This past Saturday at its annual conference in New York City, Writer’s Digest — the venerable 90 year old writer’s resource — announced the launch of Abbott Press, its new self-publishing division. Abbott Press’ mission is to help writers improve their craft and get published; but its creation represents more than that — it signals a new frontier in the indie publishing movement.
There have been several seminal events in indie publishing over the last five years including: the creation of partnerships with traditional publishers; increased retail equality resulting from the advent digital formats and platforms; and the eclipse of traditional publishing as the most popular option for bringing books to readers.
Abbott Press’ creation is another such event. This partnership, between Writer’s Digest and indie publisher Author Solutions, represents outreach to writers most concerned with improving their craft. Writers that first and foremost write for the love of writing. The indie tent continues to expand and there’s room for everyone who wants to share their works with the world.
I don’t like the idea of a magazine that carries advertising for competing self-publishing companies, to have a financial stake in the success of _one_ of those companies.
If you were a soda salesman and wanted your products to be sold by Walmart, would you expect to be treated fairly if Walmart owned Coke or Pepsi?
If you were the boss of Infinity Publishing or Outskirts Press and you advertise in Writer’s Digest, would you expect to be treated fairly — in ad placement and editorial coverage — if WD profits from the success of your biggest competitor?
I’m sure that WD wants the world to believe that the new arrangement will have no effect on its relationships with the competitors of its own Abbott Press. But, in an era when print publications are starving — and since WD is operated by human beings — it will be extremely difficult for WD to resist the opportunity to maximize its income by discriminating against Abbott’s competitors.
WD may degenerate into a biased “house organ” for ASI.
Also, ASI is NOT an “indie pubisher.” A few years ago, it would have been called a vanity publisher. Today it could be called a self-publishing company or a pay-to-pubish company or an author-services company. Calling it an “indie publisher” is stretching the English language much too far.
Michael N. Marcus
– http://www.BookMakingBlog.blogspot.com
– http://www.Self-Pub.info
– Create Better Books, with the Silver Sands Publishing Series: http://www.silversandsbooks.com/booksaboutpublishing.html
– “Stories I’d Tell My Children (but maybe not until they’re adults),” http://www.amazon.com/dp/0981661750
Isn’t it great that publishing has changed so that more and more authors have opportunity to get published. Some may chose to use your services or read your books and do all the work themselves. Others chose to use services to realize their dream of publishing. For me, Abbott Press simply providing more opportunity for authors and more choice for readers.