Cory Doctorow, having finished yet another novel that none of us will see for a year and a half, bemoans the glacial pace of the publishing industry in a piece for Publishers Weekly. The hardest part of being a writer, as Doctorow notes, is getting the manuscript in on time and being forced to wait 18 months to see a finished book—an “object of commerce” in Doctorow’s words—on bookstore shelves.
Doctorow goes on to explore the wilderness of self-publishing, arriving at the same conclusion I did: “To be blunt: Every piece of With a Little Help that I didn’t pay minute attention to has slipped through the cracks. Not just one or two pieces, but every element I took my eye off, even for a second.” Doctorow pledges not to do this again, not being interested in farming out the tasks that normally fall to the agent and publisher.
Instead, Doctorow plans on focusing his efforts where the money is: Limited editions. “Over and over again, when I describe With a Little Help to people, they fixate on the limited editions” he writes. “I’ve had dozens of emails from people practically begging to buy the US$275 editions I’m doing—and I stand to make US$50,000 or more from them.”
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