…Mister Publisher, tear down this wall!…

Among the hardest things on earth are diamonds, and even harder, trying to get a prospective fiancee to buy a large-carat sample. Japanese arithmetic…that’s hard. Harder still, getting politicians on opposing camps to agree …, (well-near impossible). These all fade into mediocrity on the hardness scale when compared to a new author’s quest to find a publisher. Particularly if the scribe is an indie, with no agent stroking the literary feathers. I’m told that madness consists of doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. On that score, I have to ‘fess up. Guilty of imbecility as charged, m’Lud. Sending trillions of submissions all over the world and many other places, in some areas singlehandedly helping the local postal authorities achieve their revenue targets, is right up there with throwing dollar bills from the stern of an ocean-going liner in mid-Atlantic. Submissions sent versus rejections received, parity—the first seeds towards abject suicidal thought. But wait, as ol’ Billy Shakespeare used to say (or so I’m reliably informed), “what light from yonder”.., etc…That beacon growing large on the horizon, that light through the tunnel isn’t an oncoming express train, No…it’s the new dawn. The advent of the strongest growing phenomenon since Justin Beiber’s Twitter account…the eBook is here! What was scorned and scoffed at a mere twelve months ago is battering at the doors of the established publishing bastions. The new kid on the block has more new toys than Uncle Publisher has been able to match. With a click of millions of thumbs, (and that’s a lot of click) the magic of the web unites every single heretofore isolated wretch of a writer into a vibrant molecule in the brave new world of self-publishing. Anyone who’s been reading my  recent offerings here will be aware of how REALLY dumb I am on computers, ( a day without an exploding laptop is a bonus)  but even this old dog is now happily immersed in the magic of Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Blogg-y stuff et al. The need for agents and publishers may never recede completely, but the worldwide tsunami that is the indie movement seems unstoppable. The genie is out of the bottle. The new creed is, ‘If you write, you publish’ (and be damned or not, at least you’ve got some pleasure in doing your own thing). With all the postage I’ve saved, I’ve had my warders buy me ice cream, lots of ice cream… now where’s my spoon?…