E-Publishing

frozen delights

I should have entitled my last post as E-Publishing rather than Self-Publishing, and I'm surprised I didn't get a host of comments pointing out my basic mistake.

So let me say right away that self-publishing is either
a)Vanity publishing or
b) publishing yourself via Amazon Kindle.  (I've not investigated Smashwords, Nooks, Kobos and the like yet. My learning curve has reached astronomical heights in figuring out the Kindle process, and I'm resting on my laurels for a while.)



I think we all know that in Vanity Publishing, the author pays someone to publish his or her work. Using Amazon Kindle is different in that the author pays no one, and has to do all the work of getting the ms up there as a buyable commodity. if you can write good tales but know next to nothing about  formatting and using unfamiliar software, then the obvious route is via Vanity Publishing. For those who have some knowledge of software and not enough dosh to pay someone to do all the hard work, then the Kindle route is preferable.Both situations provide an open door for a lot of authors who would otherwise never get published, who perhaps should not be published - but it also provides a springboard for those who have a good story to offer but find that today's recession-ridden publishing world simply won't take a risk on them. As an aside, it seems that there are a lot of people in the world who want a fast, cheap read that has few pretentions to literary fiction. As in everything else, the range is wide and there is a market at every level.

The independent e-publishers, on the other hand, are more willing to risk taking on an unknown author. They vet the offered work and reject or accept according to their varied criteria.Their editing levels are varied, too, and so are their royalty rates and contractual demands. But it must be remembered that the range is wide, and while one end offers low quality writing for sale, the opposite end offers high quality.