Once upon a time, a handful of publishing companies decided what Americans could read.\u00a0\u00a0Those companies lived in the great literary castle.\u00a0 No common writers were admitted to the castle.\u00a0 The publishing royals would periodically admit certain\u00a0citizens that they deemed worthy to petition them on behalf of the common writers. By and large, most of the worthy citizens\u00a0had either worked in the castle in years gone by, or they had worked for other worthy citizens that the royals had known for years. It was an insider's paradise and no outsider need apply.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
The worthy citizens had the loathsome job of dealing with the commoners in the Kingdom.\u00a0\u00a0Someone had to do it and it wasn't going to be the royals themselves.\u00a0 After all,\u00a0the\u00a0royals couldn't dirty their hands by working directly with those who created the products that paid for their castle.\u00a0 No, let the worthy citizens deal with the rabble.\u00a0 Best of all, the worthy citizens\u00a0not only protected the royals from the rabble, the royals didn't even have to pay the worthy citizens.\u00a0 The worthy citizens\u00a0took\u00a0their fees from the rabble's proceeds.\u00a0\u00a0A cut of the bounty paid by the royals to the rabble rightly belonged to the worthy citizens.\u00a0' Twas a small enough price for their having\u00a0to deal with the commoners and\u00a0sort through their barrage of products to find the work\u00a0that worthy citizens thought would be deemed acceptable by the royals.<\/p>\n
Most of the commoner's notions got rejected by the worthy citizens.\u00a0 Those esteemed folks worked and socialized directly with the royals and knew what the royals would and would not deem worthy.\u00a0 Or at least, they believed that they knew.\u00a0 And the worthy citizens did not, as a rule, challenge the royals to accept something too new or too different.<\/p>\n
And thus was born -- the sacred system.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The worthy citizens received missives from the commoner's via mail.\u00a0 But as technology progressed, they began receiving queries via email.\u00a0 Although the email saved the commoner's time and money, 'twas the fact that it saved the worthy citizens\u00a0equal amounts of time and money that won the day.\u00a0 Besides, it gave the worthy citizens grounds to beseech the royals to accept their submissions via email.\u00a0\u00a0So they saw that it was good.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But time passed and technology marched on and the sacred system remained, changed it bits and bytes but not in any measure that would benefit the commoners.\u00a0 The worthy would only present the same commoner's work and the work of those new commoners who could write like the acceptable commoners.\u00a0 New ideas and\u00a0radical concepts\u00a0would die beneath the weight of a rejection email.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If a commoner wished to bypass the system and market his own work, well he could do that.\u00a0 Or at least, he could try.\u00a0 He had to marshal his resources for\u00a0the endeavor would demand all he had - and more.\u00a0 The commoner would pay a rebel printing company to print his book.\u00a0 Then, to market it to the holy bookstores, he had to spend more coin and buy many, many\u00a0copies of his book and use all of his free time to peddle them, door to door.\u00a0 It cost money and time and pride and left the commoner with many unsold copies of his book crowding his chariot.<\/p>\n
The royals and the worthy citizens watched these pathetic efforts and sneered or shook their heads and said, \"The poor, deluded fools.\"<\/p>\n
But time marched on and technology marched apace and then technology marched faster.\u00a0The royals and the worthy watched in mild concern as their compatriots in the Kingdom of News lost a revolution.\u00a0 But, surely, that was news and this was publishing and even the vapid commoners understood that publishing could not be challenged!\u00a0 And for a time, only small and largely unsuccessful forays were fought.<\/p>\n
But then, the commoners who could now gather, filter and disseminate\u00a0news as they liked it, began to gather in numbers.\u00a0\u00a0And while the sacred system remained the same at its core, the holy bookstores had heard the beat of change in the requests of customers.\u00a0 More and more, the bookstores marched apace with change and opened their doors to the rebel publishing companies.\u00a0 And thus were born the great online retailers.<\/p>\n
Soon,\u00a0the public demanded the right to get their books the same way they now got their news -- instantly.\u00a0 And the royals and the worthy began to grow fearful\u00a0for\u00a0they too could hear the beat of fists on the castle walls.\u00a0 They knew the public would demand more - and soon it did.\u00a0 The public demanded the right to decide for themselves which books were worthy and which were not.\u00a0 And the rebel merchants and online retailers worked to satisfy the demands of those whose coin began to fill the merchant's coffers.<\/p>\n
So came to exist Amazon and the Kindle, Sony and the Stanza.\u00a0 Soon, there were more e-readers and more online retailers than the royals or the worthy could count, much less control.\u00a0 Great services like Lightning Source and CreateSpace were born to allow the commoners to disseminate brand new work at the speed of tomorrow.\u00a0 But smaller services were born too, and they were not destined to remain small.<\/p>\n
A brave, bold Knight\u00a0marched to the fore.\u00a0 His name was Mark Coker.\u00a0 He'd been among and with those commoners who had\u00a0demanded change.\u00a0 He'd also labored with the royals and the worthy.\u00a0 He was what those first current events, politics and beyond\u00a0bloggers (Drudge and company) were to the news\u00a0revolution - an outsider's insider who\u00a0decided to storm the walls of the castle.\u00a0 He created a small online site for commoners to post their work.\u00a0 He named it SMASHWORDS<\/a> and he promised the commoners that his battle had only just begun.<\/p>\n Through Smashwords<\/a> the common writers, using the word processing programs they had on hand could post to a site.\u00a0 Then the great engines\u00a0that Mark built could take the work and presto, chango - turn it out in a format that every reader on the planet could enjoy.\u00a0 Adobe, yes and HTML and Java and plain text, yes.\u00a0 But also\u00a0Palm and Epub, RTF and LRF and yes, the engine that Mark built even turns the commoner's work to Kindle.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Mark said he hadn't finished.\u00a0 He promised more.\u00a0 And soon, he delivered it.\u00a0 He created a path\u00a0to allow others to sell the writers work on their sites and earn a commission.\u00a0 Horray for Mark,\u00a0cheered the commoners.\u00a0 But Mark said he hadn't finished. He promised more. He promised another chink in the castle walls.<\/p>\n And now the masses believed him, so they cheered for that too.\u00a0 \"SMASH IT AGAIN, MARK,\" they shouted.<\/p>\n And so he did.\u00a0 Smashwords took the engine that Mark built and showed it to one of the wise retailers who'd heard the shouts of the crowd, who'd studied the news revolution, and who'd seen the future.\u00a0 The wise retailer saw that it was good and it would present customers with what they'd come to demand -\u00a0 the chance to choose what they'd read in the format they wanted to read it in.\u00a0 And the deal was done.<\/p>\n Smashwords is now distributing to Barnes and Noble<\/a> and Fictionwise<\/a>.\u00a0 So soon and very soon (the first catalog just shipped), the work of the commoners on the site that Mark built will be available\u00a0in the biggest e-book retailer stores on the planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n As one of the lowest of commoners, I wish to thank Mark Coker and his Smashwords<\/a> team, including his \"magician\" and CTO, Bill Kendrick.\u00a0 I suspect that Bill had a hand in the engine Mark built as well, but my suspicions don't much matter.\u00a0 What does matter is that Mark, Bill and their team are battering the castle walls for me and my fellow independent authors.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n To my fans (come on, they exist - or at least I believe they exist the same way I believe in them) I say that all of my e-books - the historicals - Brotherly Love<\/a><\/em>, A Faerie Fated Forever<\/a><\/em>, A Golden Forever<\/a><\/em> and A Six\u00a0Sense of Forever<\/a><\/em>, and my contemporary - E-mail Enticement<\/a><\/em>, should be on Barnes & Noble<\/a> and Fictionwise<\/a> soon.\u00a0 I expect that other e-book retailers will come to share the wise vision of\u00a0\u00a0B&N and Fictionwise - the e-book retailers who understand the American thirst for choice and who are bold enough to embrace change rather than scurry out\u00a0of its path.\u00a0\u00a0So hopefully, my e-books will appear on those sites soon.\u00a0 They are also available through Lightning Source,\u00a0another rebel company who has long fought for independent publishing. \u00a0\u00a0I don't plan to restrict anything - in choice there is power and that power is where it belongs - in the hands of the e-book stores big and small and ultimately, in the strongest hands of all - those of the buying public.<\/p>\n But I do cheer for Mark and Bill and the Smashwords<\/a> team who've gone a GREAT BIG step farther than even the other rebels.\u00a0 Smashwords<\/a> will take my work, my words, and run them through their magic machine and turn them out in formats that make them available to virtually every PC user, every cell phone user and every e-reader user on the planet.\u00a0 Smashwords<\/a> turns\u00a0raindrops\u00a0into a rainstorm.\u00a0 You're much more likely to get wet in a storm than\u00a0a sprinkle. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n We shouldn't forget that the castle walls still exist. But I understand that these days they're\u00a0quivering.\u00a0Those walls\u00a0should be shaking in their foundation because the Good Knight Mark says he isn't finished and I bet his wizard, Bill the Magnificent, isn't finished either.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n So let's give a cheer and root for the next battle in the revolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n SMASH IT AGAIN, MARK!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once upon a time, a handful of publishing companies decided what Americans could read.\u00a0\u00a0Those companies lived in the great literary castle.\u00a0 No common writers were admitted to the castle.\u00a0 The publishing royals would periodically admit certain\u00a0citizens that they deemed worthy to petition them on behalf of the common writers. By and large, most of the ...continue reading \"Smash It Again, Mark\"<\/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\/525"}],"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=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":717,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}