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In a new attempt to keep up with the rising self-publishing industry, which increasingly demands to be taken seriously, Publishers Weekly is significantly beefing up its coverage of authors who go it alone.
The literary trade magazine has announced that PW Select, its quarterly-turned-bimonthly guide to self-publishing, will go monthly in October—thus essentially doubling its critical coverage of self-publishing authors by the most influential journal in the industry.
This, by most accounts, is a fitting response to the not-entirely-shocking proliferation of self-publishing in the e-book era.
"It's really become part of publishing—that's probably the bottom line. It's certainly not stigmatized in any way," Jim Milliot, co-editorial director of Publishers Weekly, told The Atlantic Wire in a phone conversation this afternoon. "Most of the major house are looking at self-published authors now."
Indeed they are. When 50 Shades of Grey scribe E.L. James went from dropping her literotica opus on a small Australian e-publishing community to fielding adaptation requests from the likes of Universal Pictures, self-publishing became the Next Big Thing in literary spheres. Fifty Shades "may not revolutionize porn, romance, chick-lit, or literature," but it is, make no mistake, "the future of publishing," gushed The Daily Beast's Lizzie Skurnick in a piece that is clear about not mistaking form for substance.
Self-publishing, then, is the wave of the future, evidenced by moves like that of Penguin, earlier this summer, to market books by self-published authors on its online Book Country store.
"All sorts of authors are self-publishing for all sorts of different reasons," Milliot said. Some bypass the traditional channels after they've already had books rejected. Others, Milliot acknowledged, are hoping to mimic James' or Amanda Hocking's unlikely trajectory: put a book online and rack up sales until a traditional publisher takes notice. "There are a growing number of instances where this has happened. Sylvia Day, of course, was a big self-publisher, and Penguin made a bestseller of her." Had e-publishing been around in 1996, perhaps J.K. Rowling would have gone the route after fielding 12 rejection letters
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The literary trade magazine has announced that PW Select, its quarterly-turned-bimonthly guide to self-publishing, will go monthly in October—thus essentially doubling its critical coverage of self-publishing authors by the most influential journal in the industry. This, by most accounts, is a fitting response to the not-entirely-shocking proliferation of self-publishing in the e-book era.
"It's really become part of publishing—that's probably the bottom line. It's certainly not stigmatized in any way," Jim Milliot, co-editorial director of Publishers Weekly, told The Atlantic Wire in a phone conversation this afternoon. "Most of the major house are looking at self-published authors now."
Indeed they are. When 50 Shades of Grey scribe E.L. James went from dropping her literotica opus on a small Australian e-publishing community to fielding adaptation requests from the likes of Universal Pictures, self-publishing became the Next Big Thing in literary spheres. Fifty Shades "may not revolutionize porn, romance, chick-lit, or literature," but it is, make no mistake, "the future of publishing," gushed The Daily Beast's Lizzie Skurnick in a piece that is clear about not mistaking form for substance.
Self-publishing, then, is the wave of the future, evidenced by moves like that of Penguin, earlier this summer, to market books by self-published authors on its online Book Country store.
"All sorts of authors are self-publishing for all sorts of different reasons," Milliot said. Some bypass the traditional channels after they've already had books rejected. Others, Milliot acknowledged, are hoping to mimic James' or Amanda Hocking's unlikely trajectory: put a book online and rack up sales until a traditional publisher takes notice. "There are a growing number of instances where this has happened. Sylvia Day, of course, was a big self-publisher, and Penguin made a bestseller of her." Had e-publishing been around in 1996, perhaps J.K. Rowling would have gone the route after fielding 12 rejection letters
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