Ebookishness

Two and half years ago I wrote a blog post called The Wrong End which asserted that self-publishing was less than ideal for the aspiring writer.

Obviously the landscape of publishing has shifted in the intervening time. Now that there are more ways to publish and distribute books in electronic formats than there were in 2008, one can set up shop as a self-publisher and not be saddled with boxes of books to lug around and wave in people's faces and you can have large corporations like Amazon and Apple do the heavy lifting of making your work available to the world.

This doesn't mean I entirely rescind what I said previously about the hard work from the wrong end. The ease of distribution still doesn't mean that the hard work of polishing the work to be the best it can should be ignored. Even having the wonders of social media to tell the world about your book won't help much if the book isn't that good to begin with.

But I am curious about the possibilities of ebooks and I'm embarking on a little experiment with it. I have a rough draft of a wee advice book on free writing techniques, which I'm looking at revising and expanding to publish as an ebook and possibly on paper via LuLu. I'll probably post a bit about the process as I go and naturally I'll pass on the link so you can buy it when it's done, if you are so inclined.

Next post, I'll talk a bit about what I've done so far and what I still need to do.