I wanted to bring Lisa’s story to light only because of an article I found on Times Magazine’s website from a few weeks ago.  The article begins with coverage on Lisa, but most importantly goes into a very in-depth look at the “digital age” of publishing.  The Amazon Kindle is mentioned, along with the infamous free “cell phone” novels that have taken off overseas.  Daniel Suarez’s Daemon is also mentioned, which was self-published in the beginning before being picked up by Penguin after a huge following by online bloggers. 

Here’s a great quote from the article…

Self-publishing has gone from being the last resort of the desperate and talentless to something more like out-of-town tryouts for theater or the farm system in baseball. It’s the last ripple of the Web 2.0 vibe finally washing up on publishing’s remote shores. After YouTube and Wikipedia, the idea of user-generated content just isn’t that freaky anymore.

As more people continue to blog and publish online, it is very true that the physical novel is not only losing it’s paper value but also losing its dollar value as well.

Not that Old Publishing will disappear–for now, at least, it’s certainly the best way for authors to get the money and status they need to survive–but it will live on in a radically altered, symbiotic form as the small, pointy peak of a mighty pyramid. If readers want to pay for the old-school premium package, they can get their literature the old-fashioned way: carefully selected and edited, and presented in a bespoke, art-directed paper package. But below that there will be a vast continuum of other options: quickie print-on-demand editions and electronic editions for digital devices, with a corresponding hierarchy of professional and amateur editorial selectiveness.

So, there you have it.  Self-publishing isn’t such a bad thing now, is it?

None of this is good or bad; it just is. The books of the future may not meet all the conventional criteria for literary value that we have today, or any of them. But if that sounds alarming or tragic, go back and sample the righteous zeal with which people despised novels when they first arose. They thought novels were vulgar and immoral. And in a way they were, and that was what was great about them: they shocked and seduced people into new ways of thinking. These books will too. Somewhere out there is the self-publishing world’s answer to Defoe, and he’s probably selling books out of his trunk. But he won’t be for long.

Check out the full article here!

It begins…

The point may soon come when there are more people who want to write books than there are people who want to read them.

It also includes a nice success story about Jim Bendat’s self-published book about presidential inaugurations.

“I wanted the satisfaction of holding the book in my hands,” Mr. Bendat said.

“O.K., it’s not a best seller,” Mr. Bendat said, “but I’m happy for what’s happening.”

Don’t miss this quote from Lulu’s own Bob Young…

Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. “We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind,” Mr. Young said.

Overall, I found it to be a very nice and enlightening article and definitely worth the read for anyone who has already self-published or might be considering it.

Read the full article here.

Posters in one of the forums are worried that help through email won’t be much better and may be more time consuming as authors sit and wait for replies.  I always thought the option for live chat help was at least ahead of other POD publishers out there who don’t offer it.

Lulu also recently laid off 24 employees, including their president Bryce Boothby Jr who was just brought on board last year.  Apparently Bob Young, Lulu founder, is taking a more active role in the company during these hard economic times.

Let’s hope for now that Author Solutions doesn’t come snooping around.  They already own iUniverse and Authorhouse, and just recently bought Xlibris.  I found this line from a Wall Street Journal article about the buy out to be humorous, particularly the part about “placing books in stores”…

Print-on-demand publishers take manuscripts from authors, edit them, market them and place them in stores and for sale online, in exchange for payment.

What are POD publishers?  Book prostitutes? Even Wall Street has no idea!

I am speaking of Timeline of America, written by Floyd M. Orr who is chief of the PODBRAM review site.  His book was published through iUniverse, which was the main self-publishing company he focused on reviewing books for until earlier this year.

His book is a fun romp through American history and pop culture, complete with pop quizzes at the very end, and filled with fun facts that chances are you never got out of a grade school history classroom.  I won’t spend too much time reviewing it here, but instead invite you to check out his book at Amazon and read my review of it there.

Kudos to Mr. Orr for a brilliant book that I sincerely believe deserves the attention of a traditional publishing company!