Friday, January 13, 2012

DO PUBLISHERS SEE THE WRITING ON THEIR WALL?


It is interesting that the Digital Book World Conference & Expo (January 23-25, 2012) has on its agenda a forum named “Changing Author Publisher Relationship” with six speakers representing big name publishers, but no authors.
I have tried to draw this obvious deficiency to the conference organizers, but the only addresses one can reach are for registration. I have paid $25 for the exhibit day, but I do not have the hundreds of dollars I would need to attend (Individual Full Conference - $1,495.00).
So let me give a piece of my mind to the conference here on our website:
My take is that the publishers are feeling the competiton coming from people to whom they have been giving short shrift: the self published authors. We are already circumventing the barriers publisherdom has been setting in front of independent authors by uploading our stuff ourselves onto Kindle, Nook and other media, and printing our books as our own publishers. We pay the costs connected with making our works public, we promote ourselves at our own expense, and we wear out our own shoes peddling our books to bookstores and libraries.
No wonder there is writing on mainstream publishers’ walls.
If they want to prevent the approaching collective bankruptcy of their industry, they had better start talking to their bread and butter, which includes us, the “self-publishers,” aka independent authors,
Our organization is ready to start exploratory talks, and you, our members, can help by rounding up many more to give us clout as strong in numbers as it is in the principles we espouse.

I have published this blog also on the website www.indiePENdents.org -- the home of self-published and independent authors and their supporters. Join them
Digital Book World C

No comments: