As the year ends, authors, publishers and readers are recalling 2012 as a watershed moment: Self-publishing has shaken its “vanity press” origins and moved mainstream. For the recently-concluded Miami Book Fair, Copyright Clearance Center presented a special panel to discuss the implications; Miami-based freelance journalist Carlos Harrison likewise covered the story, Self-Publishing Industry Explodes, Brings Rewards and Challenges, for the Miami Herald business section.
In Miami, Harrison – a prize-winning journalist and book author – spoke with CCC’s Chris Kenneally to share what he had learned from his reporting.
“Self-publishing makes the old-school publishing houses very nervous,” Harrison said. “Some of them are actually buying up the smaller companies that are helping writers get into the Internet.
“The key thing for every self-publishing writer that everybody says over and over again: you need to get an editor. You need to have somebody else look at it,” Harrison continued. “If the readers come to it and say, this has typos and it’s sloppy and this is missing or something else, then they’re going to take that against the prose itself and against the story itself, and the next time around, it’s going to be harder for you to get people to pick it up.
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