Lance makes some very good points in his article below. I am not a big believer in the POD model for authors serious about building a business around their book. POD publishing is a good service for authors who have a dream of publishing a book, but for authors who want to get published or who want to earn an income from their books and related products, then they need to take a serious approach to their business.

A proven model for getting published is to build your platform and demonstrate sales from your book. If an authors can sell 5,000 copies of their book, they have a much better chance of catching the eye of an agent or publisher. In addition to getting to that coveted “published” position, these authors will earn income from their product.

The key is to focus on building your platform - your credibility and your audience. When you create a 3 to 5 year plan for your book you will build this platform and be positioned to take your book to the next level. Here’s Lance’s article:

2008 Trends in Book Publishing
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow]Lance Winslow

The book publishing industry has surely changed over the years. Many self publishing schemes that were thought to revolutionize the industry failed to materialize. There have also been several controversial issues with the Internet and copyrights where Google and Microsoft were scanning out of print books to place online. Google also took flak for posting parts of books online, but not the entire book for folks to get an idea of what the work was about.

Barnes and Noble canceled or rather highly modified their innovation in self-publishing, finding that books on demand, or printing on demand books from obscure authors left them without significant profits. Some of this is still being done, even though it was assumed that it would take hold and compete directly with online eBook websites starting to take their toll on big book retailers.

Indeed, iUniverse Publishing appeared to really shake things up, but the synergy simply did not take hold. Does this mean such a strategy is completely dead in the water? No, but it shows that some things are slow to change and perhaps it was ahead of its time and folks did not fully understand it. Meaning we will see more of this in the future and it may very well be the next wave in self-publishing (with a little help).

This trend coupled with the Sony Reader and other new innovations made to compete with it are of interest and also poised to save a few trees. Many of these new electronic readers will allow downloading of eBooks in various formats or actual popularized books at a reduced volume discount. Does that mean books are dead? No, not yet, but surely just like the modern day newspapers, that day is coming. Think on this.

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