Posted on Dec 18, 2012 in Future of eBooks | 0 comments

There are several companies like Lulu and the Amazon acquisition CreateSpace that are helping writers self-publish their own books. This is similar to the YouTube model, where writers gain popularity through self-promotion and viral word-of-mouth marketing, with their books appearing on Amazon alongside works published through major publishing houses. Read the series: “The Miranda Proposal: Tomorrow’s eBook Platform”:  Prologue  part 1   part 2   part 3   part 4   part 5   part 6   part 7   Epilogue Self-publishing has long been associated with vanity publishing. It’s what you do if you can’t get a professional publisher interested, but you want to see it in print regardless. It’s largely the realm of the amateur: Auntie Irene’s favorite recipes and the calendar made by your local Girl Scout troop. But today’s digital self-publishing world includes a significant, serious, and growing movement: the democratization of publishing. Writers (and artists, musicians, and indy filmmakers) no longer have to rely solely on the rare attentions of traditional publishers; they can gain viral audiences using their own resources and the power of the social web. And it sometimes works on a grand scale; after all, pop star Justin Bieber began his career as a YouTube sensation, 50 Shades of Grey was originally self-published, and Lulu proudly states that “Over a million authors have used Lulu.com.” Some have gone on to achieve market success, with a few best-selling authors included in the mix. There is a place for small-run specialty publishing, and self-publishing may be the best option if you have a book in you whose audience is small but important. Self-publishing is not new, and has a notable history in America. Writing for the Atlantic, Sarah Fay reminds us: “Ben Franklin self-published his paperbound pamphlet Poor Richard’s Almanac. And in 1776, one of the country’s unofficial founding fathers Thomas Paine self published ‘Common Sense’, a 46-page pamphlet that sold over 500,000 copies and helped bring about the American Revolution. During the next two centuries, authors such as Hermann Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, and Mark Twain also self-published.”   On the other hand, today’s Web-powered self-publishing can be a bit perilous for consumers. There...

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