william.hertling

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Commented on Why I don't self-publish
I'm not sure where the money goes, but I'm sure it's a different economic landscape for self-publishing vs. traditional. From March 2012 to February 2013, I sold 18,998 self-published books. The total gross sales (e.g. price to end buyer) was...
Commented on Why I don't self-publish
The only sane way to do it would be to hire someone else to do all the boring crap on my behalf. And do you know what we call people who do that? We call them publishers. Well, yes and...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
Maybe I am just restating what you said, but I see two aspects to this: Evolution is shooting for a level of intelligence that enhances survival. If you look at hunter-gatherer tribes, there isn't a huge need for physicists, neuro-surgeons,...

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David L commented on Why I don't self-publish
Would would have seen the most change in their day to day life: a person born in 1925 living to 2000; or somebody born in 1850 living to 1925? I think my grandfather saw about as much change as anyone. He was born in 1885 on a rural farm. One room house. Water from the spring. You chopped wood for cooking and heat. That was the year the phone was invented. He was active till he was 92 in 1977 and died at 97 in 1982. More than a decade after they landed on the moon. Life certainly changed for...
RDSouth commented on Why I don't self-publish
I'll take OGH's word for it about self publishing. Just keep 'em coming. Email them to me as attachments if you like. I'll send you the cover price and let's cut out the middle man. I'll proofread it myself. Regarding the recent thread diversion toward rate of change. You could make the argument that it's subjective. We consider recent changes the important kind because they are in the foreground, and thus loom larger. The question assumes change is a single quantity. There are different kinds, and in different places. Certainly any given modern span of time in most of the...
lexidick commented on Why I don't self-publish
Two months? Two months? I can get a book out, once it has been to beta readers, in a week or two. That includes formatting the ebook, formatting the print book, designing the cover and loading to Amazon's KDP. I do my own proofreading (and before you scoff, check out my samples). If I felt unable to tackle these tasks, I could hire others to do them quickly for a reasonable fee. Publishers, I have gradually realized, aren't much good at their job. Being used to the monopoly of distribution they enjoyed until very recently, they have become slack and...
Charlie Stross commented on Why I don't self-publish
You didn't actually read a word I wrote, did you?...
Bellinghman commented on Why I don't self-publish
Oh, I think s/he read it. I suspect it's total comprehension failure that we see here....

Responses to Comments from william.hertling

Common Misconceptions About Publishing—a series of essays about the industry I work in.
How I Got Here In The End —my non-writing autobiography, or what I did before becoming a full-time writer.
Unwirer—an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction.
Shaping the Future—a talk I gave on the social implications of Moore's Law.
Japan: first impressions — or, what I did on my holidays
Inside the MIT Media Lab—what it’s like to spend a day wandering around the Media Lab.
The High Frontier, Redux — space colonization: feasible or futile?
“Nothing like this will be built again”—inside a nuclear reactor complex.
Old blog—2003-2006 (RIP)

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