But in response to Michael's point, one has to keep in mind that the publisher handled the editing and helped market and polish the thing. If Doug had gone any other route, would the book have reached such a wide audience?
Self-publishing is a bit of a mess. There's no quality control. It might work for Doug since he already has an audience and some cache, but would a young-ish writer like Richard Seymour have been better off self-publishing his first book instead of going to Verso?
On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 4 Sep 2011, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> $6000 for the book Wall Street
>>>
>>
>> It was a great deal for Verso, which made something like $300,000 from the
>> book.
>>
>
> So you made 2% of the take?
>
> I honestly have to wonder whether you would do any worse on an aggresive
> cyber tip jar basis. That is, if you wrote a book, told people they could
> download it for free but if they liked it, the suggested donation was 10
> bucks.
>
> Or alternatively, has anyone ever financed a book via Kickstarter? Where
> nobody would pay unless you reached your goal of say $20k? And then you
> could do the tip jar on top of that?
>
> Just wondering out loud.
>
> Michael
>
>
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