It is no longer okay for authors to sit back and allow publishers complete control over their books. As this excellent article by Penelope Trunk proves while the publishing business is changing at warp speed, publishers themselves are stuck in the past. Can you allow your career to be directed by someone who doesn't understand how books are currently being sold?
I have contracts with traditional publishers for 17 books. For about half, I was sensible enough to keep my electronic rights. For now on I am going to do my best to never sell electronic rights unless they give me a deal I cannot refuse. Let them use their outdated methods with the print books, but I cannot sit by and watch my ebooks sold in a way that makes no sense. For all authors, ebooks are your future. If print books will survive at all, they are going to be sold online. So if your publisher has no internet marketing savvy your books will not sell. You will have to do all of the work and if you have to do all of the work, then why share the money?
Read this article by Penelope Trunk, it's important.
So I sold my book to a mainstream publisher and they sucked. I am going to go into extreme detail about how much they sucked, so I’m not going to tell you the name of the publisher because I got a lot of money from them. I’m just going to tell you that the mainstream publisher is huge, and if you have any respect left for print publishing, you respect this publisher. But you will not at the end of this post. (continued)
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