Friday 16 January 2009

POD...The New Year's Shock Email

I've got very mixed feelings about this. I received the email from Authonomy as part of an exclusive crowd of approximately a couple of thousand. Some are angry, some are excited, me? I'm confused.

On one hand, a most attractive offer, it has HC behind it (as the owners of Authonomy), it offers you the chance to get into print (and isn't that what we all really want?). On the other hand, POD takes you book out of the running to get it in the hands of someone who might want to publish it in a conventional way.

Then there's the question of who will buy. Who will buy? Auth is mostly composed of other writers. So, other writers, friends, family and who else?? I would like to think that a few complete strangers who have never put pen to paper in the cause of writing a book would like to buy mine, and read it, may be release it into the wild to allow other complete strangers to enjoy it.

But.... this little voice keeps whispering in my ear.... you could get published in a month or so... quite seductive that little voice!

I'm going to stick to the game plan. Almost certainly. I've been too good at dilly-dallying and taking the wrong path before. I want my shot at a contract, and even if I have a pile of rejection slips at the end of it, I will have taken my best shot first.

4 comments:

Lauri Shaw said...

I'm not angry. I'm just done. I don't feel that this was handled well, which makes me not want to be affiliated with the site any more.

Please stay in touch. I met some wonderful people there and you're one of them.

Lauri

DadsDinner said...

Yeah, Print on Demand isn't something to rush into and Authonomy doesn't seem like a particularly good place to do it.

If HC picked a few books, input a minimal amount of proof-reading and design, and then promoted the whole lot together as new writing, that would be something else. This is just an attempt to squeeze out a few sales without taking any responsibility for content.

Authonomy is seriously ceasing to be worth the effort of participating...

Edmund.

Gillian McDade said...

POD is not something to consider lightly! I would step well back and continue to seek other routes.

Mockingbird said...

If I POD... I'm inclining towards something called Booklocker (so far).