Publishing

For someone starting a business, it’s possible to do it alone, but it’s easier with help. There are limits to what you know, limits to how much you can get done, and limits to where it’s valuable to spend your time. Tech companies typically start with someone who knows how to make the product (i.e., Wozniak) and someone who knows how to sell it (i.e., Jobs). In traditional publishing, the co-founder is similar to the agent or acquiring editor. You, the author, create the product, the others know how to sell it. They’re more than just a hired sales force [...]

When startups talk with investors, one of the main questions they have to answer is “What problem are you trying to solve?”. It tells investors about the startup’s understanding of the market, the size of the opportunity they want to chase, and their ability to communicate with potential customers about how a new product or service can be helpful. In short, it gives an investor a summary of the startup’s potential. Writers have plenty of good (and bad) reasons to go indie. Money, control, and opportunities which might not exist in traditional publishing are easy to identify. But indie publishing [...]

This is the first in a series comparing indie publishing to technology startups. I’ll follow up with more posts looking at the lessons indie publishers can learn from the tech world. Indie publishing is awash in pricing discussions. Joe Konrath and his outstanding blog have been a primary venue for the issue. John Locke selling a million books launched another million posts. Dean Wesley Smith tackles it from (among others) a highly instructive by-the-numbers perspective. One of my favorite blogs, The Passive Voice takes it on in a couple of posts (the last also includes a shameless plug, which makes [...]