Monday, August 23, 2010

A book packager/author goes e-books

From Seth Godin's blog:

Linchpin will be the last book I publish in a traditional way.

One of the poxes on an author's otherwise blessed life is people who ask, "what's your next book," even if some of them haven't read the last one. (Jeff did, of course). To answer your question, this book is my next book. I think the ideas in Linchpin are my life's work, and I'm going to figure out the best way to spread those ideas, in whatever form they take. I also have some new, smaller projects in the works, and no doubt some bigger ones around the corner.

A little background: For ten years or so, beginning in 1986, I was a book packager. Sort of like a movie producer, but for books. My team and I created 120 published books and pitched another 600 ideas, all of which were summarily rejected. Some of the published books were flops, others were huge bestsellers. It was a lot of fun. As a book packager, you wake up in the morning and say, "what sort of book can I invent/sell/organize/write/produce today?"

It took a year or so, but I finally figured out that my customer wasn't the reader or the book buyer, it was the publisher. If the editor didn't buy my book, it didn't get published. Here's the thing: I liked having editors as my customers. These are smart, motivated and really nice people who are happy to talk with you about what they want and what they believe. Good customers to have. (In all of those years, only one publisher stole any of my ideas, no check ever bounced, and no publisher ever broke a promise to me).

for the rest go here:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

4 comments:

Peter L. Winkler said...

http://www.observer.com/2010/daily-transom/seth-godin-cant-quit-qutting-publishing

Ron Scheer said...

Thanks for reminding me about Seth. A decade ago before our career paths diverged, I found him a refreshing voice who knew how to get people's ear. He's done it again.

sayed said...

The postmen serving these people must have hated them ha…..ha..!
www.babycell.in

sell gold la said...

I've never heard of a book packager before. I guess I thought the author or whoever worked for a publisher found someone to publish the works. I grew up reading and have always loved books, I think this would be a great profession for me! Seems like I might be hard to get into, though.

-Tatyana