I’ve waited up to 18 months for a book to be published, but that was before publish on demand. POD is considered second class by many in the publishing industry, and I don't understand why. It's much more efficient than traditional publishing and isn’t it great that the wait between submission and publication is only a few months? Your books aren’t languishing in some warehouse, maybe never to be delivered to the bookstores. That's happened more often than publishers care to admit. It’s also the reason bestselling authors have delivered pizza, donuts and coffee to warehouse workers. It insures that their newly published books leave the loading dock.
If you’re young, you have all the time in the world to wait for a major publisher to produce your books. But as you grow older and wonder if you’re going to live long enough to see them in print, you think POD is the greatest invention since paper towels.
I came to that conclusion last year after the first novel of my Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series was orphaned. Who would want to publish a series that had already been published? I wondered. I received an almost immediate response from Avalon to my query letter, but I waited and waited for a go-ahead to my submission. Seven months later and tired of waiting, I decided to go with a small POD publisher that is very accommodating.
My first two books were published within three months and released not only in print but Kindle and Fictionwise multi-format. Not on the bestseller list, by any means, but they remained #1 in sales for a couple of months at Fictionwise-epress. That made it worthwhile.
This week Diary of Murder, the second novel in my mystery series, appeared in print at Amazon.com nearly a month after the Kindle edition, and it’s difficult to find although the Kindle edition pops right up. I finally tracked it down at: http://tiny.cc/gO2vi, and wonder if POD editions are given second class status by online bookstores. I think it’s time, especially during this economic downturn, that POD publishing receives some respect.
What do you think?
