Daniel’s Comments (group member since Jan 30, 2014)

Daniel’s comments from the Digital Publishing group.

My background.

I have made a book by hand and been taught the rudiments of book binding. I have many excellent artist friends and discussed digital printing with a tutor at Falmouth Art College (as was) and helped print our archival quality prints for sale on A2 canon printers on several occasions. Before I ever thought about publishing I knew a good deal about how artists sell their work and a good deal about the growing quality issues - good and indifferent - to do with the digital world.

I had two agents in my time and almost been taken by Heinemann and Penguin for two different books.

It was the corruption in the main publishing conglomerates that made me realise I didn't want to work with these people, that the marketing of authors had little to do with talent and that based on the history of classical design, modern books are often lacking in fine presentation and friendly design.

I am now going to say something that will make most of you leave the group.

Writing is not a business for me, it is an art form. And excellence of expression while a talent, goes hand-in-hand with design.

I would be interested to know your own paths towards setting up digital publishing houses, whether as raising the bar for your own books or because you want to get together as authors and publish in the manner of publishing houses.

I hope this will guide me to know what folders to cerate in the group. I am not averse to foreign language sections but will need moderators for them.

Digital publishing is the future of mass title publishing, and a good deal of small distribution publishing. The Book Arts will still continue and printing by hand will be out there somewhere, but digital reproduction is so good now it rivals lithopress in colour reproduction and quality.

Beware. Everyone in publishing has always known that authors receiving their own work in book form have a huge lift, a great buzz, and that buzz can hide many flaws.

I hope all the flaws will be dealt with here and this group will receive information from a wide variety of people becoming publishers.