From Publisher’s Lunch:
On the same day Barry Eisler turned down half a million dollars from Minotaur Books to self-publish, news emerged publicly that Amanda Hocking appears to be doing the exact opposite. Yesterday afternoon the NYT finally caught wind of what many in the industry have known about for weeks now, which is that agent Steve Axelrod is shopping a new four-book series to publishers, attracting bids “of well over $1 million for world English rights,” according to two unnamed publishing executives who spoke with the paper, and that the auction may be complete by today. Sources in turn tell us that Penguin and St. Martin’s are no longer in the running, and that the series is entirely new an previously unpublished.
It looks like self-publishing with ebooks is duplicating the same process that obtained before the Kindle phenomenon. You self-publish, and hope to sell enough books to attract a traditional publisher. Then you cash in and abandon self-publishing. Apparently, Hocking doesn’t believe in Konrath’s “booyah” euphoria about the unlimited sales potential for ebooks, or else she wouldn’t be seeking a traditional deal.
In my opinion, this proves that publishing really isn’t changing as much as people think because of the impact of the Kindle. Best sellers will remain exceptional, no matter what the medium. Most writers will still struggle, no matter the distribution medium.
That doesn’t appear to be Amanda Hocking’s rationale. She says, on her blog…
I’m writer. I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full time corporation. As I said before in my post – Some Things That Need to be Said – I am spending so much time on things that are not writing.
I like writing. I even like marketing, especially when it comes to interacting with readers. And I don’t mind editing. I just don’t want to run my corporation, because that takes away from writing and everything else that I actually enjoy doing.
http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-i-can-say-right-now.html
Yeah, she needed to get hard covers into the remaining stores. Mission accomplished. Self-pubbers almost never pull that trick off.