To Self Publish or Not?
There is a lot of discussion going on over at Bob Bly's blog this week. He laid down the gauntlet to say that e-books and self publishing don't garner the same respect like publishing with a famed house like McGraw-Hill and Harvard Business School Press.
The comments are leaning toward agreeing with Bob with one caveat – it's other writers that seem to be impressed with the big publishing names, but the reader – your intended audience – do they care?
I think not.
A friend of mine, author of Learning for Profit, originally published his work as an e-book and has done very well selling via his website. He recently made the decision to have a print version and after much research, has published his book through Amazon.com's print-on-demand program.
I challenge you to find a quality difference between his print-on-demand version and that of a large publishing house.
The one main difference – it's published. He didn't have to go to the expense of getting an agent, going through the arduous task of finding a publishing house to agree to take on his book and the potential for lots of rejection before he found a place willing to publish his works.
Amazon.com is one of the largest Internet destinations, with tens of millions of customers world-wide. There is no bigger community of book-hungry customers anywhere in the world. The name Amazon.com is immediately recognized for excellent customer service, reliability, and security. Amazon has the ability to proactively put titles in front of the most qualified and receptive potential buyers. Whether it's a top selling book or the most obscure title, we put the right products in front of the right people.
So what do you think? You have knowledge worth sharing with the world – do you wait and hope for a contract with a large publishing house or do you look at other alternatives for printing your book?
General | Deborah Brown | 05 March 2007 |
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By S.M.Mehdi Hassan, March 6, 2007 @ 7:30 am
Deborah Brown, I agree with you hundred percent. I think self-publishing would help any struggling writer truly measure his/her abilities. It would help him to know what other people really thinks about his writing.
By Debbie, April 10, 2007 @ 11:12 am
I think it all comes down to your personality and tolerance for the tasks that are involved with self-publishing. You have to ask yourself if you think you’ll also enjoy the business side of it. Do you mind working with printers and fulfilling orders to Amazon or directly from your website, etc. By the way I recently had a terrible experience with a company called Central Plains Book Manufacturing out of Kansas, so watch out for them!