Raphas Coat | Shamgar (2014/15)
As publishing models evolve
From ~2010-2015 I took on a few independent projects. These were typically individuals who were trying to sidestep traditional publishing during the nascent period of self-publishing becoming viable. In those days it seemed like publishing companies were faceless entities whose submission policies were impersonal. You’d also hear that the public submission policies weren’t really where they found books to publish, but agents were the way to go, which had its own set of hoops to jump through. I can understand wanting to avoid all that.
But in those days, there wasn’t great data to help folks understand the difficulties in self-publishing, either, which is essentially the problem of crying out into the void: once a product is put on the market, getting anyone to know it exists is almost impossible without distribution and marketing dollars
