Presto Book-O (Why I Went Ahead and Self-Published)

To say that I’ve had a checkered history in publishing would be like saying Elizabeth Taylor had a checkered history in marriage. In the past decade, I’ve churned through three houses, and twice as many editors. I’ve pissed off half the agents in New York City, and told the other half (with unreasonable glee) to fuck off. At one point, I actually had to be physically separated from one of my publishers.

It would be easy to blame all this on my unique temperament, with its charming blend of acerbic superiority and righteous indignation. But the truth is, most of my writer friends are filled with similar feelings of despair and disgust when it comes to putting books in the world. They just have the good sense to keep it to themselves.

The saddest thing about all this, of course, is that the publishing industry is not trying to piss us off. No, the industry (and the folks who populate it) are the ones trying to help us. It’s not their fault that reading has been shoved to the margins of the culture, or that a typical American teenager now spends 95 percent of her time staring at a tiny screen and frantically thumbing shopping updates to her social network. (read more here)