Saturday 18 June 2011

Stories may well be lies...

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.
Neil Gaiman



So I was looking online for some writers blogs - in particular for un-published or self published authors and I stumbled across 'writers beware'- Victoria Strauss had written an interesting blogpost on self publishing saying that - well in a nutshell - self publishing was not worth it. there were some great comments to and from the site - stupid me should have copied the link- but I didnt but here is the link to the main blog:


http://accrispin.blogspot.com/


Anyway my response to the blogpost about the above was as follows: 


Great article and some great comments. I have just self published my novel and am on the self publishing band-wagon. My grammar is terrible and therefore paid for a full edit. I know my writing needs improvement but as one comment said- self publishing is an alternative - in a market which is flooded with budding novelists and therefore there is hard competition. 


I think the growth of e-books (and the low prices) will bring self publishing to the forefront. Most readers don't look at the name of the publishing house when they pick up a book- they read the blurb on the back. 


Either way readers will decide and new authors will have more of an opportunity to get out there- even if it is just one book out of ten that is great and self published- it is better than nothing. 


I think most authors that go into self publishing know the drawbacks- I doubt they are sucked in. And they get to live their dream and maybe, just maybe they will be successful! And that in itself is worth it. Most self pubbed authors don't release a book expecting high sales- but they work at it and if they are good then they will get somewhere and there is no harm in that.  

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