Jan 9, 2012

The Glory of Options in Publishing

With the publishing industry in a state of flux and the stigma lifting from self-publishing, there is no longer one right path to publication.

JA Konrath and Amanda Hocking began on their own and ended up with lucrative publishing contracts.

Traditionally published midlist authors like Bob Mayer have decided to leave their publishers and go off on their own.

Epublishing has changed the game. It’s the fastest growing market for books. Ereader folks are voracious readers. This is great news. It means the written word won’t die. It’s just changing formats.

These were some of the factors which made me decide to go indie. Science fiction is not a big market. Most of my readers are digitally savvy. So, it made sense to me to get out there and tap into my market myself.

Sure, writing is an art, but it’s also a business and a career. In the end, I want to make money and quit snuffling around for peanut shell crumbs. Going indie is my best shot at achieving that.

Just because that’s what I decided, doesn’t mean it’s the best answer for you. We all need to respect each other’s decisions. No matter how a writer publishes—indie, traditional, or a smaller press—we all work very hard and put a huge amount of effort into what we produce. We all pour our souls into our stories, sentences and words.

It’s wonderful that we now have so many options.






And check out The Missing Link, a novel by Brandon Meyers and Bryan Pedas of A Beer in the Shower. Available at Amazon.




And there have been noises in the blogosphere of this year's AtoZ Challenge. Arlee Bird has a separate site for it this year HERE and several cohosts for the mega event.

Yes, it's a bit of extra blogging work, but it's worth it. I know I met several of you last year during the challenge, and am damn glad of it.

Load up the posts ahead of time, so that you're not blogging and visiting all at once. There's no way to visit everyone. Last year I started in the middle of the list and went as far as I could. I plan on signing up again.

I'd actually like to feature many of you this year, so if you have a book, a short story to promote, blog post send it on over--mpaxauthor[at]gmail[dot]com. Flash fictions, etc.. would also be great. How about your favorite blog post? Maybe could all trade posts and made the load lighter. :) Shrug. Just an idea.

Anyway, hope you all had a great weekend.
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