December 21, 2004
shame on andreas!
Only a little while ago, Andreas shamelessly pimped his company on my website without asking me first. Tsk-tsk!
I own a company, Publish And Be Damned, that allows authors to become independent publishers themselves, totally bypassing traditional as well as vanity (or subsidy) publishers.
When we first started out we thought that the majority of our customers would be authors who had previously been turned down by established publishing houses.
Not so.
More and more authors are turning to us, having actually ditched their publishers. We have been operating for six months now, in that time we have helped to publish over 70 books. Four of these were established authors who have clawed back the copyright for their work and are now going it alone.
The reasons: Control and money. Mid-list authors are very badly served by publishers, simply because they don’t make enough money to support a large support staff, corner offices and all the paraphernalia that goes with it. As a result they are used to taking care of marketing and PR themselves — the publisher won’t do it for them. For these authors independent publishing makes total sense. They still have the same amount of work, yet the financial rewards are much higher.
To give an example: One of our customer’s books sold about 70.000 copies. He made, after tax, about6 Responses to “shame on andreas!”
Except that there was no direct link to my company in my original comment. A decision I made after careful consideration.
Shameless plug? Maybe. I still think that the comment offered some beef and contributed to the discussion and the original post you’ve made.
I only pimp when it’s relevant. At least I hope that’s true.
Heh. We advertising folk are allowed the occasional bit of shamelessness. It’s second nature to us
Hey Hugh.. Also, check out my friend’s service, http://www.comixpress.com — it’s really great. Also, there is an online calculator, etc. Mostly for comic books— the quality is fantastic, and I know the owner very well, so if you need something specific, give me a yell. It might be a better price on POD type service. Not to knock what the other fella is linking.
No, Im not a paid spokesman for comixpress.com, I just use em and love em! I sit on my ass and do nothing and my comics sell and they ship them for me etc– and I collect a check every month.
Hugh;
With all due respect (if any), please check out the following site on the subject of “self-publishing”
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/
Theresa Nielsen Harden, and husband Patrick Hayden (?), are editors for Tor, and have considerable information on the “self publishing industry” (to which, I’m sure, your “self-promoting” publisher will have considerable violent opinions).
Yeah. many vanity publishers charge you out the hoohah — For comics, and soon tradepaperbacks, you pay 15 bucks at comixpress.com then a flat low rate for book. Better suited for comic books, but the tradepaperback stuff is coming soon and will be just as reasonable—
I’d love to see a comic book filled with all of Hugh’s drawings. A minicomic would be divine! Im just being selfish here though. This is just what “I” would like to have… heh
Just to wrap this up: My company is a reaction against vanity publishers. We work with the guys from the Creative Commons License. We’re working with lulu.com. We work with the ISBN agency. We’re getting rave reviews by quality papers like The Guardian and The Globe and Mail. We’re working with a national charity to help publish books written by homeless people. We even work with several publishers who pass on authors to us who they can’t help but who have merit.
We are, believe it or not, the good guys.