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The Strategies of Authoring

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I've been at this for a while now, and I've seen the publishing world undergo drastic changes . When I got my first contract with a traditional publisher, that was the way to go, because books published by an author in what was then called "vanity publishing," were expensive to produce and almost certain to fail. That changed when two things happened: a few brave authors (e.g. Hugh Howey) began working to understand and use the system to their benefit and Amazon made it (fairly) easy and definitely cheap to publish books. My time with traditional publishers was extremely valuable. I learned about the need for good editing, good cover art, and good resources for promotion. On the downside, I learned I had few options once I signed a contract, and the financial reward for my work was a long time coming and not nearly as much as people imagine when they plop down $26.00 for a hard cover book. Now that I'm sort of independent (I've stuck with one of my pu