Re: Off-topic on publishing (was: Re: Signature book)

["R Tennenbaum"]

On Tue, 24 Nov 1998 07:25:16 +0900 (JST), Yo Intl. wrote:

>>publishing is apparently to offer royalties at the same percentage as
>>hard books -- even though, of course, the overhead is a mere fraction
>>of book printing and distribution.
>
>But... with hardware developing the way it does, could you not simply
>become your own publisher?

Well -- bingo. This seems to be the tenor of many writers' response
and it's the blessed truth. One agent has already started things in
motion. There's the cost of the delivery/encryption system to work
out, but how much could it be? It wouldn't seem that formatting is
much of a hitch, since apparently it's gonna be some kind of HTML. The
only real impediment would seem to be that a book needs the
infrastructure of the book biz (ie, reviews and publicity), and if
there's a concerted p-r effort against "independent publishing" (the
agent I heard talking on the subject called it "disintermediation,"
which I suppose is an apt enough description but sounds to me
descriptive of a negotiation over an exhuming) the process could be
retarded. But all it takes is one Stephen King to say, "Screw them,
I'm taking it all myself" to make it work. All I can say is I hope
it'd pay better than the ads on my web page do.

Rafe T.

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http://www.ray-field.com