Self publication?

[_leareth]

Barnes & Noble just launched PubIt!, a new platform that lets individuals upload their opuses, sell them as real, honest-to-goodness ebooks in B&N's eBookstore, and keep a decent chunk of the profit.I'd say something about a new way to distribute fanfic and orig-fic (and get money from it) but I'll bet money there's some interesting clauses in the

Comments

[akk_]

I don't know, publishing fanfic is out of the question, but if I ever get one of my origfics to publishable status, Smashwords might be a broader platform not limited to the Nook community and they don't demand exclusive rights. Of course, I haven't looked into their exact terms for publishing, being a solely reading customer of theirs, but still... :)

[_leareth]

PubIt doesn't seem to have an exclusive rights clause (I'll have to read through it again to check - why are American contracts so badly laid out?!) and it does interestingly say that the user keeps copyright in their work. SmashWords I haven't heard of so thanks for that link, I'll definitely check it out, but I can already say the fact that they pitch to NaNoWriMo says a lot about their target user base.

[akk_]

I've always had mixed feelings about NaNoWriMo. While I'm all for encouraging writing, I detest it's focus on word count and writing speed. Most often, quality and plot suffer from that.

I've found some nice ebooks on Smashwords, which is why the service is currently on my radar somewhat.

[_leareth]

I looked at NaNoWriMo when it first started, and decided against it because of not just the word count, but the time factor. I've along accepted that I am incapable of just writing out pages and pages of text in one hit before going back to edit; I'm far more comfortable spending ages planning/researching/plotting, and when I actually do write I may only write a paragraph or three in a sitting because I spend hours redrafting and editing those paragraphs to the point that I'm happy with it before I move on. NanoWriMo goes completely against my personal writing practice, ergo I don't think I could ever do it. (Besides which, full time job = not conducive to devoting a whole month of intensive writing.)

[rubysp720]

Sorry to butt in and please ignore me if I offend anyone?

As a fervent reader I would love to buy fanfiction to keep on my bookshelf if I ever get the chance to (much better that late night printing of hundreds of pages to bring to my trip) :D

[_leareth]

No need to apologise!

...does this mean I should try selling mine? XD joking only, those terms and conditions do, as expected, have a clause about warranties and representations.

[rubysp720]

I LOVE YOUR FICS!! *hinthint :D

[_leareth]

AND I'M WORKING ON THEM.

But I can't sell them XDD there are less direct ways to make money from fanfic that I'm not going to get into though.

[fyredancer]

I'd be interested to see what you have to say about their terms and conditions, for sure.

[beliael]

I've heard a lot of bad things about self-publications, at least for serious writers (I first learnt about it here and here) though the problems mostly relate to actual hardcopies of books.

I had a little skim over PubIt!'s ToS and it doesn't sound as skeezy as some other small press ToS I've seen. I don't particularly like the statements of what they can do with the ebooks, such as "bundle the eBooks with related physical content available for sale from Barnes & Noble". What if your ebook is bundled with other media that don't conform to what your beliefs and/or principles?

Nonetheless there seems to be definitely more of a genuine pro-author vibe to PubIt! compared to the more glossy but ultimately more greedy publishers.