The New Paradigm of Publishing

More and more writers are getting their books published and to readers utilizing internet avenues and new online publishing models (companies such as AmazonEncore) not available before...New models such as the new-developing middle ground publishing field I posted about yesterday on my other blog Writers Thought for Today Blog http://alturl.com/tnap

Writers are establishing online platforms by giving some of their work away for free and getting feedback and editing from the readers, entering online contests, producing serial podcasts, etc... and many are being picked up by online publishing companies that will also sell POD written versions of their books.

Exciting stuff happening!

Regan McMahon, writing for SFGate of the San Francisco Chronicle, has some details of just how three Bay Area writers got published using internet avenues and bypassing the old agent-publisher-bookstore gatekeeper model:

In the old days - which, in this case, you might define as "two years ago" - getting your book published would entail finding an agent, sending it off to publishing houses like Random House or, when that failed, paying a vanity press to put the thing in print.

All of that has changed, thanks to radical shifts in the publishing industry and, oh yeah, the Internet.

Here are some examples of how a few Bay Area authors recently got into print:

Retired occupational therapist turned writer Francine Howard of El Cerrito had a short stack of unpublished manuscripts collecting dust while agents kept rejecting her queries. Then in January 2009, she entered her novel of interracial love in the Jim Crow South, "Page From a Tennessee Journal," in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel Award contest, whose top prize was a contract with Penguin Books.

She didn't win, but for making it to the second round, in a field of 6,500 hopefuls, her prize was two Amazon Vine (customer) reviews of a 5,000-word excerpt of her book. They were both raves, and that May, an editor from the Web site's then-week-old imprint called AmazonEncore called with an offer to publish her book. It came out last month.

Berkeley author Seth Harwood, who teaches writing and literature at Stanford University and City College of San Francisco, wrote his first book, the gritty crime novel "Jack Wakes Up," in 2005. He began posting 50-minute podcast episodes from it on Podiobooks.com in 2006, establishing a marketing platform for his work. He made a print-on-demand deal with Breakneck Books in March 2008, and then Three Rivers Press, an imprint of Random House, scooped him up and published the book in May 2009.

Read more http://alturl.com/ifdy