{"id":2628,"date":"2011-03-31T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=2628"},"modified":"2011-03-31T21:28:15","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T02:28:15","slug":"self-publishing-ebooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2011\/03\/31\/self-publishing-ebooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Self Publishing Ebooks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Gutterball Cover.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/images\/gutterball-cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"333\" \/>In the mid 90s, there was a big self publishing trend&#8230;with comic books.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 90s, I wrote comics for independent publishers who, just because they self published, found a certain degree of success. The companies I worked with, no matter what level of promotion, always seemed to break even&#8230;or make a profit.<\/p>\n<p>When my wife and I started self publishing a book, the bubble had burst. Our numbers were sad compared to the numbers I had seen just years earlier, but our numbers were still big compared to others. Especially after some positive press in some trade publications.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Self Publishing E-Books<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Lately, there&#8217;s a trend in self publishing e-books that reminds me of the self publishing trend in comics.<\/p>\n<p>Lines are drawn in the sand and people swear that one way is <strong>the<\/strong> right way to do things.<\/p>\n<p>(It&#8217;s rarely that simple.)<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Can the Future of E-Books be Seen in the Comic Book Self Publishing Boom of the 90s?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I knew and still know people who saw it all fall apart in the 90s when they self published comic books.<\/p>\n<p>But&#8230;<a title=\"Brian Denham's website.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.briandenham.com\/\">I saw others succeed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know what the future of e-books publishing holds, but I see similarities to comic books in the 90s.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"manda Hocking's blog.\" href=\"http:\/\/amandahocking.blogspot.com\/\">Amanda Hocking<\/a> just signed with St. Martin&#8217;s Press and inked film rights for her books&#8230;much like some comic book publishers signed with Image and other comic book publishers after doing their own things in the 90s. (If you like Amada Hocking&#8217;s stuff, check out <a title=\"Jason Letts Twitter feed.\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/foreverjuly\">Jason Letts<\/a>&#8211;one of the nicer guys you&#8217;ll meet online.)<\/p>\n<p>Make no mistake&#8211;these people are not selling out&#8230;they are finally reaching what they always wanted.<\/p>\n<p>And I think that&#8217;s a wonderful thing!<\/p>\n<h2><strong>History Often Repeats Itself<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I saw a lot of people fall during the self publishing craze of the 90s&#8230;but I also saw a lot of people succeed.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m seeing that again with e-books.<\/p>\n<p>I only hope that <a title=\"My Amazon.com e-books (so far).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/qid=1301622587\/ref=sr_nr_seeall_1?ie=UTF8&amp;keywords=christopher%20gronlund&amp;rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Achristopher%20gronlund%2Ci%3Astripbooks\">my forays into self publishing e-books<\/a> fares better than comic books.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s only one way to find out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the mid 90s, there was a big self publishing trend&#8230;with comic books. In the early 90s, I wrote comics for independent publishers who, just because they self published, found a certain degree of success. The companies I worked with, no matter what level of promotion, always seemed to break even&#8230;or make a profit. When [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}