Wednesday 23 May 2012

Cooperation?

Steam has been pouring out of my ears all week. In one of those coincidences which seem to happen as a needed push or kick, tales from writer friends who have publishing contracts with the traditional big name publishers popped into my inbox or post box and all of them conspire to shove me towards self publishing.

I cannot believe what publishing companies can do. Apart from the one friend who been dumped because of lack of sales I have been steaming over the editing done to another writer pal's first novel.

This writer's editors chopped the really marvellous ending and insisted on a smaltzy, sloppy, not accurate historically ending be written instead. The novel is a great literary historical. The bloody fool editors keep trying to turn it into a Hollywood action adventure. Quite spoilt the story with their additions which are supposed to make the novel sell more! I seriously doubt they will help sales.

But from all this fury has come the determination to join with a couple of writer friends and make a self publishing cooperative. We aim to run an experiment and see if our novels, the ones agents and editors like but..., will sell as ebooks.