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Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river […]
We have indie publishers, self publishers, specialty-press publishers, small-press publishers, and so on and so on. Are there any differences and does anyone care? Well, it seems some people care. Those people with far too much time on their hands, in my opinion. But alas, I have been asked questions about the differences now for […]
This myth in the old days (meaning more than three years ago) used to get knocked out of young writers early on in their careers, so it had little or no impact on writing careers as young writers came into the field and got help along the way from older, more experienced professionals. In fact, […]
As we ramp into 2011, I figured that besides all the goal-setting talk, it might be a good time to give a few warnings as well. And maybe set a clear work goal as well. Electronic publishing is the hot topic and traditional publishing is struggling to change to the new world. Indie publishing is […]
A long time ago, in a magazine I did for fun for writers called The Report, I came up with an idea to try to add numbers and quantify the mysterious process of submissions to traditional markets. For some reason it got the name of “The Race” because it was a race against ourselves as […]
A couple years back in December I did a series of posts here about writers setting goals for the new year. And last year I brought some of the old posts forward. But frighteningly enough, the publishing industry has changed so much and so fast, those posts from just two years ago felt dated. The […]
Self-publishing writers think that big publishing will collapse because the self-published writers now find it easy to put up their own books. That belief is so silly that I wasn’t sure if this should be a Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing chapter or a New World of Publishing post. The belief is certainly a […]
So far, in a number of these chapters in this topic, I’ve talked about the differences with this new world and the old traditional publishing. And then in the last post I talked about just one of the decisions that writers publishing their own books in their own publishing company must face. Pricing decisions, and […]
On a number of different email lists over the last four or five months there have been discussions on ebook pricing. Joe Konrath is a defender of the $2.99 novel price, while traditional publishers are keeping their prices in the $7.99 to $15.99 range depending on how new the book is. And on these lists […]
Very few of these chapters has dealt with the editor and publisher side of publishing. I know that in fiction publishing there are lots of problems with publishers, and right now picking on them just seems to be like kicking dirt onto a person who is struggling to even figure out how to stay alive. […]