gotta raise overhead on each and every book,
as a tax shield for the occasional blockbuster…

and hey, being _big_ is what dinosaurs do best;
$1500 conferences on what’s “new” this quarter.

but let me tell you what the mammals will do…

they will be authors who shun any middlemen.

they’ll release their books, for free, to the wild.
they’ll use free tools to connect to their readers.

they’ll find fans who’ll feed back gifts to them,
repeat-readers who will await their new work…

they’ll nurture a relationship with those people,
form a strong bond between author and reader.

they’ll communicate with them in ways that will
transcend the superficial hype found elsewhere,
and in doing that, help create an honest world,
which serves our needs better than the old one.

they’ll do hard work to build long-term careers,
_careers_ that will mock the ever-transient and
fleeting nature of “this month’s best-sellers”…

they will laugh when corporate bookstores fall
like dominos. brick-and-mortar? yeah, right…
a better description would be a house of cards.
didn’t you notice all the record-stores closed?
what made you think you were any different?

they will understand, deeply within their d.n.a.,
that we need to go to the roots of storytelling,
that we need to recover our _basic_humanity_,
and they will scoff at the stupidity of the notion
this is all “managing” or “deals” or “marketing”,
or “a complex set of revenue opportunities”…

they will give away their books — free! — yet
make more money than most authors ever did,
and it will be money their fans gave voluntarily,
_after_ they read the book. no more scam jobs.

they will entice those fans to be _collaborators_
– and the fans will be _thrilled_ to participate.
somebody out there has a photograph that will
be a great illustration to accompany some page,
and that someone will appear with that photo…
their fans will happily furnish error-reports, so
the books quickly move to a state of perfection
that they couldn’t obtain with “quality-control”
even if they were willing to pay a bundle for it.

readers love authors, and authors love readers.
it’ll be like church, without any priest scandals.
churches have lived for centuries on donations.

get a clue-train. it’s all about the conversation.

there is dialog happening, and happening now.
a one-way monologue doesn’t cut it any more…

and nobody has to go through any gatekeepers
to reach an audience any more. that’s just silly.

and — on some level — you know it, and well…

after all, you put this on a blog, didn’t you?
you didn’t turn it into a book, find an agent,
seek out a publisher, and have it all “vetted”.

you wrote it up, you put it out there, and now
you’ve got feedback, whether you like it or not.

so, by your very own actions, you have shown
that you have absolutely no need for publishers.

neither does anyone else…

-bowerbird