Gemini Rising

An agent's thoughts on self-publishing

Literary Agent Donald Maass also says, in his book, Writing the Breakout Novel, "Prior novel publications always make me sit up and take notice, although self-publication has the opposite effect---unless it resulted in an Edgar Award nomination, or similar."

All I can say, is that this quote embodies the traditional publishing arena. It's sad in a way because there are a lot of good writers using self-publishing. While I do think the big $$$ and even a descent advance comes from a traditional publisher, even a writer who has been traditionally published has to work to promote their books. One hard working author I know who has been traditionally published is Kathy Love. While I do think there's a slow change in thinking regarding the respectablity of self publishing, it's a shame the traditional publishing side of the house has to be like this.

I'll talk about the pros and cons of self publishing in a future post.