Salon continues its ongoing debate on the future of publishing with its latest article, entitled Self Publishing is the Worst, which you can read here. This follows a piece arguing that, well, Indie publishing is really horrible, which followed a piece arguing that Indie published books literally SELL THEMSELVES!
The author of the most recent piece suffers because he expects an indie publishing experience to be the same as a traditional publishing experience (except without the pesky rejection slips), when, of course, it’s not. Any book published by Random House (for example) has a certain floor of library sales and media publicity, while an indie published writer has to struggle for everything. While his complaints ring a LITTLE hollow (his sales rank on Amazon is actually pretty good), he has correctly discovered that competing against the million other indie books that are published each year can indeed be not-exactly-always-easy.
Anyway, it’s worth reading for anyone who may be lulled into thinking that the indie publishing model is a guarantee of riches and fame.