"Needs a Little More Elaboration"

Aditya Mukherjee writes:

This post needs a little more elaboration. It sounds useful for writers. What’s your issue with it?

First of all, “needs a little more elaboration”: what a fantastic heckle!¹

Second of all, I have no problem whatsoever with “Book Country”: if a writer finds it useful in their quest to get eyeballs and get paid, more power to them. What I take issue with (read: find interesting) is the way in which an Old Media publisher (in this case, Penguin) is attempting to re-insert itself into the publishing process in a New Media kind of way.

For example, a few months back when the Amanda Hocking stuff was all the rage, this quote got passed around quite a bit:

[T]here is no traditional publisher in the world right now that can offer Amanda Hocking terms that are better than what she’s currently getting, right now on the Kindle store, all on her own.

“Book Country” strikes me as Penguin’s attempt to put all the Amanda Hockings out there back into their boxes, without really adjusting any of Penguin’s “terms.” Instead, Penguin appears to want to come along after the fact, understandably worried about being “disintermediated,” and ride a Web 2.0 wave to further profitability. I absolutely see what’s in it for the publisher. But what does the writer gain from being a part of “Book Country” that they wouldn’t gain from publishing their own blog or publishing an eBook on iBooks, Kindle, Nook, etc.?

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1. And I mean “heckle” in the best possible way. I want to start a series now looking back over old posts and call it “needs a little more elaboration.” ↩