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This article on a proposed "e-publishing bubble" was a fascinating, and I must admit, painful article to read.
I've self published some books lately and I've also had a couple short stories tradtitionally published. Though, I'm in my early thirties, it feels like I've been in it for the long haul and have adjusted to all the developments as they came up. I was anti-epublishing, then I changed my tune. I've studied creative writing at college and highschool, went to conferences, participated in Zoetrope, blogged, queried, submited, had interested agents... you get the idea.
This article could be very frustrating to me.
It basically says that after five years of work on a novel, the timing is off for you again, everyone's came out with their book, and your work will be buried. Meanwhile, good luck with traditional publishing because it's in crisis mode as well. A rock and a hard place and a good measure of stigma to boot.
However, I'm not upset, I feel halfway decent. There's more to this story than money. If you're proud of what you've done, you've done your best and you did it all for the right reasons, the outcome becomes less important.
I'm not sure if it was Orwell or Hemingway who said something to the effect that "the best writing was written from a sense of outrage..." implying that real writing, the best writing is an attempt to criticize and thereby improve the status quo of a society. Don't get me wrong, I like money. But that quote is to me what all this effort is really about. It's not about trying to calculate what your hourly rate would be or when you can recoup your costs. Come on, people! This is a labor of love and we're privilaged to even live in a country where we have a title-shot.
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