Self publishing Authors – strength in numbers

It’s a measure of how the publishing world is changing that there is a new association on the verge of launching.

The Alliance of Independent Authors – as described in this Bookseller article – is for authors who have self-published.  Their aims are to have a joint presence on the publishing stage.  

Only, say, five years ago, a self-published author would have been regarded with a fair degree of suspicion and disdain by traditional publishers.  As gate-keepers of the printed word, it was felt that anyone who had bypassed them had done so by creeping below a permitted standard.

With the advent of print-on demand, and the growth in e-books, that view has shifted.  An author that self-publishes may have decided to bypass the traditional publishers, rather than have been rejected by them.

Authors self-publish for a variety of reasons, and I hope the new Alliance will help them vocalise those reasons, and help them understand the task of self-publishing.

Ending on a note of warning – anyone can write a book, but not everyone can write a book worth reading.  Along the same lines, anyone can self-publish, but not everyone can act as a publisher.

If you’re a self-published author – what are your thoughts on the subject?  And if you’ve decided not to go down that route – why not?

February 6, 2012

Posted in Blog.