Posted on 12/29/2010 8:11:47 AM PST by abb
Writers are bypassing the traditional route to bookstore shelves and self-publishing their works online. By selling directly to readers, authors get a larger slice of the sale price.
Joe Konrath can't wait for his books to go out of print.
When that happens, the 40-year-old crime novelist plans to reclaim the copyrights from his publisher, Hyperion Books, and self-publish them on Amazon.com, Apple Inc.'s iBooks and other online outlets. That way he'll be able to collect 70% of the sale price, compared with the 6% to 18% he receives from Hyperion.
As for future novels, Konrath plans to self-publish all of them in digital form without having to leave his house in Schaumburg, Ill.
"I doubt I'll ever have another traditional print deal," said the author of "Whiskey Sour," "Bloody Mary" and other titles. "I can earn more money on my own."
For more than a century, writers have made the fabled pilgrimage to New York, offering their stories to publishing houses and dreaming of bound editions on bookstore shelves. Publishers had the power of the purse and the press. They doled out advances to writers they deemed worthy and paid the cost of printing, binding and delivering books to bookstores. In the world of print, few authors could afford to self-publish.
The Internet has changed all that, allowing writers to sell their works directly to readers, bypassing agents and publishers who once were the gatekeepers.
It's difficult to gauge just how many authors are dumping their publishing houses to self-publish online, though for now, the overall share remains small. But hardly a month goes by without a well-known writer taking the leap or declaring an intention to do so.
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Baen also has almost 100 books for free on it’s website under the “Free Library” link at the bottom of the page. You can download them to Kindle or to your computer and read the first book or two in a seris. That’s where I found Drake, Weber, et al... Love them all.
His words are further proof that we need to dump the gatekeepers.
For instance, I am reading a lot of self published stuff on the Kindle by a guy who goes by Vaughn Heppner. He has a series of books about what the world could have been like pre Genesis Flood. Good reads.
A major publishing house would never let that story see the light of day. Now he could use the help of a good editor at times, but over all they are good stories at a cheap price.
Excellent news for writers. It is for me anyway. The economy is so lousy what publisher wants to take the chance on new authors? They want to stick with their proven writers. How many really good stories never make it to print because of economy? It’s good there is an evolving alternate source. Another outlet for the unpublished is great.
As a new owner of an 32 GB 4G iPod touch, I can use Amazon's Kindle app or Barnes & Noble's Nook app and be able to read a huge selection of new books on my device. This right there is threatening to become a huge game-changer in the publishing world.
As has the game changed in the ‘news’ world. I’ve not read any complete books on the web - I can’t keep up with the dead-tree “to read” shelf of books in my bookcase.
I figure I’m about 200 books behind...
I record news and documentary shows and play them back on the PC using the free VLC media player. It can speed up the video while maintaining the original pitch of the audio....I can get through a 1hr news program or documentary in half the time :-)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
The media player that fulfills all your needs. It handles DVDs, (S)VCDs, Audio CDs, web streams, TV cards and much more. With VLC, there is no need to continually update many different codec packs. VLC comes with nearly every codec built in! And whats more, VLC can play back your files, even if the media is damaged! Missing or broken pieces wont stop VLC. All the video and audio information that remains can be played.
What an interesting site. Thanks for the link.
ping
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