Just checking in with a WIP update and a few comments on the industry.
The Winds of Heaven and Earth is coming along nicely, although at times I vacillate between "this is shit" and this is pretty good stuff." I'm about a third of the way through editing the first draft into a second, and I'm busy in parallel with re-writing the first chapter; I was never completely happy with it. I think the release date is going to slip from June to July, but that's OK--it'll be ready when it's ready.
On the publishing front, I Tweeted a fist pump last week about the state of the top ten digital titles, but never followed up with a blog post: five of the top ten titles were self published. Take that, gatekeepers!
This week, Digital Book World reports that six of the top twenty titles are self-published, still an amazing accomplishment, and something not many people would have bet on even a year ago (except for maybe Joe Konrath); that's hugely encouraging for writers toiling away on current projects. Only a select few will have a shot at that measure of success, but that's true for any profession or endeavor. The real take away is that the barriers formerly imposed by the Big Six no longer matter, and that readers are free to make their own judgements about the merit of your work. More and more readers and writers are discovering that the supposed value-add of the gatekeepers of the Big Six is nothing more than an illusion; authors create the product, not the industry.
You can't win if you don't play. Get cracking.
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