Digital publishing

Let me nail the ‘Long-Distance’ bit of the title as I don’t imagine that the ‘Loneliness’ part needs any explanation.    It’s purely a function of time, not miles.

In the time-honoured cliché, I’d always felt a book lay within me, albeit invisibly deeply.  Being made redundant and deciding to go freelance created the space and time in which to contemplate the possibility.  I didn’t set out to write something that might be published.  It was much more that I needed to know that I could do it; ‘it’ being create something from thin air that worked. ‘Worked’ meaning that it had integrity, a sense of purpose and being.

If you’d told me then it would take eighteen years from first contemplation to final realisation, I may well have taken up some other life challenge, perhaps crocheting or self-waxing.

But then again ...

Who, once they’ve written, would ever really want to be without the joy of sculpting a …

The journey begins ...

... or, to be more accurate, the next stage of the journey begins.

A publishing contract has been signed and so the first leg, writing the thing, is over.  I now must treat it as though hewn from stone, rather than the waters of creativity.  No more tweaking, time to move on.  It's been with me so long that it might be hard to let go ... but let go I must!

So what are my hopes and fears for ‘Grosse Fugue’?  Should I reveal my innermost thoughts?  Perhaps not yet.  As any author knows, the greatest hunger is for an audience, preferably one as large as possible.  Of course, there's a revenue attraction to that.  But for many, it's just the notion of our work being read by many hearts and minds.

A few may love it, many may loathe it.  A handful might be moved, others offended.  With any luck, no-one will be indifferent, the true mark of failure.  But I hope that some may be …

With the recent revolution in self-publishing, a lot of writers are given the perception that their voices are being heard but the reality is with no way of knowing the calibre of the writing, i fear a lot of readers will be turned off and away.

I've said it before but I'll say it again, first and foremost we should be for the reader. Writing is the most interactive of all the arts, with writers forever subtly or overtly demanding something of their various readers. but, with this recent avalanche, we now need to consider filters to help readers navigate what's out there.

that's why i was so happy to come across Varytale last night at an industry event and their clever way of supporting the independent writer while  signaling to readers those books that have been shown to be really special, or those that are still half-finished, or in development. Using generative design, they automatically generate the same book cover in different editions. Books in Varytale can go …

This isn't a blog about whether it's wise to be romantically entangled with a writer, that's a discussion for another time!  It's about a new publishing venture  that actually builds on a much older model.

Unbound is a new site that asks for readers to commit to an author's book - before it's written.  As you'll see from the site, authors are trying out new ideas, and taking on sponsorship from readers, who can sign up to support the author at staggered levels. A £10 stake gets you an e-copy of the book, whereas £250 will get you lunch with the author, signed hardback first editions, tickets to the launch, and goodie bags.

This harks back to a time when books were published by private subscription, with the readers joining a list and paying before the book was published, which was very popular in the seventeenth century.  The first illustrated edition of Milton's Paradise Lost was published by subscription, with the support of more than 500 prominent individuals.

…

Big authors are experimenting with self-publishing, e-publishing, crowd-funding, and other non-traditional models. But, asks Andrea Phillips, can you make it work for you too?

There's never been a more exciting time to be a writer. Just the other week, best-selling marketing guru Seth Godin announced that – from now on – he’s eschewing traditional publishing. Novelist Cory Doctorow has put out free Creative Commons editions of his work – including the young adult novel Little Brother, which was nominated for the Hugo Award and won the John W. Campbell Award in 2009.

It’s all about fans

Striking out on your own is all well and good if you’ve already got millions of fans. Most of us aren’t so lucky. But to make a modest living, you don’t need millions – Kevin Kelly has suggested that a creator can make a living in the digital age with 1,000 true fans.

It's a much less daunting number, but where do these fans come from and how exactly do you get them?

Winning …