However I’d like to take issue with a couple things that I think are false premises.

1 – “The real issue for me in that lies exactly in self-publishing’s advantage: the ability to get inside the distribution and exposure system and game it for your own benefit.”

That is not, as I see it, the advantage in self-publishing. The advantage is about control of the product and rate of return, the key being one doesn’t need as much distribution or exposure to make the same kind of rate of return. When you’re making 30% royalty at Amazon vs. 12.5% traditional, your necessary exposure rate is cut by more than half. Plus you’re no longer slave to any publisher’s poor editing or poor cover choices, both of which happen more than they’d like to admit. The other advantage of self-publishing is evergreen shelf-space. You’re no longer operating on the archaic produce model, where you have to hit good numbers inside of a month or you’re out of luck.

2 – “And many writers may simply decide their time is better spent writing than marketing.”

You seem to have bought the lie that traditional publishers are paragons of marketing. Sure they are, if you’re at the top of their catalog. No publisher engages in a big marketing push for an unknown newbie author fresh to their house. Authors like that still have to do their own marketing! They are the ones that have to harness the power of social media, or blogging, or author appearances, in order to build that word of mouth. They just don’t have to handle the distribution chain. That brings us back to all the failings of publishers, such as royalty statements that may or may not be accurate, and reflect what happened six months ago, well after said book may be viewed as a flop.

Besides that, as David Gaughran himself–and Dean Wesley Smith for another–have pointed out, it’s not your skill at doing anything special in marketing that gets you noticed. It’s volume and quality. So for the writer whose time is “better spent writing than marketing,” then it has borne out that the self-publisher who consistently puts out more product gets more entries into the algorithms and in turn gets more eyeballs on the book.

3 – “Now that publishers are no longer compulsory, they might actually start to appear desirable.”

It’s not about being compulsory. It’s about whether or not publishers can pay authors what they think they’re worth. Until New York determines that they need to lower their overhead and become leaner machines paying authors more fairly, self-publishing will continue to be an attractive and increasingly more viable option.

Anyone else want to share their favorites?

Konrath, however, pushes his views of piracy which works for him but not writers not at his level of the profession, so read him with more than a grain of salt.

If you are interested in craft blogs, I suggest the writing specific search engine, “The Writer’s Knowledge Base” http://hiveword.com/wkb/search And mine, of course.

“You make an interesting point about my book, which made me pause for a moment. But I suppose it’s like any advice in that if everyone adopts it to the same level, no-one gets an advantage. For example, if we all used top-level cover designers for our books, we would all have nice-looking books but no-one would gain an advantage. But that’s not what happens. Even though there are plenty of amazingly talented cover designers out there, not everyone uses them. I know one brilliant designer who sells pre-mades for $30 – a price everyone could afford – and yet some won’t invest that in their book.”

Just because resources are available, doesn’t mean everyone will take advantage of them. Personally I am stunned that anyone would publish a book without an editorial pass or a professionally designed cover—even if it’s just a pre-designed template, as David points out.

Also, just because traditional publishers are making strides in internet marketing doesn’t mean the “Golden Age” of self-publishing is ending. Self-publishing shouldn’t be viewed through the same lens as corporate publishing, because the success metrics are different. Millions of people are now able to publish books who couldn’t a decade ago. These authors may not break into best-seller lists, make a million bucks, or become household names, but they are able to share their message, make a little (or maybe a lot of) money on the side, and advance their personal & professional standing. If that’s not golden, I don’t know what is.

I also want to address the unspoken assumption that these blockbusters are what everyone needs. Previously published writers who are converting their backlist to ebooks are certainly not expecting an old book to become the next blockbuster release. Rather they are taking the long view that more books generating even relatively small amounts will collectively make a good income. To denigrate this as an “honest penny” is not a worthy criticism. This is the long tail model that allows a broad population to profit albeit at a smaller level compared to a very few who profit hugely. Both can be successful in supporting their livelihood, but the scale is merely different. That everyone can’t be a James Patterson scale success is obviously true, but that a much larger number can support themselves with the smaller though much more profitable sales of self-publishing than via the earnings of traditional publishing is also true as well.

Ironic that I haven’t been following this story closely this evening because I’ve been binge watching Supernatural to get to the point where I can read a particular fanfic. Two more seasons to go and then I can read it.

There’s also some fascinating fair use issues here. At what point could a fan fiction writer claim that their work is parody?

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/22/amazons-kindle-worlds-instant-thoughts/