I’m glad to hear that you and Konrath are friends. I don’t know him personally, but I do admire his success and his moxie and I do wish him well. Unfortunately, I did not get the impression from your story that you were friends and I did consider Konrath’s story about Print Being Dead to be a response to your piece.

What I got from your article and still think based on your response is an impression that you believe the publishing elite’s opinion to be a standard of some sort. In reality, the readers set the standards and self or indie publishing is the ultimate form of democracy.

Since publishers make their money from the work of authors, they need to leave their Castle or open the gates so that the work of all receives consideration. Receiving and considering only work presented and pre-screened by Worthy Citizens (agents) means that publishers are building their business on the labor of folks that they refuse to deal with directly. It keeps the Castle Dwellers too far removed from the commoners.

I’m posting your response with this reply so that if my blog entry misrepresented your views, your response is here for everyone to read. I do appreciate you taking the time to respond and I’m glad to hear that you want all authors to succeed. On that we do agree.

–The author I mention in the first paragraph is NOT Konrath, but another author who has not been published traditionally. In fact, I am highly complimentary of both Konrath’s ambition and talent, and say as much in the article. I bring up the author (NOT KONRATH) in the first paragraph as an example of someone who, to me, was blaming the establishment for his lack of acclaim rather than looking inward.

–Konrath’s HuffPo piece was NOT a rebuttal to mine. In fact, Joe (aka J.A.) emailed me after my piece ran and said he agreed with many of my points.

–I am NOT a rival of Joe’s in any way. We are in fact friends, and have been on panels together at conferences. We have met many, many times, tipped glasses together, and corresponded on numerous occasions. It is easier to say that he and I are enemies to make your argument, but it simply is not true in any way.

–I want authors to succeed, in any way, shape or form, and I am a fan of e-publishing. I even released a novella, THE HUNTERS, as an exclusive ebook. The point of my article is that sometimes talent must be nurtured, and sometimes being rejected or facing hardships forces you to work harder. Both myself and Konrath were rejected numerous times before we were ever published, and I think we’d probably agree that it forced us to write better books.

–I am not a ‘Royal’, and if you read my other pieces on HuffPo you’d see that I am critical of many aspects of ‘traditional’ publishing. In no way do I aspire to stifle creativity, if anything I want publishing to more fully embrace the digital revolution.

I hope this clears up some of your misconceptions. Without any doubt, I want every author to succeed in their career, in whatever way success is defined by them. I do believe that as of right now, for new authors, e-publishing makes it hard to fully develop a career. That’s not to say the landscape is not changing (it is), but what worked for Konrath will not necessarily work for everyone at this moment.
Sincerely,
Jason Pinter