Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Indie vs. Traditional publishing debate


Should You Sign With A Legitimate Book Publisher or Self-Publish


I wrote an article for this debate today on Helium. The title of it was rather offensive to me. What do you think?

More on indie publishing coming soon, as I'm in process of going indie again, but differently.

4 comments:

Lisa said...

I can tell you after reading 'Made in the U.S.A.' (or attempting too) by Billie Letts a 'best selling author' that many times books that are published by a 'legitimate book publisher' are a far cry from even resembling good literature. Honestly, I kept thinking as I'm reading this how did this get into print!??!

And then I've read indie work such as yours and think this should be published!

I guess it's similar to the premise of American Idol. There's alot of hidden talent out there just waiting for the right opportunity and venue. And if you self-publish to get your work out there, why not?

I disagree with waiting for the Right Publisher to come along. Sometimes you have to stand on your own with your talent. :)

LK Hunsaker said...

Lisa, thank you! I haven't heard of that one but "best selling" is such a misconstrued term it's appalling. They "manage" the lists with publicity and timing and buy-offs, so a best seller doesn't need to have anything to do with quality. It's all in the promotion. Sad.

That's why they have big "release day" events so on THAT day they may be the bestseller and can always be called that, regardless of what it does after that day. A book can also be a bestseller for a day or two on a little bitty list and be branded the same as one that consistently sells month after month. Readers need to learn to look past the "bestseller" status. It means almost nothing.

Andra M. said...

Didn't Hillary's book make the BS (hee, hee) list because her cronies bought 50k of them straight out, and threw them in a warehouse somewhere?

Okay, if you don't mind the pat on the back BestSeller = BS is pretty darn clever.

LK Hunsaker said...

I hadn't heard that one, Andra, but I wouldn't be surprised. It happens. Authors do it on Amazon, also.

Yep, BS, all the way around. ;-)