of my life. I began publishing my poetry in little mags and presses in the 1960’s. In fact, Susan Graham Mingus, the wife of the late bassist Charles Mingus, first published me and had Andy Warhol take the pictures for the spread. The first draft of <span style="font-style: italic;">Junk Sick</span> was written circa 1985 and then from a kind of cowardice brokered by booze and dope it was shelved. From time to time, I would re-engage and edit it, but not until Thanksgiving of 2007 did I really begin to edit and update it.

[Mark Coker] – When you first contacted me, you had just lost out on a potential book deal for Junk Sick with Farrar, Straus & Giroux. What happened?

[Norman Savage] – In 2007, I was invited to the Thanksgiving dinner of an old friend who I’d met almost thirty years earlier at a bar where I worked. I’d always declined previous invitations because I’m never really comfortable around most people I don’t know and am not much a fan of polite chatter. I never really know what to say. But I’d lived a solo life for a long time now at that point and thought I needed the company and a home-cooked meal. Joanie was, and is, a terrific cook.

It also was a kind of challenge to myself to see if I still had the "chops" to engage the human race in social situations. She, too, had become a bartender in a pretty famous saloon in the West Village and so I thought there’d be other barflies as well, which made it easier to rationalize. As it turned out I met a woman that evening who had been an editor at Doubleday and was most interested in biography and memoir–she helped Brando pen his. I told her that I, too, wrote, and had written a memoir. I’m sure she was being polite by offering to read the first chapter of what I’d written and gave me her email address.

Within a week she contacted me and was very enthusiastic about what she’d read. She wanted to read the entire work and thought that three agents who she knew would also be interested. After reading the work she called with encouraging news. She thought that Cynthia Cannell, a very prominent literary agent, once a VP at Janklow Nesbitt and now owner of her own boutique lit agency would be the person to best represent it.

Right after New Year, Cynthia called me. She, too, thought the work terrific and wanted to meet. After meeting, she suggested I edit three sections which she would send to senior editors she knew. Sometime in March one of those editors at FS&G called and said she’d be interested provided I was better able to "marry" the diabetes with addiction. This to me was wonderful news. It gave me an opportunity to go back into the work, update it, and use the cutting edge of "new" psychological advances in making sense of what I and every other addict and diabetic experiences on various levels.

I returned the newer version back to her late July, early August. She read it and liked it. She told Cynthia that she was giving it to another senior editor and should he like it as well she was moving it up to the marketing and sales division.

Then we didn’t hear. And didn’t hear. I felt in my bones there was something wrong. That "something" began to become clearer as the economy began to unravel. At the end of October she called Cynthia to tell her that FS&G was not going to go ahead with new writers and unknown material. A few weeks after that, Cynthia learned that she was let go after many years of service. Cynthia suggested that I keep working on my new novel and then she’d revisit the "scene" with my work after the new year. But that didn’t sit well with me. I began to look for alternatives.

[Mark Coker] – What led you to Smashwords?

[Norman Savage] – Serendipity. I was researching how to serialize my memoir and/or novels online when I came across a forum where some person spoke about your site as a publishing tool. Curious, I took a look and liked what you had to say about it. I didn’t decide to actually publish there until I fooled around–for a couple of days–with my own blog. Deciding that a blog was not the right way for me to go in getting an entire serialized on it, I then contacted you. I’ve never had much faith in the publishing industry, or industries in general. Their existence is by and large for one purpose: to make money. How that’s done is usually dictated by what they think the marketplace is, or what they can manipulate the marketplace to be. And that’s usually the lowest common denominator.

We’ve all heard stories of some of our finest artists never seeing the light of day–in their lifetime–because the powers that be didn’t believe that their audience was either ready or could appreciate the work of these people. At one time, and not that long ago, if a senior editor at a publishing house thought well of your work they could (though it still could be a fight), get it published. Some of the best publishers and editors could take risks, and they did.

Now, before a major publisher takes a chance on a "new" voice, they have to run it by the sales and marketing department and they try to see whether or not it will sell 25,000 copies or else they usually won’t take a chance on it. They try to crunch numbers, but usually go by the past in making decisions: what used to sell. They can no more discern that than Hollywood can predict what movie we go to see. Everyone plays it "safe." It’s like never falling in love because you never want to get out of your own hip pocket. And the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

We know, of course, that most of the stuff that gets to us is dull, mind-numbing. Whether it’s in print, on a canvass, film, or music hall. It’s repetitive shit and, for the most part, having nothing whatsoever to do with our lives as we know them. In order to get published you now have to go to and come out of "writing workshops"; actors and directors come out of "film schools" or "acting workshops"; painters out of "A Fine Arts" program, etc. How many writers or actors or painters that are in the public eye today come out of the streets, madhouses, jails? How many were vagabonds, hobos, trapeze artists, merchant seaman, janitors, dockworkers, street sweepers? How many talk a living language?

Thoreau once told a young man who wanted to learn river navigation not to go to college, but to get his ass on a ship. You learn by living. Drink, have a few bad love affairs, drink again (or shoot some dope), get up at 5 a.m. and go to a job you hate, come home to woman you can’t stand being with, but can’t stand being away from, hit the keys like you’re in a heavyweight fight–because you are–and get up the next morning to do it all over again, and do it for many many years. Go on welfare, food stamps, grab on a rope tossed over, think it’s going to save you only to find no one on the other end and just go until the living stops. And it will, soon enough.

I know there is good stuff out there that’s being overlooked by the mainstream boys who will continue to publish safe shit: diet, gardening, how to, celebrity, and formulaic fiction and non-fiction that fits their idea of what writing is. It rattles their balls and their hearts when something different comes along.

However, there’s a problem that you face as well: since this is intended to be the most democratic medium to get stuff up on, how does the reader evaluate all the stuff that floats in this ether world? How much do we have to wade through to get a kernel of what we’re looking for? We complain, bitch and moan about critics, but the good ones filter some of the shit and saves us god awful time. Beside, some of the best fights are between critics; sometimes they’re better than the "art" itself. Hard to draw the line.

[Mark Coker] – How important is it to you to reach an audience?

[Norman Savage] – All writers/artists want an audience. We’re all "talking" to somebody, even if it’s to ourselves. Even Emily Dickensen, not the most outgoing of gals, had this one guy who she was hot for. Her poems were directed toward him. In a way it’s only to prove that we’re not mad and all this breathing and pain was not a waste of time.

[Mark Coker] – What’s the connection between diabetes and addiction in Junk Sick?

[Norman Savage] – I wrote Junk Sick after completing a heroin detox and then, faced with no job prospects, but living with a generous woman who loved me and was paying the rent, decided not to let all that I knew about diabetes and addiction, up until that point, go to waste. I knew that there was not a book that tackled the diabetes from an emotional perspective (there’s still very little of that today). I did not want it to be a "how to" book or one that just gives a very clinical definition on how to cope with a chronic illness, psychopathology, or a new diet.

Diabetes implies deprivation, sacrifice. I was diagnosed at age 11, and for a kid, coming into and going through puberty, that’s a high wire act without a net. I wanted the book to represent the chaos of growing up in a crazed Jewish family in Coney Island, coming down with a disease that no one was equipped to handle or cope with intelligently and, left to my own devices, how I managed to assuage the feeling of being "damaged." I thought that other people, diabetic or not, who try to cope with life’s madness, could gain some insight as to what governs them and maybe, in one way or another, get some insight into how they’re feeling and acting.

[Mark Coker] – In Junk Sick you write about how music, literature and art served as salves to calm your "crazy fascistic masochistic impulse of creation." What do you mean by that?

[Norman Savage] – It’s scientifically and psychologically proven that when a person engages the arts–reading, writing, really listening to music or looking at a painting–our minds secrete a certain amount of endogenous opioids–the bodies natural morphine–to soothe the system. It is not something we’re conscious of, but we do feel the effect. Why, we must ask, do we engage with those things if we derive no pleasure from them? We actively seek pleasure in our daily pursuit to avoid pain. Artists are no different, except that in their art, when it’s going really well, those same hormones are triggered. Every artist at one time or another got in "the flow" and usually that’s what they mean. Eugene O’Neill, that quintessential alcoholic expressed it this way, "Writing is a vacation from life."

But this is where it starts to get fucked-up. You can’t be "in the flow" all the time. Shit, sometimes the gods are not good, the words don’t come, the paint has no color, the sentences make no sense, the kid is crying, the wife needs to talk, or fuck, the water is stopped up, the landlord is screaming for his rent, the car has a flat, your tooth just broke, your shoelace snapped…

You know that in order to do this shit you need "time" but you never have enough of that–there’s too much shit to do. So what do you do? You deny yourself pleasures. You don’t do things that normal people do all the time: movies, TV, sex, companionship, food, etc. Now I’m not saying that you become a fucking monk, no, but that you try to give yourself enough time to try and let whatever art you have from whatever word gods sit on high to get through. So the artist is a bit "fascistic."

"Masochism" is, in a way, the flip-side of that: somewhere in your insanity you must enjoy whatever hell you’re putting yourself through. There has to be some secondary gains. You do have some kind of hidden agenda that you’re not aware of or copping to. And, of course, you do remember those times when the work was going good, even though your life was in the shitter. Those pockets of peace are worth a great deal of madness.

[Mark Coker] – Which authors or artists inspire you?

[Norman Savage] – All writers/artists are inspiring if they’re not bullshit artists because even the bad ones you learn from. You know some of them are pretenders, phonies, fakes, frauds, but they give you some courage and anger to do it your way. But the few who’ve been where you have get you through some hard days and nights and others, especially at the beginning of your writing allow you to be who you never thought you were allowed to be or are. They opened up, dynamited, gone over and around, what was or wasn’t there before: Hubert Selby, Jr, Jones/Baraka, Ginsberg, Eliot, Pound, Miller (Henry), Roth (Philip), Pynchon, Pound, Bukowski, Celine, Purdy, Hamsun, Morrison, Marquez, Crews and others, of course, many others. And, then, you got around to what the painters and musicians were doing and saw color and rhythm and tried to marry that, too. It’s style, man. You create it; you swing to it. It’s yours and yours alone. It can’t be copied and it can’t be faked. You just know it when you see it, hear it, or read it.

[Mark Coker] – What drives you to write?

[Norman Savage] – Mostly biology. It’s not a big thing; it’s much like pissing–when your bladder gets full, you just have to empty it because if you don’t the whole goddamn system implodes. Toni Morrison said in one of her great novels, "Sula," "if a writer doesn’t practice his craft, that craft will eventually turn against him." I don’t know if I got the quote exact, but it’s close enough. It is very difficult for me not to think a certain way, in a certain style, to a certain music. If I deny that–and I’ve tried to do it, sometimes for many years–I’ve usually wound up fucking myself.

I’m sure it’s a selfish thing, too, bound up in ego and all manner of forces, some of which I know and others I have no idea about. I suppose, when it comes down to it, it’s about "fucking" as well. I was always good with the women, but in the short term. Writing has most of the time satisfied my libidinal urges: striking hard at the keys, blasting letters onto a white sheet of paper, penetrating a canvas or the airwaves. And now, as my body betrays me, writing has not, my mind has not. The gods have certainly been gracious and have given me more than my right share.

[Mark Coker] – You write openly about your various addictions to a laundry list of legal and illegal drugs. Do you regret or treasure these experiences?

[Norman Savage] – "Regret" and "treasure" are two words that are not easily addressed. Each usually contains some of the other. It’s like a woman saying she loves you and you are unable to respond, whether you love her or not. It’s never that cut and dried. I know that people would like "simple" answers, but for them there will only be hard days and nights.

I "regret" wasting a lot of time tethered to a habit, but then again, I regret wasting a lot of time going into another ridiculous job. Alcohol and drugs opened up ways for me that were unsuspected, and they led me to other things that I wouldn’t have come across without altering my normal sense of reality. They helped make sense out of things and provided different ways of seeing and experiencing, not necessarily all good.

But, as I’ve said earlier, there’s a lot to be said for "bad" experiences, too. They are part of the whole, whatever the "whole" is or becomes. They have also fucked-up and altered certain relationships, and given others pain, that never did them or myself any good. But then, again, without them, I might have bitten the bullet before I had a chance to sort some of this out.

When I first started to experiment with drugs, I was lucky enough to be around some people, smarter than me, who used drugs as a tool and they taught me ways to work with various substances. For me, though, they finally became a way for escape, escape from what was really best in myself and, after losing what control I had, I had no way of returning to my previous state.

But, to answer your question, I do treasure many experiences–from making connections with things when alone and thinking, to experiences with others in the most common situations–and regret the dishonesty, to myself and others, that bordered my own particular cowardice and what fueled it.

[Mark Coker] – How is it that you’re still alive after struggling with diabetes for 50 years and nearly continuous drug addiction for 45 of those years?

[Norman Savage] – Luck, brother. Never underestimate it. Yes, we work and plan and scheme and pray and think we’re on top of our game, but dumb providence makes the difference in a great many respects. And fear, don’t forget down home gut-wrenching fear; that will get your attention. My memoir makes clear just how helpful "luck" and "fear" were and are.

My genes, except for the "diabetic" one (if my disease wasn’t psychosomatically orchestrated), are apparently good. Also, within my madness and mania, I never missed an insulin shot, ever. The doctor, who became my friend, and took care of me for a long time, was a past president of The American Diabetic Association, wasn’t judgmental, and always was not only in my corner, but gave me other docs to sort out other ills.

Women were always far better to me than I was to them and kept me going long after I should have "stopped." I’ve been clean for a couple of years now and stopped on my own. I kicked junk three years ago by going into a looney bin and then coming out and getting on a public Buphenorphine program, then stopped going there after being clean for a year, and stopped drinking two years ago because I wanted to.

I do not like the word "recovered" or "recovering." I used to go to a lot of AA meetings and never liked all the hand-holding, sharing and higher power kind of thing, but I did like, and needed, the social lubricant. But I stopped going at a certain point. What exactly am I recovering from? Desire? How the hell can you recover (and why would you want to?) from "desire?"

People drink or drug because there is an absence inside us, and we "desire" to fill that absence. We fill it with drink, drug, sex, others, TV, gambling, eating, working, or praying. But that kind of desire remains, always. Usually it’s the misguided desire for the other: mother or father. And that "other" is dressed in drag, disguised. It’s finally false and utterly impossible to reproduce. But we still search.

I believe, it’s only when you try to come to grips with that that you get on with it and go on. There was a huge study done by NIAAA comparing what mode of "therapy" worked best for the drug addict/alcoholic. They compared AA, therapy, and pharmacological interventions. Each of them were dismally inefficient. Most people who do stop using alcohol and/or drugs and who were really addicted (not those fakers who go on TV or to meetings wanting to meet people and get laid, published or "networked"), do so by "spontaneous remission." They just decide one day that they’d had enough and quit. Quietly.

[Mark Coker] – What’s your day job? What are some of the other jobs you’ve held over your lifetime?

[Norman Savage] – I’d rather not mention my day job. It’s legit and it’s hard, but it suits my purposes. Aside from being a bartender from time to time and before I had four toes amputated, I was a non-profit whore. Whoever wanted me, I lifted my skirts for. I taught, wrote grants, counseled kids and adults in alcohol and drug treatment settings, taught nurses and interns about diabetic management and skills (circa, 1984), drove taxi’, worked supermarkets, administered grants in major medical institutions, and worked with kids who had ADD & ADHD.

[Mark Coker] – When I asked you for ten things about you, you listed, "the impossibility of not lying." Do truth and fiction blur to you? Is your memoir truth, fiction, or both?

[Norman Savage] – Yes, "words" are a construct. They’re made up. It’s like trying to tell someone your dream. Yes, you can almost, almost describe it, but you can never quite get the colors right, the texture right, you can never really say what you mean. Some, of course, are much better at getting at the right word than others, but, brother, that takes a whole lot of work. "Words," too, are straightjacketed; they strain and crack under the weight of too many tongues.

I try to get it right, at least as "right" as I know it, but I’m sure if other interested parties were to describe the same experience they had with me they’d remember it, see it, and word it in other ways. Truth and fiction indeed do blur. My friend, Jack, calls it "friction." Melville, too, in his great work, "Billy Budd," (or was it "Benito Cereno"?) says this about the rainbow: how can you really tell where the blue ends and the orange begins, and then to red, to green, to yellow, to fuscia, to purple, to gold? How do you really tease those things out?

My memoir is as close to "truth" as I know it for me. I did not make-up or fabricate any of it; I didn’t have to. Dizzy Dean, a once great baseball pitcher, once famously remarked: "It ain’t bragging if I done it." Other people would disagree with some or all of it. That’s O.K. Let them write one of their own with their own take on things. What is always fiction is how I put the words together; one word, one sentence after the next. In that respect, it’s entirely up to me.

[Mark Coker] – Have you been truthful in this interview?

[Norman Savage] – Yes. Today. But as this cat Zizek said, "I’d rather be inconsistent, than inconsequential." If I learn of something that makes more sense to me, then I’d be a fool not to entertain that.

[Mark Coker] – What do you want written on your epitaph?

[Norman Savage] – There’s a writer who I’d admired long before I came to correspond with him briefly, Harry Crews. There’s something he said that I’d like on my gravestone. And, Mark, since I don’t know many people these days, maybe you’d be so kind? Here’s what I’d like on the rock: "I never wanted to be well-rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design." I want to leave a stain, Mark, I want it to say that I was here and lived it through.

[Mark Coker] – Thanks Norman!

—

Where to buy Junk Sick:

Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrolled Diabetic is available at Smashwords for $2.99 as a multi-format, DRM-free ebook. Visit http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/715

To learn more about Norman Savage, visit his Smashwords author page.

This interview originally appeared at the Smashwords Blog.

Podcasting For DumbDumbs

January 3, 2016February 16, 2009 by Publetariat

This article, written by Corey Dietz, originally appeared on About.com.

Let me first assure you I don’t think you’re a "DumbDumb". If you’re like me, you just want to get things done with the least amount of resistance. You want to get it done quickly, easily and done well.

Not long ago I wrote an article on how to put together a podcast. Although not terribly complicated and very straightforward, since it’s publication several services have popped up which eliminate the need for potential podcasters to learn any of the “nuts and bolts” I wrote about. (Of course if you’re curious, by all means have a look.)

Nobody needs to learn any of that stuff now that there are “point and click” services which provide what might be compared to the WYSIWYG metaphor: What You See Is What You Get. For busy people or those with little time to learn even the slightest code or new procedures, these are the easiest ways to get a podcast going. That’s why I want you to know who these services are in the event you want to create a podcast but are totally freaked out by terms like “RSS”, “file properties”, and anything that begins with “http://”

Gcast.com

Gcast from GarageBand.com is an easy to follow setup allows the user to quickly setup a Podcast with title, description, graphic, keywords, and more.

With Gcast, you can upload a finished Podcast in the form of an .mp3 or better yet, you can record your Podcast right over your phone – toll free.

Additionally, if you’re looking for “Podcast safe” music to include in your program without the worry of copyright-infringement, GarageBand.com is integrated so you can choose from that service.

You can create music playlists for your shows from Gcast’s Playlist Manager.

It allows you to change things up any way you wish.

That’s it. It’s amazingly straightforward and anyone can create their own Podcast for any reason.

ClickCaster.com

ClickCaster is a very simple and easy to use podcasting solution that gives anyone with an Internet connection, the ability to create, publish, listen and subscribe to an on-demand Podcast. The ClickCaster creation and management tools are available directly from the ClickCaster website.

End-users simply click, record and publish their podcast directly on the ClickCaster directory service.

Read the rest of the article at About.com.

Self-Publishing Standards, Part One

January 3, 2016February 16, 2009 by Publetariat

This article, by Mick Rooney, originally appeared on The Self-Publishing Review on 2/12/09. This piece, together with Part Two (link at the end), provides an excellent overview of self-publishing options and many specific comments about specific service providers.

The author who embarks on the journey into self-publishing takes on a great many tasks. If they choose to fulfil all the tasks themselves, they have, in effect, taken on the running of a small business and everything that goes with it.

They may decide to run their small publishing business by registering it a sole proprietor company, with the intention of publishing more than just one book. They not only become authors of their book, but editor, designer and illustrator. They will have to go about preparing their book as a digital file for the printers, using a program like Indesign, Quark, a cheap off-the-shelf book publishing program, or perhaps they will be proficient enough to use MS Word, resulting in a print ready PDF file. Whatever method they use, a book will result, and the arduous task of promoting and marketing the book will follow.

Self-publishers using POD (print on demand) technology, like iUniverse, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, Infinity, Xulon, Mill City Press, Dogear, Raider, Lulu, Createspace, etc offer publishing services to authors unwilling to take on all that goes with self-publishing a book. An author may be motivated by other needs and wishes. They may simply want to see their book in print and available for family and friends, or they may see their books as the first step on the path into publishing. They may have already published through traditional publishing channels or instead given up after countless rejections. The facts remain that more than ever before authors are arriving at the road sign-posted ‘Self-Publishing – This way.’ So what barometers and measurements of standards of self-publishers does an author have to go on?

When we buy our car, we have an expectation that it will be value for money and run well. If we buy a pair of new shoes and the heel falls off in a few days; we take them back because, as a consumer, we have the right and we are protected under consumer laws. We expect the products we buy to do what they say on the tin or packaging. Self publishing, in spite of the contracts signed by authors, doesn’t quite work that way. When an author signs a publishing contract with a Self Publisher; is he buying a service or a book? Perhaps it is both. If a reader takes his James Patterson blockbuster back to Borders, WH Smith or sends it back to Amazon because page 218 is blank, they will replace it or give him his money back. In the traditional world of publishing, an author often has an agent to legally represent them. If things go wrong during or after the publication of a book, the author can use his agent or approach an Author’s Association or Guild. The publishers have their own representative associations.

This does not work the same way with self-publishers (who after all draw up their own contracts) and many self published authors. Often, both parties are isolated, and during a dispute have to legally go it alone without any norm or publishers charter. There are legal and consumer laws and copyright laws, but publishing goes far beyond these. National publishers associations frown on even the most reputable self-publishers. Some national author guilds and societies also treat self published authors as though they had done something wrong or deeply offensive to literature.

The world of self-publishing is easily open to the most unscrupulous scammers and fraudsters. It is an area rife with enthusiastic but naive authors and new ‘publishers’ with not a scintilla of editing, publishing or book marketing experience. Over the past two years, there have been far too many self-publishers set up by failed, disgruntled and disillusioned writers, who, with the best will and intentions in the world, have no idea how to run a bookshop, let alone a publishing business. Over the past two years—I can’t say I have found any more than about twenty who actually hit the mark—and that is looking at the USA, UK and Irish self-publishers.

So what is the mark all good self-publishers should be trying to work to and achieve? And more importantly, how can we help and go about bringing self-publishers up to that mark? Well, first let’s look at the ‘model’ of publishing and services offered by some publishers.

Read the rest of this article, and Part Two, at The Self-Publishing Review.

Citizen Journalists Will Bring The What, While Professionals Bring The Why

January 3, 2016February 16, 2009 by Publetariat

This article, by Pat Thornton, originally appeared 2/8/09 on The Journalism Iconoclast blog.

Citizen journalism is a gift to journalism, professional journalists and people all over the world.

It’s an army of active citizens who want to report about the world around them — for free. They can cover far more ground than professional journalists and can provide coverage of events as they happen in real time — not afterwards.

As a reporter you can’t be everywhere, but billions of people are everywhere.

That’s the power of citizen journalism.

Citizen journalism won’t replace in-depth reporting anytime soon — if ever. You probably won’t see citizens uncovering government corruption, but citizen journalism offers the ability to cover breaking news better than professional journalists ever could. Faster, better, uncensored and in real-time.

Wherever news breaks, there are always people around, but there aren’t always journalists around. Increasingly, these people are armed with mobile devices with Internet access that can post text, photos and videos from anywhere.

When you think about the power of citizen journalism, and how increasingly news stories will break first by everyday citizens instead of by professional journalists, one has to ask how much resources should news outlets dedicate to covering breaking news? Should professional journalists be belatedly duplicating the work of citizen journalists? Citizens can handle the what, while professional journalists can handle the why.

That’s the power of professional journalism.

Camera phones, smartphones, Web apps like Twitter and other technologies are helping make citizen journalism a reality. It’s just so easy today to report on the world around us, many people are asking, why not?

Why not snap a few photos with a cell phone and send them in to Twitpic? Why not send off 140-character bursts to Twitter and other micro-blogging services? Why not make a short blog post to WordPress or TypePad via their free mobile versions? Why not record real-time video and broadcast it to the world with Qik?

And this is just the beginning. A year from now more people will have more capable mobile devices, existing services like Twitter will be more robust with more users and many new Web apps will pop up. Imagine five years from now. 10 years from now?

I’m excited, and we are just in the nascent stages of citizen journalism. Combine citizen journalism with beat blogging, and I think we have a path forward that will allow news organizations to cover a lot more ground with a lot fewer resources. Better coverage with less. I like the sound of that.

Read the rest of the article at The Journalism Iconoclast.

Notes from the TOC conference

January 3, 2016February 14, 2009 by Publetariat

I just returned late Thursday night from the O’Reilly Media Tools of Change conference in New York City. This was my third year at the conference. The first year I attended as a reporter for VentureBeat, and then these past two times as a speaker. For the benefit of those of you who didn’t attend, I’ll share some of my personal highlights, in no particular order:

Twitter Forever Changes the Conference Experience – Thanks to Twitter, conferences will never be the same. For every session of the three day conference, hundreds of TOC attendees were Twittering real time quotes, analysis and conversation. I found myself monitoring the Twitterstream (check it out here) as I listened to the speakers, and it added another interesting (though distracting!) perspective on the conference.

Twitterers held nothing back. If the speaker started giving a sales pitch, or made questionable statements, the Twitterers were merciless. If the speaker said something interesting (or not), Twitterers would tweet it and then that would cause a cascade of retweets. For three days straight, TOC was in the top five most discussed subjects on Twitter. Thousands, if not millions, of people who weren’t at the conference were getting a taste of the not only what was happening but what people thought about what was happening. Many of the Twitterstream participants weren’t even at the conference.

One of the most profuse and entertaining Twitterers on the TOC Twitterstream – and he wasn’t at the conference – was Mike Cane (@mikecane for you Twitterers), a self-described "ebook militant" and writer who lives near Staten Island. Twitterers from around the world tweeted their friends at the conference and had them convey questions to the presenters. At one great panel on social media in publishing, moderated by Ron Hogan (@ronhogan for you Twitterers) of MediaBistro/GalleyCat, Ron actually introduced his panelists by their Twitter handles.

Is Twitter going to become a secondary form of identity? I think yes. I think it’ll also forever change the dynamic between conference presenters, attendees and wannabee attendees. At some points, the Twitter echo-chamber reached heretofore unknown limits of, well, echo-chamberness. During the Blogging and Social Media Workshop led by social media guru Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) who told attendees he considers Twitter the new phone, session attendee Chad Capellman (@chadrem) uploaded a YouTube video of Chris speaking. When Chad told Chris about it, Chris logged on to YouTube and the audience watched Chris watch a big screen projection of the Chris video taken minutes earlier, and then Chad or some other attendee joked they could take and upload a new video of this special moment as Chris watched a video of himself that we could all then watch.

Several times during his three hour workshop, Chris checked the Twitterstream to gauge audience impressions of his live performance. At one point after he walked on stage drinking from what looked like a beer bottle, Susan Danzinger (@susandanziger) of DailyLit tweeted she thought Chris was drinking a beer onstage, then yours truly (@markcoker) retweeted it because I was wondering the same, then Kat Meyer (@katmeyer) set the record straight, as did Chris when he saw the tweetstream on the big stage monitor. Twittering while watching Twitter while listening to and participating in a conference while the presenter talks about Twitter and is the subject of a Twitterstream while he himself Twitters makes for a very surreal experience.

Peter Brantley on Literature as a Driver for Services – Peter Brantley directs the Digital Library Federation, and he’s one of my favorite thinkers about the future of the books, and about the sacred place books occupy in culture. In a keynote address, Peter challenged the audience of publishers to consider how moving books from print to digital can change the nature of reading, and how the move to digital can open up new business opportunities for publishers. "What’s published will be less about the book and more about the people who read them," he said. He talked about how books will become networked and empower more participatory methods of reading.

Cory Doctorow Eviscerates DRM – In a keynote, author Cory Doctorow (@coreydoctorow) had the audience in rapt attention as he proceeded to disembowel Amazon and all those who would seek to perpetuate the short-sighted practice of DRM. He challenged publishers to step up to the plate and demand Amazon accept their ebook files DRM-free. If anyone knows where I can find a transcript of his talk, let me know so I can link to it here.

Chris Baty of Nanowrimo Says Authorship has Bright Future – One of my favorite presentations came from Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month, which just completed its tenth year of operation. Although Steve Jobs says people don’t read books anymore, Chris made clear that you can’t stop writers from writing, and for this reason alone books face a bright future because the process of writing helps writers appreciate books. "Novels are not written by novelists," he said, "novels are written by everyday people who give themselves permission to write novels."

At least one Nanowrimo participant has landed on the New York Times Bestseller lists, and several have earned book deals. The international Nanowrimo challenge has grown from only 21 participants in its first year, 1998, to 119,000 participants in 2008. Chris spoke at length about how the success of Nanowrimo has been driven by the powerful community that develops between writers as they share the deeply emotional experience of "meeting the book inside them."

The Rise of Ebooks – Ebooks were a big theme of the conference. The first year of the conference in 2007, there were maybe one or two ebook-themed sessions. Last year there were maybe three or four. This year, ebooks reigned supreme with at least ten sessions squarely focused on ebooks and with most of the other sessions touching on related themes. I moderated the "Rise of Ebooks" session. I admit, I’m biased, because I think my panelists (Joe Wikert of O’Reilly Media; indie author advocate and Publetariat founder April Hamilton; David Rothman of Teleread; and Russ Wilcox of E-Ink) did a kick *ss job of surfacing and debating some of the most interesting trends facing ebooks today. We covered a lot of ground in just 45 minutes, including:

What’s driving the rapid sales growth of ebooks? (Answers: better screen display technology; availability of more titles; Oprah; lower prices; e-reading becoming as, or more, pleasurable than print; DRM starting to slip away)
How long until ebooks go mainstream? (Russ predicted 2-3 percent of American households will own a dedicated e-reading device in the next 18 months [this is huge, and even if he’s off by half, it’s still huge], and most of the panelists agreed the ebook market will be dramatically larger in the next couple years.
Screen technologies, present and future (screens will get faster, cheaper, better color, different sizes)
Print vs. ebook, complementary or competitive? (most concluded they’re complementary, though I don’t think we’ll know if they’re a net positive or net negative for a few years – I suspect the latter)
Supply chain implications for ebook intermediaries (new supply chain models forming, may not look exactly like print model; publishers and authors likely to get closer to consumers)
Rich media ebooks, integrating video, audio, sensory feedback such as vibrations (lots of interesting stuff happening; a worthwhile opportunity to leverage traditional "book" content to offer readers a more engaging experience)

Artist Nina Paley Argues, "Give Away the Content, Sell the Containers." – Artist Nina Paley closed out the conference with a thought provoking talk in which she argued that artists and writers should give their content away for free but sell the packages that add value to their content. For example, she argued, water is free from the tap or filter, yet people will pay for water in a bottle for the benefit of the packaging, the brand, and the perceived benefits of that bottle or brand. Customers will pay for free content that is packaged in such as way that it adds value to the consumption of the content.

She showed a trailer for her new animated feature film, "Sita Sings the Blues," which she plans to make available online for free. She plans to make money (and pay off the debts incurred to make the movie) by selling the film to theaters, and by allowing publishers to publish coffee table books of the movie and its art. She also plans to sell value-added packaged versions of the movie, such as the limited edition DVDs she sold at the conference (Corey Doctorow was the first buyer).

Amazon Announces the Kindle 2 – Amazon tried to steal some of the thunder of the conference by choosing to announce the Kindle 2 a few blocks away on the first day of the conference. Amazon, however, was conspicuously absent from the conference. While attendees generally praised the new device for it’s faster screen refreshes (enabled by new E-Ink technology) and improved user interface design, as mentioned above in Cory Doctorow’s keynote and repeated by other keynoters, presenters and conference-goers,

Amazon was ridiculed throughout the conference for its adherence to DRM on the Kindle. Download O’Reilly’s Free "Best of TOC" Ebook – There was a ton more of interesting opinions and news from the conference, and I couldn’t possibly capture it all here. O’Reilly put together a good ebook (it’s free) that captures the best of the show (its only big omission is it doesn’t mention the Rise of Ebooks panel!) you can download it as long as you don’t mind jumping through all the convoluted hoops necessary to register for, and "purchase" the free ebook. Check it out here: https://epoch.oreilly.com/shop/cart.orm?prod=9780596802110.EBOOK Watch TOC Videos – O’Reilly has created an online archieve of some of the videos from TOC 2009 and prior years you can access here.

An Interesting Viewpoint on Indies

January 3, 2016February 12, 2009 by Publetariat

I’d like to share this from Independent Publisher Online Magazine:
[http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1276]

The Good, The Bad & The Simply Ridiculous
Why Independent Publishers Can Rule the World
by Nina L. Diamond

For the last two decades, we’ve all seen that neither the major publishing houses’ crazy business model nor the variety of business models used by independent publishers have worked. Some have been worse (major houses) than others (independents).

As our current unfavorable financial follies progress worldwide, it’s clear that every publishing entity will have to change how it does business. Some will change for the better. Others will simply change without the concept of better entering the picture.

My money (what little we starving writers and authors have these days) is on independents changing for the better and the major houses finding ways to stay afloat while continuing the model that has been so destructive to books and authors.

This brings us to some news – the good, the bad, and the simply ridiculous:

The Good
Independent publishers are in the same position that cable TV networks were back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

The three broadcast TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) short-sightedly and unwisely underestimated cable’s potential. Well, we see where that got the three smug behemoths: focused solely on money, they’ve lost their market dominance, scores of viewers, and most of their creative credibility.

Their news operations can barely keep up with cable’s quality, and the networks’ creative programming has been reduced to a handful of quality shows amidst a line-up of mind-numbingly stupid so-called “reality” shows, while the cable networks have grown in number and in high-quality, critically acclaimed programs loved by audiences.

The cable companies, those independent visionaries once dismissed as poor step-children by the broadcast industry and the print media, have shown that quality rises to the top.

Today, independent publishers can follow the cable network model, and rise to the top of the publishing industry.

Did putting money first and quality a very distant second spell financial success for the three broadcast networks?

Of course not.

And it hasn’t spelled success for the major publishing houses, either.

And, as you’ve noticed, it certainly hasn’t worked out very well for the real estate, banking, and investment industries.

It never does, when you don’t care what you sell as long as you’re selling something. That always leads to selling nothing.

Independent publishers far outnumber the major houses, and can survive the storm because the independents have a tradition of focusing on quality, and of respecting authors and their books.

They can come out on top because they don’t have the burden of a mandate to sell crap in order to funnel millions of dollars into corporate conglomerate leaders’ salaries, bonuses, and other payments, and to cut back on staff and titles when they can’t sell enough of said crap in order to keep stuffing those dollars into corporate honchos’ pockets.

They can come out on top because they have the flexibility that the major houses lack.

They can turn on a dime. And get by on one, too, for a while if they have to.

Recently, I had a conversation with Lynne Rabinoff, a literary agent who represents an author I’ve been working with. She represents high profile and midlist authors, and, until now, like most agents, has pitched her authors primarily to the major houses.

Given the current publishing climate, she’s now routinely including independent publishers in her list when she pitches an author’s book.

Other agents, she says, are doing the same.

Her advice to the major houses?

“Put more emphasis on what a book has to say rather than on a glitzy platform.”

That will force them “to pay more attention to a book and to reign in the big advances that just end up hurting everyone.”

Her advice to authors?

“Think twice about writing a book. You need to know that what you’re saying is important. Not everyone can or should write a book.”

Often, she says, the material is better suited for a magazine article, if it’s even suited for publication at all.

But, alas, the lure of fame and fortune – that, of course, doesn’t come to 99.9% of authors – leads so many people to want to have a book published, often when it’s not warranted. And that does nothing but hurt the industry.

So, yes, there is good news to come from today’s publishing predicament. At least for independent publishers and their authors.

Independents, with the quality and creativity they offer, are in a position to take over the industry. And agents who once shied away from independents solely because they couldn’t fork over big advances, are now turning to them. That helps authors, keeping them from being under-represented, or not represented at all, as they deal with independent publishers.

The Bad
Economic recovery is going to take a while. This isn’t the sniffles, it’s a serious illness with a long treatment plan. The patients, however, will steadily improve. If they take good care of themselves and stop doing self-destructive things.

The Simply Ridiculous
The list of absurdities in the publishing industry could wrap around the world twice, so I’ll just share one with you that’s emblematic of what’s been wrong for so long:

An author I spoke to has been having a hard time getting a novel published.

What’s so ridiculous about that?

The author has had about 20 fiction bestsellers that have been loved by critics and readers, and that have made a tidy fortune for the major houses that have published them.

So, why the trouble getting the next one published?

The major houses would prefer to publish only the author’s non-fiction, which is very good and has done okay, but nowhere near as well as the bestselling novels. Novels that readers have made very clear they want more of.

See, I told you it was ridiculous.

Independent publishers will lead the book world if they can focus on the good, ride out the bad, and learn from the ridiculous.

* * * * *

Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.

Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.

#TOC Trip Report, Part I

January 3, 2016February 11, 2009 by Publetariat

So far, in the various sessions here at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, two messages about publishing in the digital age are coming through loud and clear. The first is that publishers need to reconsider exactly what it is they’re selling, the second is that going forward, the most successful books will be as much about community as about content. While these concepts are new and difficult for large, mainstream publishers, indie authors and small imprints have embraced them from the start without even realizing we were doing something revolutionary. It seems big publishers now have a thing or two to learn from us.

In the first two keynote speeches of the morning, Bob Stein of the Institute for the Future of the Book and Peter Brantley of the Digital Library Federation gave complementary talks about the very nature of that thing we call “book” and commonly think of as pages bound between covers. The upshot was that this is far too narrow a definition in today’s world, to say nothing of the future. Audiobooks and ebooks have been around for some time, and they’ve stretched the definition to some degree.

However, the digital age has ushered in entirely unexpected new forms of media which are book-like, but are not books in the traditional sense. For example, blogs, wikis, online comment forms, Japanese novels being composed and distributed entirely on cell phones, in-progress manuscripts being workshopped online, and even Twitter messages are all forms of written communication, and they blur the line between what is book and what is not. They also blur the line between who is considered a “legitimate” author and who is not. More importantly, they are all collaborative and social in nature.

Today, media consumers expect a conversation, not a one-way infodump. Mr. Stein remarked on the desire of today’s media consumer to be involved in the creative process, and went so far as to say that when players log on to World of Warcraft, they’re essentially paying to be involved in a collaborative process of creating a narrative.

In his session on Extending the Publishing Ecosystem, Dan Gillmor of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship emphasized the need to build an online community around your content. Laurel Touby of Mediabistro gave a talk on Bringing Sexy Back to the Book Party, and guess what? It was all about online book launch parties and leveraging social media such as Facebook and Twitter to promote those parties. The panel presenting a session entitled Smart Women Read Ebooks hammered away on the necessity of engaging with your readers to learn their wants and needs. The Long Tail Needs Community was another very popular session here.

In all these sessions, mainstream publishing attendees furiously scribbled notes, leaving me with the impression that a lot of this stuff is entirely new to them.

The closing keynotes by Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, Sara Lloyd of Pan Macmillan, Jason Fried of 37 Signals and Jason Epstein of On Demand Books (the company behind the Espresso Book Machine) again underscored the same two messages conference attendees had been hearing all day: if you want to survive, you must expand your definition of the book and focus on building communities around your content.

These two directives are incredibly challenging for big, mainstream publishers. Rethinking the definition of the book demands that they rethink virtually everything about their way of doing business. Either that, or that they create entirely new, ancillary businesses to handle non-traditional forms of bookish content. The possibility of allowing consumers to play a significant role in the creation of mainstream-published content seems like a minefield of legal issues and rights management on the face of it. For big publishers, fully investing in ebook production and distribution begins with six months to a year of strategizing, budgeting, forecasting and running ideas up the chain of command. Building communities for the primary purpose of promoting content is a mighty tall order as well once you realize how jaded and marketing-averse today’s average web surfer tends to be.

For savvy indies, on the other hand, doing these things has become second nature, born of necessity. We leverage the internet and social media for all they’re worth because it’s the most cost-effective way to reach a global audience. We throw virtual (online) book launch parties because we don’t typically have the resources to throw traditional book parties nor the media connections to widely publicize them, and because we realize virtual book parties can offer numerous advantages over the traditional type: wider reach, longer duration, and the ability to offer attendees a fully interactive experience in a controlled way, for example. We blog and engage with blog commentators because we are passionate about what we’re doing and what we’re trying to achieve. We’re quick to adopt new forms of media such as podcasts, ebooks and wikis because we want to reach the widest possible audience, via every device possible, and on the audience’s own terms.

Even if we don’t think we know much about “viral marketing”, the fact is that we’ve been engaged in one long viral marketing campaign from the time we began our journey down the road of indie publishing. Newly-minted indie authors and small presses not already engaged in these activities can easily undertake them, because they’re independent and nimble. Being small-time operators enables indies to quickly change gears as needed, and our relative ‘outsider’ status confers a degree of street cred not accessible to faceless, corporate publishers. We can afford to take risks on new ideas and technologies because we don’t answer to shareholders, thousands of employees or even an industry. If we decide to release our work in ebook form, we can do it the same day we make the decision via Smashwords or Amazon DTP—and we can do it for free.

We can relate to the community of media consumers in a genuine and meaningful way because we are still very much a part of that community; to big publishers, media consumers are the “them” in an “us and them” equation. Moreover, however hard they try big publishers will have a hard time concealing the fact that their community-building initiatives are fundamentally about selling more books, whereas ours are fundamentally about connecting with people who are interested in what we’re doing. For us, increased book sales are a nice, but entirely optional, byproduct of the activity.

Congratulations, savvy indies. You’re already doing the right things and are ideally positioned to meet the current challenges of multi-format publishing and building readership through building community. Where big publishers see little but expense, risk, a nightmare of change management and major, possibly painful shifts in their corporate cultures, we can look forward to another few years of business as usual.

April L. Hamilton is an indie author, blogger, Technorati blog critic and the founder of Publetariat.com. She is also the author of The IndieAuthor Guide.

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