This post, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: Guest Post by David Gaughran, makes the valid point (emphasis mine):

“Of the many memes being parroted by writers, one of the most destructive is “Most self-pubbed ebooks don’t sell.”

When you are arguing a point involving a new technology, such as ebooks, it is essential to make sure your argument also encompasses the older technology. The fact is, most legacy-pubbed books don’t sell.“

Too true.

Read the entire post. David Gaughran says, “I can’t afford to take a publishing deal.”

Again, too true.

That’s the case for many — I’d say MOST authors.

I’ve been the traditional publishing route many times. I’ve had two New York agents. New authors tend to think that having an agent and a publishing contract from a publisher solves problems.

Here’s the truth — it increases your problems, because more people are involved, and you have little control over what they do.

Your agent has other clients. Your editor has other books. Neither your agent nor your editor cares about you and your career as much as you do. They’ll give you advice, and taking bad advice can stymie you for years. Only you know what’s best for you.

If you’re a new author, you’ll think that everyone knows more than you. A trip down the traditional publishing path will soon disabuse you of that idea, I promise you. To repeat, only you know what’s best for you.

I’ve been writing for over 30 years. There’s never been a better time to write your own books and sell them — there have never been more opportunities.

If you want to go the traditional publishing route, and think that this is the short path to bestsellerdom, remember: as Joe Konrath says “most legacy-pubbed books don’t sell”.

There are many reasons for that. Mostly, they’re out of authors’ control.

Self-publishing gives YOU control. Write a good book, whack it up on Amazon. Or, go the trad publishing route… and give up control. Your choice.

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I’ve no idea what’s happening with Dorchester, but the author below is pretty upset. As she should be.

Is Dorchester refusing to revert rights? Selling books they have no rights to? Selling ebooks without the rights, and without a contract?

This post Guess What Dorchester? “It’s On” | StacyDittrich.com says:

“If your rights have reverted, Dorchester is still able to sell these books (REALLY? FIND ME THE LAW ON THAT ONE….). A caveat of our reversion notice allows for sales of all pre-existing stock (I GUESS ITS NOT AN ISSUE SINCE YOU OBVIOUSLY  DON’T HAVE A CLUE WHERE THE PRE-EXISTING STOCK IS. BUT PLEASE, WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR EXPLANATION ON HOW YOU ARE STILL OFFERING E-BOOKS THAT YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHTS TO)”

I’ve no idea what the background is on this dispute.

Sadly, my guess is that it’s a foretaste of what’s to come in traditional publishing.

As Stacy Dittrich is doing: “Funny, I decided to follow J.A. Konrath’s lead and self-publish one of the books in my series that Dorchester didn’t get its dirty hands on. And, guess what? I had more downloads in less than 1 day than Dorchester “claimed” I had in 2 YEARS” — you may want to go the self-publishing route too.

You’ll save yourself a lot of aggravation.

Love it or ignore it, the launch of the iPad is opening up a new era of publishing.

When Theodore Gray, author of “The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe,” heard about the iPad, he started work on an iPad version of his book, which was published in 2009. He also launched a new interactive publishing house, Touch Press.

In the article, “Future of publishing: Reinventing the concept of the book”, he says about Touch Press:

There are many companies that offer the service of taking thousands of back-list titles and putting them on a Kindle. But we’re really reconceptualizing books — new photography, new software development. Reimagining books in a super-interactive form. We look for books that would work well with interactives. For instance, a book about the solar system — you need to be able to look at the planets and turn them around.

Read the article, it’s fascinating.

In April, Touch Press is bringing out T.S. Elliot’s poem, “The Wasteland”, as an app.

Can your ebook function as an app?

In the light of what Touch Press is doing (no doubt other publishers will follow), it’s worth thinking about how you could use this kind of technology in writing your books.

Could one of your ebooks work as an app?

I get really, really tired of writing about writing scams — I used to cover them extensively on my writing blog, but there are so many I can’t keep track. (Writer Beware does a good job of alerting writers to scammers.)

Publishers pay YOU, you don’t pay them

This should go without saying, but if you’re a new writer, remember: THEY PAY YOU — you don’t PAY anyone to publish your work.

One particular scammer has turned into an industry on his own. Making Light: Robert Fletcher, Literary Scammer, Part II says about this devil:

“One of the chief points against Fletcher-the-Agent (New York Literary Agency, Writer’s Literary Agency, Children’s Literary Agency, Poets Literary Agency, etc. etc.) was that he demonstrably couldn’t sell books to publishers. But if he owned a publisher….

The difference between Strategic Book Publishing and Eloquent Books is this: Strategic Book Publishing pretends to be a ‘traditional’ publisher—no fees to the author—provided the author agrees to buy five copies per week at full retail price. Eloquent Books, on the other hand, pretends to be a ‘joint venture’ publisher, where the author and the publisher each put up half of the cost. But since Eloquent Books authors typically send Fletcher (under one or another of his names) a thousand bucks plus in advance, it’s clear that they’re paying the whole freight plus a nice profit for Fletcher.”

He’s one among many scammers. You can avoid them all, if you remember this one, very simple point: publishers pay you. You don’t pay them. Nor do you pay agents.

There’s BIG money in ebooks – just read how much money you can make by writing and selling ebooks.

However, the ebooks which sell best are non-fiction, because people visit the online world for information.

That said, I know several writers who are blogging their fiction, and others who serialize their fiction via email. Virtual Tales sends 1500-word installments of novels to email subscribers.

And they’re looking for writers.

Virtual Tales – Becoming an
Author for Virtual Tales reports:

“We are currently looking for complete novels or novellas of at least 20,000 words to sell through the Virtual Tales website and other partner sites in eSerial, eBook and print formats. We will also consider the following:

Short story collections with a strong central theme
Reprints of previously published works, including previously published print versions (or those currently published print editions outside of North America), so long as the author owns the electronic rights to the story and North American print rights
Previously published eSerials (through defunct sites such as KeepItComing.net)”

So if you’re writing a novel, serialize it. You can’t lose. It avoids the slush pile. If the novel becomes popular, no doubt a traditional publisher will pay you for the print version.

Great idea… wish I had time to write a novel this year.

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