Why Must We Publish Everything?
T here’s an innocence that exists before you publish a book. I’ll tell you right now that the first and second books I published were written with the intention of self-publishing them. To be quite honest, self-publishing intrigued me (still does) and I needed some material to feed through the process. But one of the things I’ve noticed is that people working on their first book have no clue when it comes to publishing. Almost universally, they have this idea that all they have to do is to write their book, send it off to the publisher and it’ll be in the stores before long. And though their hopes are dashed quickly after they finish their book, I keep encountering people who say, “I’m almost finished with my book and I’m going to look into a publisher soon.” I don’t think we have much opportunity to educate these people. I suppose some of us novelists could write stories about authors seeking publication, but I’m not sure that even that would reach all of these people. But there’s so...