Cracking Eggheads

As of today you can purchase and enjoy Starweaver's Retreat from either of these two sources: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MSNX5O http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/starweavers-retreat-jeffery-evans/1105617248 I'm still working on the print-on-demand version and the iTunes distribution.  It will probably be a week at least on the paperback and iTunes in a few days.

I have my own thoughts on the matter, but here's a pretty good article on the subject. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/07/03/are-estributors-the-future-of-publishing/ I've been spending some time looking at the online presence of several literary agents, and I find it unsurprising that they are about to get their lunches eaten in the digital realm.  They complain about things like poor punctuation in query emails and can't seem to manage a spam filter or an over-flowing inbox even if they have enough savvy to maintain an amateurish website or a blog.  Every single employee at Amazon.com has an overflowing inbox and they learn how to deal with it.  (Hello,  inbox rules?)  The only  thing that makes it a fight at all is their relationships with legacy publishers and their distribution channels.  It will certainly be interesting as those channels begin to dry up.

I've been asked to explain my decision to forego traditional publishing.  For me, it boils down to these three factors: 1.  Publishers and agents don't seem do enough to justify their commissions in perpetuity.  I'm not saying that they can't provide valuable services, I just believe the price over the long term commercial viability of intellectual property is simply too great.  They are running a business based primarily on marketing the creativity of others, and they haven't streamlined their operations in such a way that they can feed the great digital beast of the internet just yet.  They may come around to it at some point, but from a strictly logical perspective, I believe it will be just as much work to create, polish, and publish a novel as it would be to try to attract attention from publishers.  That may not be true, but I'm going to find out.  At least I'll know how much work it really is once I get there and I'll be choosing my distri...