[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Out of curiosity, why self-published? I gather you didn't attempt to go the traditional route?

Excellent question. To go the traditional route, I would have had to find an agent who would have to find a publisher. I figured the time frame on that would be about 4 years realistically and there was about a 10% chance of even succeeding. I decided to invest that effort into self publishing. I think ebooks are the way of the future and decided to take a chance on it after a great deal of debate.

Why should it become illegal to print on paper? Paper is made from trees. Trees are a renewable resource. (And paper is hardly the only thing trees are used for. After all, trees produce wood, and wood has myriad uses.)

It is a fairly slow growing renewable resource and there is not enough of that resource to supply 6 billion people for very long.

Publishers are essentially that now. While you can argue that they do it poorly, selling books is what publishers do.

What will differ will be the form in which the content is offered and the manner in which it is distributed.

(My own feeling is that ebooks will cannibalize the mass market paperback.)

I believe you are right.

Indie writers are already flooding the market. The Internet is now the world's largest slush pile, and the challenge is to find a worthwhile offering.

But reviews may not be sufficient. Consider the state of Amazon.com, where reviews might be glowing praise posted by the author or the author's sock puppets, and not actual comment by satisfied readers. Personally, I pay attention to reviews by people I know are real reviewers whose taste I understand. (And it doesn't have to be a good review - there are reviewers whose review will make me say "He hated it, so I'll probably love it, because his taste is diametrically opposite mine.")

I take supposed customer reviews with a 5lb sack of salt.

Indie writers are new within the last 5 years I believe. New in terms of human history.

Reviews in and of themselves are not sufficient. They are an important aspect of the process though.

Dream on. I don't care how good your book is. You will not be successful simply because you wrote it and have it available. You will succeed (if you do at all), because you have successfully let the people who might be interested in what you wrote know that your work exists, and gotten them to give you a try. The majority of your time will not be spent writing, it will be spent marketing.

This is what I said: "Writers will succeed by paying attention to the market and writing books."
What I meant to say is "Writers will succeed by paying attention to the marketing and writing books. I agree with you about the marketing! Still, it doesn't matter how good the marketing is if the writer doesn't write.