Serious authors often squirm when they have to reveal that they’re self-publishing their books. That’s because self-publishing is often confused with vanity publishing, that backwater of the publishing industry where snake-oil salesmen still flourish.
But now Seth Godin has given the field of self-publishing a shot of adrenalin. In mediabistro today, he claims he’ll be self-publishing from now on. The way he sees it, today’s publishing industry is too cumbersome and, well, archaic:
“I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread… I really don’t think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work.”
Here’s the complete interview.