Podiobooker
News from the Staff of Podiobooks.com

Ken Wohlrob, author of the serialized free audiobook The Love Book (also available in print and pile of other formats), was recently featured as the Bookslut’s “Indie Heartthrob of the Week”. The interview makes for a fun read, where Ken talks about his writing back ground and why he’s taken to the idea of DIY.

Of special interest was this passage:

When I first shopped it around to agents and editors, they all turned it down. I have the most exquisite list of rejection slips. But the interesting thing was that I never heard, “these are bad stories,” or even, “you need to go back and rewrite.” Often what I heard was, “You’re a good writer, and you have a unique style, but these things don’t sell well.” I decided why should that financial-based decision by an agent or editor stop my work from getting out there. That’s how I got involved in podcasting, releasing electronic versions for free, and on-demand self-publishing.

It has been a grand experiment allowing people to download it for free, listen to the podcast episodes, and then (here’s the important part) because they liked the free content, picked up a copy of the trade paperback.

Gatekeepers are forced to look at what will and what will not sell well. That’s the nature of the filter-then-publish world. But with the power of the webbernets, authors like Ken have a new options: publish-then-filter. And rather than a handful of people deciding whether it’s fit for distribution, it can be distributed first, and those who think it’s worth it will keep it going. Hooray for the new ways!

This entry was posted by Evo on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Author News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.