As some of you may know, I am going to be a panelist on e-book publishing at the Virginia Writers Club annual writers symposium, Navigating Your Writing Life. Becky Mushko, author and panelist moderator, asked if I would mind posting both a Q&A of my self-pub experiences and a resource sheet I put together for the participants. Hopefully, both attendees and non-attendees should get a kick out of some of the answers and some mileage out of the resource sheet.
After less than scintillating results on, well, every e-book retail outlet except Amazon, I was inspired to create what is quite possibly the worst drawn cartoon in the world.
I would be more charitable to Amazon’s competition if:
Smashwords could assure me that they’d actually ship the e-books I ask them to.
Barnes & Noble wouldn’t blame Smashword’s staff for not having my books on their site.
Apple actually acted like books were sold online.
Kobo improved a search engine that displays a search of “iden, matthew” on Page 2 and Page 3 of the results. And created some sort of system whereby indies could compete with Trad Pub titles.
Until then, it’s probably back to Select for me, like every other indie author except Bob Mayer.
I had the chance to attend indie publication Barrelhouse Magazine‘s spring “Crime” issue release party last night, where I got to hear cool authors read their work: Tara Laskowski reading “The Etiquette of Murder”, Art Taylor with his “Blue Plate Special”, and “How Sacrifices Are Made in Illionois” by Michelle Dove.
All are great reads that make you think; Tara’s piece reminded me of Armand “Blackbird” Degas from Elmore Leonard’s Killshot, while Art’s piece seemed a thoughtful blend of Chandler and James Crumley (of Last Good Kiss fame). I’m still rolling around Michelle’s piece in my head…it’s a densely-packed story with lots of sly humor tucked in here and there; easy to miss if you’re not paying attention.
It was nice to rub elbows with other writers and poets trying to make a professional go of it. If only the bartender hadn’t turned the music up to 10…I’d still be there chatting craft with some really smart people.