Quote 4: Permission Granted, 45 Reasons To Micro-publish

I sometimes find myself in the unenviable position of needing to discourage a writer from the pursuit of a book deal, at least in the short run.

In the past, it was quite the opposite. I used to encourage every writer I met, if I thought they had a good book idea and the skills to break in.

But then I watched one of two things happen. Either the writer did not break in and was heartbroken.

Or the writer did break in, and nothing turned out, in the end, the way the writer had hoped.

I paid close attention to the effort expended and the results gained or not gained and what I have come to realize is that the problems in publishing do not necessarily spring from writers.

We are living in a culture full of promising, able, and skilled writers.

However book publishing has created a dynamic with regards to writers that simply must change.

To be as fixated on book deals and best sellers as we are as a community of writers is to put ourselves in continual danger of being mislead.

So I suggest that we change our focus. As a community of writers, we stop obsessing about book deals and best sellers and we focus instead on readers and meeting their needs.

We build ownership and do not allow our egos to be seduced, and eventually end up with something much more reasonable and realistic than what traditional publishers can offer the majority of writers today.

This may sound radical, but it isn’t. Focusing on micro-publishing instead of on traditional publishing in the short run, is simply a signal that writers are growing up and taking responsibility for our own fates.

And this makes us a lot less easy to seduce, wrangle and lead astray in the first place.