“Freedom of the press is only available to those who own one.”
They had an interesting segment on self-publishing as the lead story on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday, calling it “The Rise of Self-Publishing.”
Unfortunately they only really covered fiction authors and titles, but I think that first person interviewed had it right when he said your chances of hitting it really big as a self-published author are similar to your chances of becoming the president of the United States.
They figure last year over 200,000 books were self-published, and very few sold more than a couple hundred copies, but at least this has become an option when traditional publishers aren’t interested. At least there is a better chance at freedom of the press than there used to be, when traditional publishers held all the cards!
I am of the opinion that most traditional publishing is a rip off of the artist. Sure they pay for the editing, interior design, and sometimes some publicity, but I contract out these services upfront and then receive royalties of up to 70% per book on my POD and e-books, instead of the 10 or 15% paid by traditional publishers.
We all know that word-of-mouth and the blogosphere is how sales happen today. Most do not know that many of our favorite authors historically, writers like Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Upton Sinclair, Walt Whitman, and hundreds more self-published first to get their book out there so they could be “discovered” by those with power and money.
Here’s how I go from book idea to published work:
How to BELIEVE in yourself as a writer 