What would Stephen King do?

Hey everyone, just had a few quick updates this week and a thought that's been rolling around in my head for quite some time.

First off, the updates- Two new short stories will be available later this month and I'm very excited about both of them. They will be published on Amazon Kindle and I'll be sure to Tweet and Facebook about them once they are. Before they go live I'll do a cover reveal (psst...the covers are excellent)- really excited about them also.

Now the little thought- You might be wondering why I titled this post what I did. Was it to use Stephen's name recognition to suck people into my blog? No, not really.

You see King was my first literary love. I began reading him when I was eleven. I know, that's probably what's wrong with me, I hear it from my wife almost constantly. His writing is the gold standard that I hold my and nearly everyone else's writing to. If there's one person who I admire as an author and all around wonderful storyteller, it's him. So when the talk of the indie publishing movement VS traditional comes up, I sometimes ask myself- what would Stephen do?



I'll go out on a limb and say if Kindle and the independent publishing option had been around in the seventies he would have jumped on the bandwagon faster than you can say "Carrie".

Why am I so sure? Because he's an author and an artist at heart and no author likes getting rejected or told his or her work is not on par with other pieces of merit. I'm not saying it isn't good to face obstacles and overcome them while bettering yourself in the process. I'm asking how many classic pieces of literature and just wonderful stories in general have died and rotted in an unknown author's desk drawer? How much has the world missed because of a handful of people who decide that the wind is right and the moon is just full enough for a story to sell?

I for one don't want to know. I think it would make me sick.

I'm sure some of you are saying, "Yeah but Joe, there's  a whole lot of crap being published right now just because there's an outlet." My answer is, yes there is. But there's a whole bunch of great stuff out there too, you just have to look for it. Also, the truly poor written drivel doesn't sell so if no one's really reading it, what's it hurting?

All I'm saying is that the contemporary greats of literature would have been hard pressed to ignore an opportunity like that of which is staring we unknowns in the face. I think each and every one of them- King, Koontz, McCammon, would have been tempted to hit the self publish button if they had that to choose from or yet another rejection slip. Because really, one opens up a world of readers to your work and the other you can use as a bookmark in one of your dusty manuscripts that even you will soon forget.

I've already chosen. And I couldn't be happier.