[bksvol-discuss] Chris's books

  • From: Nan Hawthorne <hathorn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:54:30 -0700

Chris and all,

Regarding your vignettes book, I have long thought about writing a book, or a web site or blog, called "Vitreous Humor" that would be a combination of jokes.. nice ones.. and other observations about the blind world and sighted world. E.g., "How many blind people does it take to change a light bulb?" "What light bulb?" I have a feeling this would be hugely popular. I don't intend to pursue this, so I give the idea to you.

I do really encourage looking into the Independent Authors Guild www.independentauthorsguild.org to learn about indie publishing. The group does not charge for membership yet... and is essentially a Yahoogroup http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IAG-members/ . The world of publishing these days is entirely commercial and profit motivated, which is just how it goes, but I feel a lot of books don't get published as a result that really should see the light of day.

A couple companies don't charge up front for publishing.. Lulu.com for instance. They take a chunk of the purchase price when someone orders the book on their site. And one of my favorite aspects of Lulu is that many of their books are available as e-books and accessible. If you want a book to show up in e- book and/or print on Amazon, let's say, you will need an ISBN number but that is only $100 which is doable compared to the chunk of change some/most of the PODs charge to publish.

When I think of the market/audience for books by and about blind people that could be published if the authors knew about indie publishing.. the mind boggles. The role of the Independent Authors Guild is to help people navigate the POD and small press industry but also to encourage standards of writing. Too many people think "self-published" means lousy books.. but it just isn't true. Yes, there is lots of junk, but there is some quality out there that just doesn't not qualify as profitable to the literary industrial complex. I have made a point of encouraging indie authors to offer their books to Bookshare which they are pleased to do. One remarkable first novel on Bookshare is Brandy Purdy's "The Confession of Piers Gaveston" - a novel with such exquisite use of the first person narrative that I challenge any of you to read it and say whether it is not high quality. And I trust my own novel will rank up there somewhere.

So I encourage you, Chris, and others not to look down on indie publishing but to join IAG and learn what the recording industry, filmmakers and software developers already know..do it yourself does not necessarily mean trash.

Nan Hawthorne
www.medieval-novels.com

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