The Internet is the ultimate vanity-publishing medium, and therefore, the ultimate place for those of us who like to watch. The Internet can reach an audience at lower cost than any medium before it.
Because publishing is becoming more business-oriented each day with more examination of the bottom line, it's harder to break out than ever.
When I was publishing my first books, the previous generation of authors was fading away, so I was welcomed because I was a new author.
As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.
And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish something that I didn't like enough to put my name on it.
Catholic fiction of the type we're publishing is stories that we know faithful Catholics will enjoy - stories they can escape with, laugh at, cry with; stories that will enrich their lives.
In my view, the ebook world for both established and new authors is a terrific new and exciting format. It is a format that will bring forth many new writers to publishing.
Writing is not a numbers game. You should focus more on reaching the hearts of readers and building fans more than publishing a plethora of books that no one may care about.
I have always been driven; I've always wanted to be published, and I wanted to make that happen, so I worked very hard. 'Perfectionist' would be a word to describe me.
If I hadn't been able to get my first book published, I am not sure what I would have done.
I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write.
One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.
When I left college I thought - based on a staggeringly inadequate understanding of how the world worked - that I might like to go into book publishing.
My agent and I put out my proposal one Thursday afternoon in August, 1998. Publishers started bidding immediately, and that process progressed for a few days.
I spoke to my agent and learned that a Hollywood scout had seen my proposal in one of the publishing houses, and had faxed it to Hollywood, where it was generating a lot of interest.
Now that I'm being very successful, publishers are trying to mainstream me, but I'm unabashedly genre. It's what I like to read, what I like to write.
I have female friends that get mails from publishers that read 'Hey. I heard you write about sex. This is a very popular topic now'.
For most of the '90s and the first part of this decade, content providers who wanted to publish online only needed to worry about the graphical web browser.
I think in daily newspapers, the way comic strips are treated, it's as if newspaper publishers are going out of their way to kill the medium.
Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor.
To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.
