{"id":2505,"date":"2012-07-20T20:11:53","date_gmt":"2012-07-21T00:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=2505"},"modified":"2012-07-20T23:02:59","modified_gmt":"2012-07-21T03:02:59","slug":"what-castle-walls-indie-goes-mainstream-thanks-mark-coker-smashwords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/20\/what-castle-walls-indie-goes-mainstream-thanks-mark-coker-smashwords\/","title":{"rendered":"What Castle Walls? Indie Goes Mainstream – Thanks Mark Coker & Smashwords!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Way back in April of 2010 - the early days of indie or self-publishing - I did a post likening the NY Publishing Empire to a Castle and indies to rebels, storming the gates. \u00a0I predicted that the castle walls would fall<\/a>. \u00a0 It took a little over 2 years, but now it's happened.<\/p>\n

This week, Penguin's parent company bought the self-publishing company,'Author Solutions.<\/p>\n

What did Penguin's CEO say about the acquistion of the company that has helped 150,000 authors self-publish?<\/p>\n

In a conference call from Author Solutions headquarters in Bloomington, Ind., Penguin CEO John Makinson and ASI CEO Kevin Weiss hailed the acquisition as the \u201cmainstreaming\u201d of self-publishing and outlined a plan to \u201c develop a global strategy and quickly identify new opportunities,\u201d according to Makinson.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The corporate bigwigs acknowledge all the free self-publishing companies like Smashwords and Lulu, but say that\u00a0\u201cEvery writer has different needs,\u201d and Makinson agreed, noting that self-publishing is \u201ccausing more people to think about writing as a career. There\u2019s a new category of professional author that will be more attracted to the Author Solutions model rather than the free model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Author Solutions now has contracts with 6 publishers which will allow client\/publishers to offer self-publishing services under their own brands. \u00a0Penguin\/Pearson think the Author Solutions acquisition has created a \"new trade book publishing business model.\" <\/a><\/p>\n

Big, huge, mega thank yous to Smashwords. \u00a0Indies alone could never have taken down the castle. \u00a0I believe that the article and the honchos' statements about Mark Coker's not-so-little company, prove that Smashwords led the charge in taking down the castle walls so that all authors could enter. Penguin\/Pearson want to do what Smashwords does - except they want to get paid for it. (Think about that. Money should always flow to the author.) \u00a0Still, the big publisher acknowledged that Smashwords is a force in the industry and that Smashwords (over 5 billion words published) has skin in the game. \u00a0 Just a couple of years ago, the NY majors thought they owned the game.<\/p>\n

If anyone needs further proof that the castle walls disappeared this week, I point out that Publisher's Weekly, the insider source for all things publishing, titled their article: \u00a0\"Self-publishing Goes Big Time.\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back in April of 2010 - the early days of indie or self-publishing - I did a post likening the NY Publishing Empire to a Castle and indies to rebels, storming the gates. \u00a0I predicted that the castle walls would fall. \u00a0 It took a little over 2 years, but now it's happened. This ...continue reading \"What Castle Walls? Indie Goes Mainstream – Thanks Mark Coker & Smashwords!\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2505"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2514,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505\/revisions\/2514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}