I've just seen the truly bizarre news that Hachette, one of the big publishing houses, is demanding that any author with titles published by Tor in some territories and Hachette in others keep the DRM on their ebooks. Tor have recently begin to offer DRM-free books,...
Mark Coker, the owner of Smashwords, does make a good point with his article on traditional publishers. Okay, him running the main source for independent authors is something of a bias, but I think his argument has merit: that trad publishers move too slowly and price...
How does DIY publishing pay for research and development? This is the question posed by Porter Anderson over on Jane Friedman's blog this week, and I find it fascinating on many levels. The general idea of the article - and I do recommend reading it all - can be...
I think we all know that there's two halves to making a living as an author: the business and the art. The art, of course, is the basic skill of writing; the forging of narrative out of raw inspiration, which takes years of practice to truly master. The business,...
First of all, let's get something straight. If you publish a book, either all by yourself or by paying someone up front for the services you can't handle (like cover design), for which you retain all rights and keep all profits, then you are an independent,...
Being in the web design business, and being connected to a number of freelancers and entrepreneurs, I get quite a few interesting articles in my email inbox most days. Sometimes I go read them, if I have the time, but this gem showed up this morning and the title...
A quick recap, for those of you who haven't seen it yet - Sebastian Marshall is a businessman. He does a lot of business-related things, one of which is writing about business. He wrote a book about his philosophy of doing business, and got a deal with Simon &...
Breaking into mainstream publishing is a difficult process, but I think not for the reasons that many people assume. I think there's a fundamental disconnect between aspiring authors and publishers that needs to be addressed: that publishing is a business, and books...