"In a country where the written word is slowly dying, Indiana is the state where they will draw a chalk line around the corpse."
So says fellow blogger Mr. Termineus, a native of Indiana. Yet there is a light at the end of that dark, dark tunnel. It is the inviting glow of iUniverse.
Not dead yet, the written word in Indiana. Bertram Capital, the owner of Author Solutions, Inc., parent of iUniverse and AuthorHouse, has looked at Bloomington, Indiana, and found their new home. If it suits the likes of John Mellenkamp, it'll do for the expanding vanity press.
Folks in Bloomington are pleased to learn that there will be a few new jobs coming to town, when they might have feared the loss of employment. Last September, iUniverse merged with Bloomington's AuthorHouse, to make a vanity press juggernaut that can boast of printing one of every seventeen titles in 2007. That's a great deal of vanity, and there's money in it.
The move to Bloomington will be Lincoln, Nebraska's loss, however. Current iUniverse cornhuskers will have the option to move and become hoosiers, but if you've been to Indiana you'd know that's not a step up.
Come to think of it, this boon for Bloomington won't do a thing for the fine art of reading. AuthorHouse churns out whatever drivel is handed in. They don't make money off of the reading public; their profits come from authors who have a dream of success that is not based on real publishing.
Where's my chalk?
2 comments:
so whats wrong with publishing whatever people send in? wake up, the publishing industry has changed, and authors now have a voice.
What's wrong is that whatever people send in is usually shite on a stick.
Traditional publishers don't want what won't sell, hence the use of literary agents to act as gatekeepers.
You won't get anywhere as an author without the publicity machine of the traditional publisher.
Go ahead and spend your own money on iUniverse or AuthorHouse if it makes you happy. Just don't be surprised when you're sitting on crates of unsold copies.
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