The trailblazers category consist of writers worth emulating and supporting by buying their work–writers blazing new trails in independent publishing.  (Excerpts only with links).

2)  You think self-publishing is the way to go, whether you’re a veteran or a newbie.  You’ve investigated some of the popular reader sites where authors can publish their work and you’re interested or you already have works posted there.  But you want to to post your great opus on your own turf and get 100% of the spoils.

3) You write nonfiction and want to grow community to market your cause and your e-book on your own site.

4)  You have backlist you want to distribute to your loyal readers, and don’t feel like helping the publishing middlemen make even more dough off your books.

It seems e-book authors with a following should be selling their own works from their own sites where they control the process and keep all the money.  I know some are content giving away 60-70% or more of the proceeds of their book sales to e-pubs, because they don’t want to worry about the technical and business end of things.  It’s what allows e-publishers to make money.

There are advantages to having your work on a site heavily trafficked by readers.  Writers should definitely use these sites to grow their readership.  On the popular self publishing sites (Kindle, Smashwords), writers have to figure out how to format, design covers, and upload their works themselves, along with marketing, but the sites still take 15-30% of the cut for downloading!  That’s worth it for their readers to have access to your work, but what if you already have readers?

Writers do need to have their works on sites with high reader traffic to grow a readership.  But they also should then have the capacity to offer premium works to their loyal readers from their own sites and pocket 100% of the proceeds.  Often authors don’t make the effort to funnel profit to their own pockets, not because they don’t want or need the money–they simply don’t know how.

My goal is to show writers how to make money from their own sites.  It’s a lofty aim.  The question is how can I enable the average nontechy writer to be able to do this, realistically?

The following are the things I know are true:

1) Expecting people to sign up and figure it out themselves isn’t working.  If they could do it, they would have done it already.

2) Outcomes matter.  I can write whatever here, but showing the results are what counts.  I need to be able to point to writers with concrete results.

I’m working on a course titled Getting Started to walk writers through setting up and managing their own book (or any writing) marketing site where they’ll have the capacity to distribute and sell their own digital works.

I’ll break the process down into doable steps that are realistic for the majority of motivated writers to handle via a variety of learning media.

I’m looking for a very limited number of initial beta testers to work with me on course formulation.  I want writers who will agree to work through all the lessons and give me honest feedback on each one.

I’m planning thirty lessons.  People want to get started quickly, but there is a lot to cover.  That’s okay, because only motivated people are suited to manage their own writing business anyway.  A daily lesson for a month to get writers started is realistic.  Thirty days to managing, marketing, and selling your work from your own custom web site.

For beta testers the process will take several months, with a lesson released every few days, instead of daily

Beta testers get free Pro membership for a year and access to the beta lessons along with the final ones.  I’m invested in their success because I want fabulous outcomes, results, and testimonials!  Over 250 themes are available to choose from, including expensive premium themes.  Sometimes simple is best, so those themes are there too.  Pros get an online store, PDF anti-piracy software, even an affiliate platform included, and you’ll learn to use all these tools.  These are premium features that aren’t free.

Writers always hold copyright and ownership to their own works on WritersRooms and no fees or percentages are ever collected for writers sales.

Fill out the from below if you’re interested in being considered for beta testing.  There are only a very few slots left.

P.S.  There’s no cost involved.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com

http://www.michaelastackpole.com/

http://www.michaelastackpole.com/

Their slices of pie (the money an author makes for their stories) are dwindling.

It’s not complicated.  If authors are publishing on their own, especially the popular ones who make money for hordes of middle men, and publishing is driven by reader demand and popularity instead of mega corporations–there will be no need for agents and authors will keep that 15% in their own pockets.

The article is well worth reading and digesting for its insights.   I think the best new model is one that does away with the likes of Andrew Wiley entirely and authors get to keep their profits instead of doling percentages out to middle men.

Fifteen percent of immortality

This is big news that many blogs and news outlets are analyzing and speaking out about.  Big corporate publishers are pissed because they see a threat to their profits. Of course, nobody is pointing out that major authors can now do it themselves and keep the bulk of their money for themselves.  What if the name authors released books on their websites, on Kindle, and a few other places online…AND they could afford to pay the pricey distribution costs to get their physical books in chains and bookstores too?  Now, that would be a revolution that most are too sheepish to consider.  Rather, it’s Long Live Corporate Servitude!  Maybe Odyssey Editions will be a big corporation in time, maybe not.  Doesn’t matter to authors.  It’s simply a bigger cut to an agent run company.

The Wylie Agency and Amazon shocked the publishing world with a deal publish 20 eBooks through the literary agency’s brand new Odyssey Editions imprint–selling the books exclusively through the Amazon Kindle Store. We’ve collected some of the strongest responses below.

Random House spokesperson Stuart Applebaum spoke out this morning: “We are disappointed by Mr. Wylie’s actions, which we dispute. Last night, we sent a letter to Amazon disputing their rights to legally sell these titles, which are subject to active Random House publishing agreements. Upon assessing our business options, we will be taking appropriate action.”

Macmillan CEO John Sargent spoke out this afternoon: “I am appalled, however, that Andrew has chosen to give his list exclusively to a single retailer. A basic tenet of publishing is that our function is to reach as many readers as we can. We disseminate our books and the ideas within them as broadly as possible.”

Other publications also analyzed the news:
New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Teleread
Future Book
A Reading Odyssey

–via Mediabistro