Perhaps self-publishing is the answer

No one is interested in picking up my next book proposal, and they all seem to have a ridiculous number of books in the pipe. A lot of them are the kind with a dozen authors that they can crank out quickly but generally aren't very good at teaching the subject matter. (I've been approached about writing on these... no thanks.)

I had heard about it before, but forgot about LuLu.com until I heard one of the founders on This Week In Tech. There's a service that speaks my language. It may not offer the really broad distribution that book stores offer, but if you have something you really want to get out there, now you can. If I could sell a dozen or two copies a month, I'd be more than thrilled.

I still believe in books. I'm not sure I believe that publishers are making the right decisions though on what to publish. I probably wouldn't have published my book unless it was part of a bigger strategy, a real understanding of where it fit. The publishers don't really have the expertise to sit down and look at the big picture in terms of the potential audience, then map out a strategy to give them a sensible offering. The old Wrox did this well, but obviously they made a lot of bad decisions financially.

Does anyone have any self-publishing experience to share?

2 Comments

  • DonXML was talking about this a bit ago. I also remember it seemed to come up on weblogs.asp.net a few times, but I don't remember who was talking about it.



    I looked at LuLu.com - most of these 'self publish' shops subcontract the work to places like LightingSource. If you know what you are doing, you may be better off skipping LuLu totally and working directly with LightingSource. This would would involve additional work, but you could start your own printing house.

  • Here's the link where DonXML was talking about self publishing:



    http://donxml.com/grokthis/archive/2004/05/07/686.aspx

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