Two things are beings mixed up here.

1) *Writers* who go the POD route. Why make the same mistake as conventional print publishing and have boxes of pre-printed books in a room? POD makes sense for that. And POD will make sense when Espresso machines are all over the place.

2) Print publishers using POD as an escape clause to refuse reverting rights to the writer. Yes, this happens. And will continue to happen. Which is why untimed contracts should be outlawed. All publishing contracts should have a 5-7 year expiration date on them, from time of signing.

Attacked by bloggers? Is that how you see it?

If you go to a blog and your first post there seems hostile (even though it wasn’t taken that way at first), and said blogger goes to your blog to find you maniacal about the issue, don’t say you’ve been attacked when the blogger calls you on it.

You came here with an agenda, a chip on your shoulder, and looking for a fight.

I did not attack you.

I followed you back to your blog and saw your nearly incoherent and uninformed rantings.

I called your motives into question.

I refused to sign up for a worthless journal platform just to correct your assumptions. If you have to hide behind a gated community then no, you shouldn’t wander elsewhere.

Yes, you should have apologized. Publicly. I do. That’s the gracious thing to do, and I see bloggers everywhere doing it. Saying that you don’t want to apologize because any comment that stirs discussion is good is a cop-out because you’re afraid to come back here and eat crow or at least apologize for being hateful to begin with.

I could’ve said a lot more, honey.

I didn’t.

You should be very grateful for that.

-bowerbird

The effectiveness of e-newsletters is decreasing. I think choose to follow (pull rather than push) methods of communication such as Twitter

Yes, I feel much more comfortable there, where people can get to know me, and then figure if they like that and what’s here on the blog, they might also like my fiction and take a chance.

Also, tons of people on Twitter are e-book readers and they don’t mind dropping $6 to see if the book is worth the money.

(of course, that means you have to stop wasting
so much time on twitter, but you knew that, eh?)

I can quantify in dollars and cents the effectiveness of my presence on Twitter.

As for your not having suggested a newsletter, I don’t know what other way I could use an email list. Perhaps you could elaborate.

p.s. i don’t think karen is challenging you… she’s
honestly trying to see how to escape her present lot.

*chuckle*

you need to rearrange your thinking.

for instance, i never said “newsletter”.

and if that’s how you’d think about it,
then that’s the wrong way to proceed.

the very word “newsletter” implies a
one-way communication, not two-way.

further, if you will look back once again,
you’ll see that i was talking explicitly about
“a community that interacts with each other”.

in other words, they amuse themselves by
talking to each other, not necessarily to you.

so think in terms of web-based forums,
and wikis, and listserves, not “newsletter”…

yes, you will talk with them too, to a degree,
but that’s not their _expectation_ coming in,
simply because they know there are more
of them than there are of you, and they know
that the bulk of your time must be spent writing,
in order for them to get what they want from you.

(of course, that means you have to stop wasting
so much time on twitter, but you knew that, eh?)

> Permission or not, I feel intrusive sending people
> what might amount to advertising spam.

it’s not “spam” because they’ve _asked_ for it…

they gave their e-mail address to you voluntarily,
precisely so that you _would_ send them the info.
you are doing them a favor, not bothering them…

you have to improve your self-confidence about it.

(you also have to make sure that stuff you send
_is_ honest communication, and not just an ad,
and you have to search your soul deeply so that
your assessment there is accurate and rigorous.
but once you understand that your fans are your
_friends_, that attitude is much easier to develop.)

-bowerbird

p.s. i don’t think karen is challenging you… she’s
honestly trying to see how to escape her present lot.

However, mine is.

I’m not sure how you got that idea. Amazon and all its online affiliates are an electronic book option, right?

Not for me. I don’t own a Kindle. A Kindle e-book is specific to the Kindle device. I will not own a Kindle EVER.

I have an eBookWise. I will soon have a BlackBerry. I put my books out in the following formats: EPUB, HTML, IMP, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, and PDF.

All of those are associated with or can be read on multiple devices and downloaded freely without the limitations of Amazon.

That you don’t know that tells me that you don’t understand the e-book market.

And Elizabeth, what makes you think I haven’t researched POD?

I suspect it’s because you’re equating POD (print-on-demand), which is a TECHNOLOGY, not a business model, with self-publishing/author service companies and vanity presses. The two are entirely different.

I get the feeling you tend to equate ebook publishers with romance/erotica.

Yeah, I do.

I come from genre romance, obviously, and I thought that was what I was writing, and so that’s where I went when I got into the online romance communities. This is where I saw e-books in action, being evangelized, being broken down and explained, where the money was.

There are, in fact, more than a few that would have given The Proviso a second look, all of which is the proverbial water under.

I stopped querying and submitting somewhere around 100 rejections, when one kind editor told me she’d read it and two other editors had read it, and the consensus was, “We like it, but we don’t know where to put it.” After spending the early ’90s with walls of rejections, I just couldn’t keep going anymore.

I understand a lot of it was my fault in not understanding what The Proviso actually IS (still don’t), and in probably not writing a decent synopsis, and you know, the fact that it’s 300,000 words long, but you’re right, I didn’t know where to look. I was coming back into querying after a 10-year hiatus and things had changed so much it really overwhelmed me.

That said, and hindsight etc, when I look into the future and where I’m going with the world I built, I don’t regret doing it myself.

As for Karen’s comment, I find it ironic that:

1) I can’t comment on her blog without becoming a member of Vox (not going to),

2) Her publisher pays no advance and only 10% royalties, which is shameful for a “traditional” independent publisher,

3) Her publisher doesn’t have a catalog of its books on its site (which means I had to go hunting high and low for Karen’s title), so I’m not sure what marketing her publisher is doing for her, and

4) Her publisher has no e-book option.

Thus, I am not impressed with her cynicism that my business model is somehow inferior to her publisher’s.