While walking to lunch the other day with my wife–we often go down the street to a Ruby Tuesdays where I get the ribs and she gets the salad bar–Robin was talking about recent happenings in the publishing world. She was explaining about self-published newcomer Amanda Hocking signing with a traditional publisher for $2,000,000, and Barry Eisler, a New York Times Best Seller, turning down $500,000 to self-publish. Along the way she mentioned something about me in all this, but I didn’t catch it as I was concentrating on watching traffic while crossing a street. Robin doesn’t believe in the dominance of cars on the road and I need to be on constant guard to pull her back from an oncoming bumper when she pushes her principles too far.
In any case, whatever she said didn’t sink in. This morning however, I was reading an email from a fan that mentioned he saw my name mentioned in a blog discussion between Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath. It reminded me of that thing I almost heard Robin say in between the Ford Explorer and the Toyota Camry so I went to look and found this:
Joe: I feel all writers need to be made aware that there is finally an option. Not just an option, but an actual preferable alternative to signing away your rights
Barry: It’s inevitable that more writers will be realizing this is true. It’s being demonstrated by more and more self-published authors: you, Amanda Hocking, Scott Nicholson, Michael J. Sullivan, HP Mallory, Victorine Lieske, BV Larson, Terri Reid, LJ Sellers, John Locke, Blake Crouch, Lee Goldberg, Aaron Patterson, Jon F. Merz, Selena Kitt, hopefully me… 🙂
Mr. Eisler is a New York Times Best Selling author and he knows I exist? He can pull my name off the top of his head? Wow. I’m amazed and flattered. For any writers reading this blog – the discussion between Joe and Barry is pretty interesting. It’s long 13,000 words but well worth the read. I myself have stayed away from the frog and monkey portion – but I’m a firm believe in live and let live so I won’t think less of you if you peek at it.
Also in the news…
The folks over at The Dead Robot Society recently interviewed Robin and myself about writing, self-publishing and the deal with Orbit. You can listen to the whole thing by going here. They are a fun lot and endured our long-winded, odd brand of sarcasm as we did our best to answer their questions, that ranged from if I outline before writing a book, to the philosophy behind Ridan Publishing.
I’m not a very good speaker, but they are, so just plug your ears when I start speaking.