Online self publishing is no longer for amateurs only

At one time, online self publishing was only a pastime for retired seniors and wannabe professional writers.

Internet surfers played at writing blogs, collecting scrapbooks and baking birthday cakes, placing equal value on each of these activities.

Not anymore. Not when Harper/Collins, Harper/Collins, a major “New York” publishing company announces that it is launching a new book imprint that won’t accept returns from retailers and will pay little or no advances to authors.

The message is clear… or the agenda is transparent.

One can guess that this new division will produce digitally books delivered through an on demand distribution system that sells its books directly to online retailers such as amazon.com.

The books will be printed at the shipping facility—as the buyer’s credit card is processed.

This eliminates the need for delivering 60% of the retail price to an intermediary.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that this method of printing and delivering books is exactly what the New York publishers, major booksellers such as Barnes & Noble and book reviewers such as Publishers’ Weekly and Kirkus Review have scorned until now as an “inferior way of publishing books that delivers an inferior product”!

It would be hard to believe that Harper/Collins would stand for such a blockade, so it is taking the first steps toward removing it.
Who really knows if a book is self published or issued by one of the big guys, unless they read excerpts or buy the book? It is well known among independent publishers and self-pubilshing authors that sometimes the only reason for a “Harper/Collins-type publisher” to reject a book is the subject matter: corporate board censorship.

It should be apparent where all of this is heading: “no returns” and “no advance against royalties” is a vote of little or no confidence in the hard copy book industry, which, thanks to the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, is rapidly going digital.

In the future, look for brick & mortar bookstores featuring mainly children’s books and start saving your shekels for an Amazon Kindle.

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