Have I gained an interest in self-publishing too late?
After reading this New York Times Article, I’m thinking that I just moved to the Wild West at the tail-end of the period of discovery, after all the gold had been panhandled, all the saloon fights had been fought, and all the stagecoaches robbed. Well, I never would have robbed a stagecoach anyway, but you get my drift despite my poor analogy:
For romance and mystery novelists who embraced digital technology, loved chatting up their fans and wrote really, really fast, the last few years have been a golden age. Fiction underwent a boom unseen since the postwar era, when seemingly every liberal arts major set his sights on the Great American Novel.
Now, though, the world has more stories than it needs or wants to pay for. In 2010, Amazon had 600,000 e-books in its Kindle store. Today it has more than three million. The number of books on Smashwords, which distributes self-published writers, grew 20 percent last year. The number of free books rose by one-third.
-David Streitfeld, NY Times, Amazon Offers All You Can Eat Publishing, Dec. 27, 2014
My thoughts, as a person new to this world, who has yet to hit the proverbial “PUBLISH” button on any self-publishing platform, but entertains thoughts of doing so one day:
1) 600,000 books in 2010 to 3,000,000 today. Wow. Kind of makes me wish I could hop in a time machine and travel back to 2010.
2) On the other hand, is there anything that can be done about the glut of self-publishing? I suppose we can’t start saying “You get to self-publish, but sorry, you don’t get to.” After all, that’s what the Indie Market has always been against, isn’t it?
3) What do authors think about KDP Select? I’d like to know. If you’ve had experience with it, feel free to share.
4) If you have any thoughts at all, feel free to share.
5) 600,000 to 3,000,000. Sorry, I know I already said it, but I have still yet to pick my jaw up off the floor.
Bookshelf Battle 