I’ll get my own readership. Do my own publication, and if I fail, it’s totally on me.

As I see it, the distribution deal is the toughest nut for the self-pubbed author to crack. Without access to that (and *you* would know if a self-pubbed writer has any chance to crack that on her own), the number of books you get out into the stream of commerce is going to conservatively 1% what you’d get with a distribution deal.

Absolutely a distribution deal takes a huge chunk out of the author’s potential take. So if a writer has an unusual property, getting the modest word-of-mouth & independent bookstore sales (numbering in the 1000s) may be the best way to get to a commercial publisher and thus the distribution deal.

Which reminds me (thinking like a lawyer) that while there are different ways to self-publish, retaining the rights to resell the manuscript is critical for any author who thinks her book may be the oddball hit. If a “self-publishing” outfit (like Dellarte?) retains the rights to second-generation publishing, that’s takes away the value to the author of all her hard work getting the book sold.

Another variable I simply didn’t feel a need to address is that a writer could hire an agent to do any one of those things on the list or a combination of them or all of them, but it would be more of a cafeteria plan.

Another hole I was thinking about is that Doc McGhee and his ilk take on acts that have worked hard and distinguished themselves somehow. Motley Crue was already well known in LA. They were creating glam metal all by themselves, and they had relatively accessible music.

So as I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that what might happen with this kind of paradigm shift is that agents will take on writers who A) have already produced the book, B) are, in fact, decent business people and marketers and really just need distribution/marketing help so they can continue to write, C) have proven that their books do have an audience, and D) have some charisma and personality.

And after thinking about this a while (post posting, natch) I’m not really even sure it’d work too well with the current manuscript submission process.

I am out of blue woad today. 😉

As I understand it, an author sends out inquiry letters to various agents. I don’t know the precise etiquette, but let’s assume that the author can mail to multiple agents. Any agent who passes on the representation is a lost cause anyway. No matter how much power the author has (as the creator and owner of both the asset and the talent to produce future assets), no author would want to be repped by an agent who didn’t like the author’s style/work/etc.

So even if multiple agents say, “Wow, I really like your synopsis!” would they actually allow the author to interview them in a variation of the “beauty contest” (the process when a potential client talks to several law firms)? I find myself thinking that only an author already deemed “valuable” (because she’s the former governor of Alaska, perhaps?) would have that sort of market power.

But there is an odd sort of process that authors get to engage in, and that’s the research into which agents to send the inquiry letter to — some agents may present themselves poorly on their websites or in the Writer’s Handbook, and thus lose even the option to be wow’ed by the author.