Self-publishing

Guest Blogger: Mary DeMuth I never thought I’d self publish anything. Truly. I’m a traditionally published girl with eleven books under my author belt. I love my publishers, love what they’ve done. But there came a time when one of my book ideas didn’t fit within their needs. The kernel of the idea to e-publish…

This has to be the most common question I get these days, from all kinds of writers including my clients. To use the words of one of my authors: Am I hurting my traditional career by self-pubbing? My pressing goal is to become a best-selling, traditionally published author. First of all, if you’re agented, the…

No matter what I blog about lately—no matter where we go in the blogosphere as a matter of fact—somebody always turns it into a conversation about two things: (1) Publishing is dead or at least in its final death throes; and (2) Everyone should pursue self-publishing and if you don’t, you’re an idiot with your head…

It seems like every week there’s a new story of an author having terrific success with self-publishing. (Two examples from just this week: Amanda Hocking and Alisa Valdes.) I’ve had quite of few readers comment that they’ve gone the self-pub route, and many authors who’ve been published traditionally now have out-of-print books they’re selling via…

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about self-publishing. My thoughts have been evolving – things are changing fast and sometimes our thinking has to change, too. Seems like these days, lots of people are into D-I-Y, and that includes the book world. My latest (but still subject to change) opinion is this: Self…

I recently received an email from a guy who had self-published a book. He’d paid to print 500 hardcover copies, and was pursuing local and national bookstore chains and distributors. But he’d hit a brick wall, finding that most buyers and distributors were not interested in talking to him. He was flummoxed; he needed to…

Ever since last month when the publishing world erupted in a brouhaha about Harlequin and Thomas Nelson entering the business of self-publishing, I’ve been watching the reports, reading the blogs and mulling this over. It took me awhile to identify what was really bothering me about all of this. But I finally figured it out.…

This week another major publisher, Harlequin, announced their entry into the self-publishing business. The blogs have lit up over it and there’s a lot of interesting reading out there. I think Victoria Strauss gave a great overview on the Writer Beware blog (here.) I have to admit that the idea of all these major publishers…

Seems I opened up a can o’ worms or two with my post yesterday. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll do my best to clear up a couple of things. There were some questions about whether self-publishing would ever lose its stigma. Truthfully, I don’t think the stigma will fade until most self…