A ton of stuff happened this week in publishing. Best summary was at Digital Bookworld. News on B&N, Borders, Amazon tablet, the spam mess at Amazon, and so on.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2011/dbw-weekly-roundup-62311/
Dean’s Short Bio
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.
Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He is now an executive editor for Fiction River.
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WMG Publishing Inc. is now my major publisher of all my coming novels, collections, and short stories.
Fiction River Volume #1 Is Available!
Fiction River, an original fiction anthology magazine edited by me and Kristine Kathryn Rusch is available for subscriptions. Unnatural Worlds, the first volume, shiped on April 23rd.
$6.99 electronic and $15.99 trade paper editions of Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds are available at your favorite bookseller..
Or subscribe to future issues now.
Just Passing Through no like hearing suggestion of paying $50, 20 or 10 to publish on Kindle as I don’t think it would solve the problem as spammers already have the money to spend on that if they so choose (like those infomercials that promise a slim stomach in 6 weeks by filling every orifice with their pills. They claim something that is not true and then when fined simply pay the fine and keep on keepin’ on). Instead it would stop those authors just starting out that that don’t have the money to spend for each title with this new technology.
No. Just Passing Through does not like the sound of that whatsoever. (I see that someone left a comment on the original story sighting that they saw nothing wrong with charging $50, as if someone took the time to write a book they should not mind to spend that kind of money to get it published. To be honest, the first thing that pops in my mind when I hear that, besides the term Vanity Publishing, is class-ism. Sure, the house wife whose husband is a middle manager and who summer’s at the house on the golf course will have no problem coming up with the saw buck to publish her magnum opus, but the working mother of three (perhaps the 9th next million seller) won’t, not because she doesn’t believe in her book as much as the housewife does, but because $50 to the working class is food on the table and heat in the winter.)
I hope, yes, will use the term hope here, that Amazon does not do something like what is being suggested. I really hope they don’t.
I do think that Amazon should have some minimal fee to post a book to DTP. As a small press this will impact my bottom line but I think the trade off to keep the spammer out will be worth the small cost.
Regarding Kindle spam, I’ve noted this elsewhere, but the best solution for readers is to read the free sample. Right now I think too many Kindle owners shop almost exclusively on price unless they know the author by name. A ninety-nine cent ebook isn’t a bargain if it’s just cribbed junk from wikipedia or more likely incoherent auto-pasted monkey typing. That of course is nothing new even in the dead tree books, some of which notoriously featured a whole page with a single word on it.
I’ve been keeping up with the articles that have seemed to spin off of the original articles in regards to the spam on the Kindle and I have to say that it amazes me that there are people out there that don’t seem to bat an eye when the topic of charging to publish on the Kindle comes up. http://www.pcworld.com/article/230690/what_amazon_must_do_to_save_kindle_direct_publishing.html#tk.mod_rel
Really. Really. Really. The Kindle has to be saved from spammers? We should pay to be published on the Kindle? The spammers are destroying the ebook market? Seems a bit like the chicken and the sky is falling. I mean, it seems that since the beginning of the internet there have been spammers and even after the rapture there will still be spammers but haven’t we figured out ways to get by it (seems that you can still get free email out there and email is one of the worst for spammers- of course it could have been replaced with spam on the cell phone). By charging to be on the Kindle it’s not punishing the spammers it’s publishing the authors.
I was going to say that I was sorry for continuing to harp on this subject, but I’m not! After finding Sensei Smith’s blog and his thoughts on ebooks and what they mean to new authors I thought there would be an outpouring of rumbling on even the mention of charging to be published. It looks like I was wrong.
Just Passing Through, won’t happen, that’s why no one is talking about it. It’s a wacky idea by some people out there and would be suicide by Kindle and they are not that stupid.
So forget it. They will solve the spam problem another way.
Was waiting for the Sensei to speak (but knew you were in mourning for your friend so didn’t want to bother you). Thank you for your wisdom. Forgetting it in 3….2……1…