So, a couple of days ago I published my book ‘Of Assassins
and Kings’ on kindle and I thought I might start a blog, now I’m faced with the
question of what to write. Well, the most appropriate subject would seem to be
kindle, although that doesn’t give me much to write about since it really was
very easy, so easy that I can’t help thinking that the days of new righters
looking for representation are somewhat over. For those who’ve never tried to
get published, which kind of includes me since I never actually sent the book
to any publishing houses or agents, I should probable explain. The answer is
that the road to traditional publishing is long, arduous and often unrewarding.
It is so long in-fact that it is quite possible for publishing to take longer
that the process of writing the book, up to 18 months for your book to hit the
shelves, and that’s after getting an agent. It’s no better after publishing as
limited print runs will mean that your book is off the shelves after only a
couple of years. All this means that most authors never earn out of their
advance, assuming they even got an advance.
By contrast, kindle direct publishing requires only a few
hours on the computer to up load to amazon, then you wait twelve hours and
there it is, your book on amazon, up for sale. To be honest I don’t expect to
make any money off publishing, but to be honest I don’t care. I would if I had
gone to the great bother of finding an agent and getting published, but I
didn’t. I wrote the book for fun and any money I do make is simply a bonus.
My advice to anyone else who has written a book is, publish
on amazon you might get lucky and find yourself rich. If not you’ll have lost
nothing and had some fun writing. As regards the change I think this will make
to publishing it’s quite simple. I don’t think kindle will kill it off; there
will always be a place for traditional paper books. But I do think that there
will come a time when new authors will simply not bother and amazon will become
a proving ground for hopeful authors. Those who are successful in this arena
will then find themselves approached by literary agents interested in their
work. In essence, agents will turn into something more like head-hunters.
As regards the book, well, it’s on amazon, check it out and
judge for yourself, at some point I’ll put the prologue up on this blog for
people to read.
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