Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Editor. Writer. Professor. Host.

On Self-Publishing and the Hugh Howey / Data Guy January 2015 Report

(Parts of this post originally appeared on my Google+ page and in the comments on Mike Reeves-McMillan’s post on the report.) You may be aware that Author Earnings, a data analysis site run by Hugh Howey and someone called Data Guy, recently released a report on ebook sales and the market share of those sales […]

Self-Published Books vs. Literary Awards: In Response to Linda Nagata

I’m a little late to the party, but Linda Nagata kindly rebutted my original post on the logistical issues of literary awards as a rationale for the rejection of self-published books from the consideration lists.  Here, I’d like to respond to some of her arguments. First, I’ll say that I don’t disagree with most of […]

Self-Published Books vs. Literary Awards: A Logistical Problem?

Back in August, The Guardian posted a column by Liz Bury entitled “Why is self-publishing still scorned by literary awards?”  The article doesn’t exactly make an argument about the apparent snubbing of SPed books in the literary awards circuit, but Bury does essentially imply in the body of the article that the inability of these awards […]

My Current Thoughts on Self-Publishing / Traditional Publishing Gurus

To all the people out there telling me how I should publish my first book: please take your advice and shove it. You have no frakking clue what you’re talking about. Anyone who says “there is only one way to do it” should be discounted as idiots.  J.K. Rowling got rich publishing the old fashioned […]

“The book market be flooded with bad books,” said the Bookstore Man!

The following comment was left on John Ottinger’s Grasping For the Wind.  Specifically, I left it on a guest post by R. L. Copple entitled “Wading Through the Crap,” which is an interesting take on the “there will be so much crap” anti-self-publishing argument.  I take some issue with the logic, even if I now […]

Why I’m Going Indie: An Anti-Self-Publisher’s Perspective

Longtime readers of this blog will be aware of my harsh opinions about self-publishing.  The title of this post is intentionally inflammatory to highlight a point which I hope will be clear by the end of this post. I consider myself exceedingly critical of the concept of self-publishing, not because I think SPing is inherently […]