How To Get The Slush Out of Self-publishing?
I used to call myself a self-published author, primarily since I haven't tried to use the traditional venue.
Actually I have a "publisher" but are they really a Publisher?
FastPencil doesn't edit my work, they don't pay me an advance, they don't acquire shelf-space in bookstores.
Perhaps they are a Publishing-Aid Company even though they are clearly listed as publisher…
So many things in the publishing realm are in flux and the best name for a given activity may take years to resolve itself.
Now Crowdsourcing is being proposed for "self-publishers".
Jane Friedman recently invited Scott VanKirk to guest post and, A Model for Crowdsourced Publishing, is, along with the fascinating comments, worth a read.
The basic idea for a crowdsourcing publishing site is best explained by my including an excerpt from the post:
"This site would offer membership to anyone who wants one. Any member of this site would have an opportunity to participate in the publishing pipeline in one or more roles. The goal of all these roles is to get a story published. Each person that is involved with a book project will receive some of the revenues from the sale of these books. The roles and their percentage of the revenues from a sale might look something like this:
Writer: 65%
Website: 15% (to run site, promote books, print books)
Critiquer/Collaborator: up to 20% (agreed beforehand, and writer can also grant from their own percentage)
Editor: up to 20% (agreed beforehand, and writer can also grant from their own percentage)"
There's more to the idea and Scott gets a lot of comments that play further with the concepts, but…
One of the most important components to Scott's idea is that the reader is deeply integrated in the site functions, the reader has their say in who is doing their job well, the reader is enabled to find what they want, easily, and benefit from a collective publishing endeavor.
Go check out the full post and don't forget to read the comments.
If you return here and express your thoughts and feelings about crowdsourced publishing, I'll have a happier day :-)
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Tagged: Crowdsource, Crowdsourcing, Jane Friedman, publish, publishing, reader, Scott VanKirk, self-publishing
