I love e-publishing and self-publishing. Don’t get me wrong, I love Lulu, and Nook, and I own a Kindle. I’m glad I can sell books via e-Junkie. I’m even glad to take a look at Ganxy, the new e-pub/promote service (look for a review).
But know what? It’s now getting just a little insane. OK insaner. I had a lot of tolerance for all these options, but I think that we’ve reached the point where, unless you dedicate a lot of time figuring out what the best way to publish your book is, you’re taking shots in the dark (or spending all your time formatting, not writing).
Every time I look at my next book or my plans for minibooks, I find some new service, some new question, some new issue to address. Sure I can experiment with all of them – in fact that’s part of what I do for here – but it’s getting a little frustrating by now.
I’d like to find a clear way to get distrubition, a clear way to format, some way to manage to get this all done without having to use 3 or 4 services, or how that service-to-service opportunities don’t mangle your book. I’d like some sanity.
But as our own Serdar told me when we discussed this, that was called “A bookstore.”
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.