Amazon Rewrites the Rules of Book Publishing - NYTimes.com

Amazon Rewrites the Rules of Book Publishing - NYTimes.com:

'via Blog this'

What Penguin did to Kiana Davenport as told in this article is proof of the lack of imagination and flexibility the old print industry has and those are what will bring it down not the existence of Amazon.com or any other forum that eliminates middlemen from between author and reader.

By canceling Davenport's contract for her upcoming novel due out next year because she used one of the well known, well tested self promoting techniques of publishing online some of her unpublished short stories and threatening to force her via legal action to return her $20K advance, Penguin has shot itself in the foot. Not only have they lost what even they must have thought was a potentially profitable relationship with a new author for this first and any following novels but the publicity of this case will likely lose them many future new authors if not many current ones.

I've been thinking for some time now that self-publish is the way to go for me. And the more I read about the arrogance of the big house publishers and their paranoia regarding the web, their elitist exclusivity, the difficulty breaking in--the no agent no submission acceptance/no publish credits no agent catch 22) the hit or miss promotional efforts for new authors and so forth, the more I am convinced I will have to get over my reluctance to self promote and just do it.

I've been holding back partly because of the stigma of the so called vanity press from the days before the web and electronic publishing.  But I'm beginning to see that as another artifact of the past.

I've also been holding back most of my best work off my blog and other web presences for fear of scaring off publishers and agents as I'd heard they frowned on that and would refuse to publish stuff previously published online.

It is my prediction that these old print publishing houses are going to find themselves unable to satisfy the readers and writers coming of age in this decade who have no memories of before electronic publishing and the web and will have no patience with waiting months for responses to submitted manuscripts and years to see an accepted one actually in print. And it will be there own fault not the fault of those with the vision to foresee the potential of the new technology and do something with it.

Whether publisher or bookstore I have no patience with those who see Amazon.com and their like as their enemy. I'm tempted to blame the age of those in the decision making positions for this tunnel vision but none of them can be more than half a decade older than me and even this ol fuddy duddy can imagine ways in which they could mutually profit so why can't they?