As the number of major publishing houses seemingly continues to shrink, and with more and more people seeking representation from an evaporating pool of agents, many hopeful authors turn to small (sometimes called “indie”) publishers. These are publishing imprints that don’t require agents to submit manuscripts. They’re often run by a small group, or sometimes even just one person. They
This old chestnut of an argument has recently reared its head again: “Self-published authors aren’t real authors.” (See also: “Self-published books aren’t real books.”) So, of course, let’s go through the debate once more. What this pronouncement almost always boils down to is the idea that, in order for any book or author to be “good,” they must go through–and
I have never, to my knowledge, had any of my books stocked in a Barnes & Noble. Not for lack of trying; I have contacted my local bookstores multiple times in hopes they would at least consider putting one of my books in a “local authors” section. (This is true of local indie stores, too.) I usually get very kind
I was thinking… Well, I was feeling a little bit irritated, really, about the way a few things had turned out. But that’s neither here nor there, except that these musings brought a certain clarity to me about how the publishing industry has shifted the bulk of the work onto authors. These thoughts came about, as many often do, during
As often happens, a question arises on social media (in this case, Twitter) and I spend way too much time answering it via a long thread. So I thought I’d also put it all here in a handy, dandy blog post. Does anyone read blogs anymore? Well, just in case someone does, here’s the setup: I admitted that I once
I recently was made aware of a publishing conversation that occurred on Twitter last month. (I know, I’m so out of the loop.) It was about ableism in publishing and there not being space for neurodivergent (ND) authors. I don’t know if that’s true; I’ve never really thought about it until now, when it was brought to my attention. I
I recently decided to move ahead with self-publishing The Ghosts of Marshley Park. And almost immediately was met by two differing responses online: people cheering me on and people who wished me well in a way that absolutely suggested the passive-aggressive tone of, “You weren’t good enough for ‘real’ publishing, eh?” To be fair, tone is super difficult to discern
I came late to Twitter’s “Harsh Writing Advice” trend, but apparently someone posted that other writers are your competition, and then got slammed, and then deleted the tweet, but of course (because Internet) it’s still around in various formats. People piled on this guy for posting this, and… given that he didn’t really explain his logic (if there was any),
The publishing world is a complicated place. More so now than ever, really. It used to be relatively straightforward: you wrote a book, you submitted it to agents, they said yes or no, and if they said yes, they submitted the book to publishers who would also say yes or no. For some publishers, it was possible to skip the