Piece on self publishing

Anyone read this blog?

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A take on self-publishing.

Thanks for the reference. Always good to read lots of opinions. Someone on this forum was inquiring about Xlibris. This blog might be of interest. The blogger seems to suggest if you're going to self-publish, use Lulu.

The very idea of somebody saying "I don't think you should self publish" is arrogant and absurd. (Not that you don't hear that crap a lot.
"I don't think you should drink, I don't think you should climb mountains, I don't think you should play with yourself"
Who the hell cares?

Apart from that it's the very, very typical picture of somebody who has some vague objection to the idea in the first place because the think somebody might be getting away with something. (In this case a guy who works for a publishing company and is not published himself...Gee, he thinks you should stick to his meal ticket establishment. Go figure)

And completely uneducated and inexperienced about what self-publshing is all about, what it's like, how it works.

A priest telling you why sex is wrong.

Lin, I gather the blog won't be of much interest to you. :-)

I have a hard time imagining that post being of a lot of use to anybody.

Self-publishing is a moving target. That blog addresses only part of it, the publishing of e-books. It ignores POD.

The author's predictions about the future of e-books are no more reliable than anyone else's, because the evolution of technology, which we cannot predict, changes everything.

My prediction is that as generations of readers grow up with e-books, the loyalty to traditional print media publications will fade. We can already see it happening to magazines and newspapers.

The moving target simply means that, whereas the notion of self-publishing is an established concept, the community of publishers and authors hasn't settled on a standard medium for e-books.

The best advice I can offer to those who would self publish, based on no better predictions than any one else's, is this: Don't close any doors, don't lock out any options, don't give out any exclusives. Keep control of your work.

As I read it, he wasn't challenging the idea of ebooks. He was challenging the idea of self published books. He doesn't think they'll get much exposure, as an e or otherwise.

LC wrote:

As I read it, he wasn't challenging the idea of ebooks. He was challenging the idea of self published books.

Within the framework of the e-book paradigm.

LC wrote:

He doesn't think they'll get much exposure, as an e or otherwise.

And he's probably right, given the current way of doing things. But he doesn't seem to have vision beyond the day after tomorrow.

One thing he's right about. If printed books go the way of the wax cylinder recording, he'll still be able to sell things--burgers, fries, cokes.

Wax cylinders -haha, my parents actually have a collection of those, and a gramophone, with a big, honking brass bell. Or whatever that thing is called.

It was called a horn.