{"id":5039,"date":"2010-06-27T14:37:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-27T19:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=2901"},"modified":"2025-07-30T15:15:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T20:15:01","slug":"selling-shovels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/selling-shovels\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling shovels"},"content":{"rendered":"

You will notice I haven\u2019t been posting much at all, much less my thoughts on ebooks and publishing. Wanna know why? I\u2019m too busy with my burgeoning business<\/a> to put any thought into a) what\u2019s wrong with publishing (because why do I care?); b) how to go about formatting ebooks (because that changes week to week); and c) wondering if I\u2019m ever going to get my historical swashbuckler researched and written (because I\u2019m a writer, dammit!).<\/p>\n

In case anybody cares, these are my current random thoughts, none of which rate the time to explore in a full-on blog post (plus, I\u2019ve said it all before):<\/p>\n

1) Writers<\/strong>: You\u2019re screwed unless you put out your own stuff and you can market it. The old days are gone. \u201cGetting\u201d published is fine if that\u2019s what you need to validate your soul. If you want better odds on getting to readers and making a little money, do it yourself. But dammit, do it right<\/em><\/strong>!<\/p>\n

2) Writers<\/strong>: Remember that the people who made money in the gold rush didn\u2019t make it panning for gold, chasing a vein that didn\u2019t exist. The people selling the shovels made all the money. Learn a new skill and sell some shovels. You aren\u2019t going to make a livable income writing for da man. Just don\u2019t make any plans to leave your day job.<\/p>\n

3) Book designers<\/strong>: Stop trying to format ebooks on a print paradigm. Ebooks are not print books. They don\u2019t serve the same function. It\u2019s like trying to apply a print paradigm to audiobooks. Stop it. Learn how to format serviceable, good-looking ebooks and forget about Teh Fancy.<\/p>\n

4) Editors<\/strong>: Go freelance. Market your name. Make the authors who hire you put your name in the book so you can establish your brand. The curation<\/strong><\/em> of books in the future will depend on the editor, not the author, not the publishing house.<\/p>\n

5) Indexers<\/strong>: You have a bright and shiny new field to explore. Learn how to index digitally. It\u2019s called anchor tags.<\/p>\n

6) Publishers<\/strong>: Get your metadata in gear. Seriously.<\/p>\n

7) Publishers<\/strong>: The first publisher to chapter-and-verse its digital textbooks\/reference\/nonfiction will win the prize. What do I mean? I\u2019ll tell you. Pick up a Bible. Any Bible, any translation, any size, any publisher. Go to John 3:16. That\u2019s what I mean. Develop a system. Patent\/trademark it then license it. Make it the standard of any good digital nonfiction book, the way good indexing is. Indexers, see #5.<\/p>\n

That is all. I have a mountain of work to get done before I leave for NY next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You will notice I haven\u2019t been posting much at all, much less my thoughts on ebooks and publishing. Wanna know why? I\u2019m too busy with my burgeoning business to put any thought into a) what\u2019s wrong with publishing (because why do I care?); b) how to go about formatting ebooks (because that changes week to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[529,587,546,525,530,559],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-production","category-editing","category-marketing","category-publishing","category-self-publishing","category-traditional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5039"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16717,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5039\/revisions\/16717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}