
A bedtime story (about the publishing industry) - steveklabnik
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/12/bedtime-story.html
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patio11
This blog, which I've devoured for months, is the best writing about online
business I have read this year. Seriously. Listen to the $2.99 serialized
serial killer man: he knows his stuff.

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euroclydon
Is there any way to get a rss feed with his entire archive?

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bearwithclaws
Get his book here (PDF, free):
<http://www.jakonrath.com/TheNewbiesGuideToPublishingBook.pdf>

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kmfrk
That's amazing (the WordArt and typography not so much). I've always held the
belief that most blogs should ask themselves if their site could ever be
published in book format. If it can, it should, and if it can't, it's worth
reconsidering whether you should keep writing it.

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runevault
To me the most interesting part is how people who haven't traditionally
published are supposedly starting to see solid sales numbers for self-pubbed
ebooks. He's somewhat of an outlier but not as much as many expected him to be
when he first started really preaching the ebook self published religion.

Guess I should start polishing my novel and see what I want to do with it ;)

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Umalu
Two things are interesting in this story. One is that this guy is doing
extraordinarily well, much better than the vast majority of traditionally
published writers. He is, indeed, an outlier. The other interesting thing
about this is how much more money this outlier can make by self-publishing. If
that is true for other outliers, that should strike fear in the hearts of
traditional publishers, who make most of their money from these outliers.

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kiba
An outlier that wrote like...10 books.

How hard is it to write 10 books and not be successful?

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electromagnetic
I suppose it's hard, but by the amount of books that use derivative themes
from other books it's hard to imagine. 4 or 5 sure, but 10 seems a little
ridiculous. He says he got 500 rejections, which seems a little low for 10
books. That's 50 rejections per book, which seems absurdly low given the
number of publishers and the vast number of agents.

I mean as a last ditch when you've got 50 rejections you might as well spend a
weekend and write an email or letter to every agent in the AAR(US) and AAA(UK)
directories to begin with. That'll land you a 100+ rejections if you only do
the AAR.

I know a lot of authors have problems doing other things than writing, but if
you can't sell yourself then why do you expect others to? Obviously this guy
didn't figure out how to sell himself until _way_ late into the game.

Did he not try short stories or even getting a side job in a newspaper in that
decade that could have at least lent him credibility as having publishable
talent?

Honestly, FTA, it looks like he has a problem dealing with people. He rejected
his publishers suggestions and got denied because of it - _after_ he had his
foot through the door. If the person paying my bills says "agree or you're
fired and may never work again" I'll say sure, whatever, fuck it pay my god
damn bills and I'll sell my next book elsewhere.

I'm wondering why he changed his name multiple times, did he breach multi-book
contracts?

I'm sorry, but this sounds an awful lot like the music artists who said "fuck
you man, that's not how we roll" to their label and got black listed for a
decade because they forgot they had a 5 disc deal and broke contract.

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steveklabnik
Regardless, he's laughing his $22,000/month straight to the bank, so it sounds
like "fuck you man, that's not how we roll" is working out, eh?

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electromagnetic
10+ years later... If he'd 'rolled' and is as talented as he obviously is, he
could have been sitting where he is now years ago.

Look at J.K. Rowling, she got a 1,000 book release and told "get a day job".
She rolled when the US wanted to make changes, even to the name or face
rejection. Now she's virtually a billionaire. I'm not saying he'd be a
billionaire, but he could have been making more money than he is now.

Literary careers either seem to fizzle out or just keep growing. Look at John
Scalzi, it took years before his literary career beat his day job, but it kept
growing. The same can be said for dozens of sci-fi and fantasy writers,
including many of the greats.

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civilian
I'm excited for a time when it's mainstream to use self-published college
textbooks too.

A neighbor of mine is involved in the publishing industry... while I was
walking her dog I tried to get an explanation for for why textbooks are so
expensive and why they publish new versions every few years. The reason I got
was "we put a lot of work into making the books, so the publishing companies
need to get money somehow".

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jdp23
A great story -- with a happy ending!

Excellent points about the business model advantages to self-publishing. Of
course there are plenty of challenges as well, and relatively few authors
support themselves that way. Then again the same's true with the traditional
route.

