Longtime readers of TBTP pages are aware of my sporadic career as a freelance author. During the olden days of the 20th century, I published a number of travel books and nonfiction reference books, but eventually gave up the struggle after some dispiriting experiences with publishers and distributers, as well as having entire books plagiarized and published in the UK and Canada. More recently, I considered self-publishing a book but after my agent at the time failed to sell the project to a traditional publisher, I eventually dropped the entire project, but did learn a bit about the self-publishing route. If you’re at all interested in the process, check-out the definitive take on self-publishing from the celebrated Kevin Kelly.

Everything I Know About Self-Publishing. Kevin Kelly, prolific author and editor (Wired, Whole Earth Catalog, Cool Tools) gives a long but concise overview of the publishing biz. (16-pg PDF here). In this article Kelly uses a wide-ranging definition of self-publishing to include blogs, newsletter, audiobooks, and video. Nevertheless a strong focus is placed on book publishing. “Established mass-market publishers are failing, and they are merging to keep going. Traditional book publishers have lost their audience, which was bookstores, not readers. It’s very strange but New York book publishers do not have a database with the names and contacts of the people who buy their books. Instead, they sell to bookstores, which are disappearing. They have no direct contact with their readers; they don’t “own” their customers.