Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I'm not sure Rowling could advertise *for herself.* Not sure that she'd be able to contact the various newspapers, blog sites, and tv personae necessary, if she didn't have some rather huge media companies shilling for her.
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Some imaginative fiction authors have it in them to do everything needed for the indie route, and some do not.
With research-based non-fiction, though, even a polymath author won't do -- it takes a team. If you
look at the kind of projects Mike Shatzkin was involved in before becoming a consultant, you might get a better idea where he is coming from.
I put disintermediation of publishers in the same category as replacement of newspapers by bloggers. The best blogger is indeed better than than the worst professional print journalist. But more opinion slingers does not make up for fewer professionals monitoring city hall -- or Afghanistan.
There is nothing stopping Amazon from giving a top journalist the kind of advance needed to go to Afghanistan. But it just doesn't seem in their DNA to do that.