WriterCooksGreek: The 21st Century Writer

The 21st century has seen an implosion of the traditional writer/publisher model.

Traditional Publishing
Traditional publishing is when the writer produces a manuscript, pitches it to an agent, who, if sufficiently convinced they could sell it to a publisher, takes it on for representation. The agent then might or might not suggest improvements to the manuscript and then shops it among their contacts with publishing houses. If the publisher can be sufficiently persuaded that the book can make a profit, the publisher offers the writer a contract.

With the onset of "desktop publishing," remember that phrase? writers began to explore avenues outside this very controlled and closed circuit of traditional publishing. Publishers plainly post on their websites that unagented manuscripts are not accepted. Every writer contemplating publication has heard of the "slush pile," basically a place where unsolicited manuscripts go to wither and die in an agent's office or a publishing house. Once in a while you heard the phrase, "salvaged from the slush pile," and that was the rare occasion where an unsolicited manuscript was picked out of the trash by an assistant who loved it enough to push it up the food chain so it eventually reached publication.

There are many talented writers, many brilliant unpublished stories. Writers have grown exponentially since the advent of the word processor. Today, it's much easier than ever to bang out a story of X thousands of words and rewrite it, and rewrite it and rewrite it. Imagine doing all that without cut and paste, or more accurately point and click and point and click! There are so many tools to aid a writer, that all a writer needs is his imagination, and a laptop.

Vanity Press
Where am I going with this, you're wondering? Today's self publishing model has created a surfeit of self published books. The capability to publish hard copies of one's book has been around for a long time. It used to be called Vanity Press printing and the author would shell out thousands of dollars to print anywhere from a minimum of 500-1000 copies and then try to sell them. The author would have to go around to bookstores, churches, libraries, door to door, whatever they were willing to do to sell those books. Sometimes they broke even, but the majority of the books would remain to rot in the back of a garage or a basement.

Self Publishing(POD &Ebooks)
With the advent of e books and e readers, though, the balance shifted hard towards more author control and away from traditional publishing. Createspace, Amazon's self publishing company has been an amazing boon to the self published author. Not only can an author publish a book online in print format but an author can also convert that book to a Kindle ebook, both to be sold through Amazon's vast online global distribution channels. There is hardly any charge to the author, unless they want to take advantage of Createspace's paid design and editorial services. The print books are published on demand(POD) which means that when a book is ordered it is printed and shipped at that time. There are no preprinted books to warehouse. An ebook is much more economical to produce, therefore the author can price their book lower than a print book would be.

I know that Amazon is quickly becoming a monopolistic book selling and book producing behemoth. Yet, as a writer who struggled for years to get an agent, let alone a publisher to even speak with me, I have found Amazon's self publishing model extremely freeing and fulfilling. There are other POD and ebook online publishers. There's Barnes and Nobles' Nook ereader where an author can upload their book for free and earn royalties from each sale made on the B&N website. There are also numerous others, however, IMHO Amazon's Createspace is the way to go at this time for maximum exposure and best quality.

The self published material runs the gamut of quality, from the sloppy, unedited, stream of consciousness texts of writers to the exceptionally well written and designed books of good writers. There have been the mega successes of self published books taken on by traditional publishers, like E. L. James who initially self published "Fifty Shades of Gray," Hugh Howey, who self published "Wool," that was later picked up by Simon & Schuster.

Bottom Line
So, what's my point?

If you have a manuscript sitting in a drawer for years, take it out, dust it up and publish it. Make sure it's the best it can be, hire an editor, a proof reader, a book designer and produce your book. It will be the best thing you ever did!

Yes, I do all my own publicity, book all my own events(with a little(lots) of help from my friends!!), I did my own Greek translation. But, guess what? A year since I first self-published, I can honestly say that it has been a blast!

My own 21st Century self publishing journey in pictures: