Author Releases 8 Books In One Day

We knew publishing was getting crowded – nearly 60,000 new titles are released each week – but now we have an author competing with himself on the launch date of his new book… of his eight books.

Author Scott Ginsberg says he has written and published 13 internationally recognized books that have made money, made a career and made a difference.  He says the best part is he never received a rejection letter from a traditional publisher. He has never tried to get published by anyone. He prefers to self-publish.  He claims he is attempting to garner entry into the official Guinness Books of World Records for a single author officially releasing eight books on one day. Here are some of the lessons he has learned along his publishing path, in his own words:

Digital isn’t he future – it is the present. “Books aren’t going away, paper is. Which sucks, since I love the smell of books. But I write faster than I can print. And now, thanks to digital, that velocity can convert into value for my readers.” That’s the state of the industry. With the infinite shelf space of the Web, with the major publishers approaching irrelevancy, with the long tail knocking down barriers to entry, with behemoth retailers like Borders going bankrupt, with zero printing and shipping costs, and with minimal design and setup costs, digital is here to stay. “Never again do writers have to wonder: Who’s going to let me? Now the only question that matters is: Who is going to stop me? And the answer is, nobody.”

Volume is the vehicle to value. Some authors are good writers, but most are just good businesspeople riding the wave of past literary glory. Volume trumps accuracy. It doesn’t matter if you are right; it matters if you’re everywhere. Volume trumps knowledge. It doesn’t matter if you know what you’re doing; it matters if you’re doing a ton of it. Volume trumps popularity. It doesn’t matter if the world likes you; it matters if your audience loves you. And volume trumps influence. It doesn’t matter if you’re persuasive; it matters if you’re pervasive. Some people have babies, I have books. They’re not as fun to make, but certainly less expensive.

Mainstream is lamestream. Instead of buying tickets for the starving artist lottery, I just went out and created market for what I love.  

The hard part was divorcing my ego from the illusion that market size matters. It doesn’t. If size mattered, the dinosaurs would still be around.” In order to win the publishing game, Change the rules of the game, or create our own game so there are no rules. That way, by learning which of the mainstream hoops aren’t worth jumping through, it is easier to forge ahead without stopping. “Artists like Henry Rollins, Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Seth Godin and Kevin Smith have been doing this for years.  

And those heroes taught me that we can sit back and wait for some invisible jury to stamp our creative passport and tell us our art is okay. We ship our work to express ourselves and please our audience. Everybody else can go to hell.”

Stat Of The Day

According to Nielsen Book Scan, through April 29, 2012, sales of printed books for the first four months of this year lag behind last year’s comparable time period by 15%.

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person.