I'm still learning about the "phenomenon" of self-publishing, but wanted to say a few things about it regardless.
I was just reading Nathan Bransford's blog post regarding self-published millionaire author Amanda Hocking (who is now published via a traditional house). I'd never heard of her until ten minutes ago, but clearly a lot of people have, most likely tweens; as her books seem to be based on teen romance/fantasy.
Anyway, Amanda has obviously done very well for herself through the self-publishing of her first nine novels, as she has made over $2million from ebook sales alone.
As will be argued, this kind of success is most likely to be the exception and not the rule. I am sure there are many self-published authors out there who have also priced their books at 99c and are making zilch.
But here is the interesting part: people clearly like Amanda's writing, her words strike a chord within them; even though Amanda's words were not what the many agents and publishers she approached (before she began to do it herself) wanted or deemed fit to publish.
Just 5-10 years ago, someone in Amanda's position would have had very few options after the usual rejections from agents and publishers:
1) brush yourself off and start/continue with your next novel in the hope it may be "the one".
2) become dissuaded and abandon all hope of success/publication.
But times have changed, and there is another option available for the unpublished writer: self-publish your work online.
Now, in 2011 we see that in the UK alone annual ebook sales have reached £180m, a 20% rise from the previous year. Despite libraries and bookstores closing down at frightening rates, people are still reading, and they are reading a lot. But the standard medium for the delivery of the words they read is changing; adapting with the ever advancing technology at our disposal.
I have highlighted words for the simple reason that I believe that words are the only thing which matter in all of this. I do believe ebooks will eventually outsell (not eradicate however) the traditional paperback and hardback. Just as online news has decimated the printed-press industry, the same will happen within the next 5-10 years to paper books. The e-media age is upon us.
Similarly, one could look at the demise of the vinyl record caused by the arrival of the now virtually extinct compact disc. And the same about the dominance of mp3s over the CD. The e-media age prevailed yet again, and both vinyl and CD's (along with minidiscs and tape cassettes) are virtually dinosaurs; extinct, rare or dying out.
It seems as if humans are evolving into a species that no longer want to hold physical things. We want the intangible and we want it readily accessible and as cheap as possible. Information (be it audio, text or video) will soon all exist online, held by servers and carried through fibre-optic cables, as opposed to being confined by physical discs or paper.
But as a writer/aspiring author, I am not afraid. For as long as I keep producing words there will always be something to be read. Words are meant to be read, regardless of the format they arrive in, and although I will try the typical agent-->publisher-->physical book route first; my ultimate goal will be to have the words I have spent hundreds of hours writing, read by as many people who deem them readable.
I am a romantic in the sense that I do prefer to read a nice paperback, hopefully untouched by anyone else before me and slightly worn by my own use over time. I also like the feel of books, their weight and texture. I don't make a conscious thought about it whilst I read, but I know I like to actually hold a book.
There is a certain mystic charm within a good printed book that will never be replaced by a Kindle or iPad.
But the following will remain constant regardless of the novel's new format:
The covers will contain pages, the pages will contain paragraphs, the paragraphs will contain sentences, the sentences will contain words and the words (hopefully) will contain enough magic to take you away from wherever you are and straight into the world the author has created.
No matter where we end up, it shouldn’t be forgotten that words are all that matter.
tl;dr :p
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