I am hoping that there will be more discussions around this topic
because I feel the implications are tremendous for publishing.
Many times, we at CinnamonTeal, are called vanity publishers. We are
at pains to explain to them that that is not the case because we
respect the basic premise of books - that they should be written and
presented well. So we pay a lot of attention to the finer points: we
insist on at least one round of editing, ensure that the book is
properly typeset and issue an ISBN and a barcode, among other things.
Often we have authors who resist such instructions. They do not value
editing and wonder why so much attention is paid to widows and orphans
or why the imprint page is needed. Some have deserted us for those
that do not insist on these aspects.
All this background because one wonders what happens now that Amazon
has allowed authors to self-publish and directly sell through them.
Now that they have a marketing channel easily available to them, will
authors care too much about the finer aspects of publishing a book? Or
will we see a deluge of badly written, badly edited and badly typeset
books?
Thoughts?
= Leonard