ePublishing

A couple of years ago, I worked on a project that included building a recommendation engine for books. It seemed like a worthy goal until I looked at my bedside table, which was covered with books I hadn’t read yet. And the floor around the table. And my home office desk. And my desk at

Update 2/19/2014: After I posted this, a friend pointed me toward a post that delineated the costs of the various steps toward self-publishing. Developmental editing costs $45-$65 per hour. The minimum cost for 280 typescript pages is $2,520. Maximum could be as much as $18,000 depending how much work the book needs. Copy-editing costs $25-$50

Science fiction writer Charlie Stross recently wrote an interesting post called “Why I Don’t Self-Publish.” It isn’t necessarily designed to discourage writers from self-publishing, but it does show why the process can be daunting — and why the publishers expect the lion’s share of all revenue. Here’s a partial list of what a publisher does:

A new format for books priced at less than a tenth of the current hardcover price? It’ll destroy publishing, right? Well, it didn’t the first time. In 1939, Pocket Books launched the paperback, a 25-cent version of books that usually sold for $2.75. Critics said that no one would buy. Some said it would bankrupt

In 1974, former World Bank Economist Anne Krueger wrote a famous article defining “rent-seeking.” The term, of course, stems from the practice of gaining ownership of land and forcing tenants to pay rent. As an economic principle, the idea is that rather than creating new wealth through growth, some people/organizations seek to gain economic advantage

Tim Parks in The New York Review of Books, explores the question’s history in under 2000 words. Parks doesn’t take on the actual historical role of the writer, only the perception left on those attempting the profession. Let’s leave aside how accurate this is historically; it’s what they taught us and it got stuck in