Do Authors Need Publishers?

Do authors need publishers?I’m feeling a little sorry for Steven Zacharias. He’s the CEO of Kensington Publishing, a family-owned publishing company in New York, and this week he wrote a blog post for the Huffington Post about how authors still need publishers. You know, because they offer us so many benefits, like great editorial support and help with publicity.

Yeah, I laughed when I read that, too.

Then I asked him to clarify the following statement: “From what I’ve read, some e-books are quite good but, for every one of these are many more that aren’t.” I wasn’t sure from that whether he had read many indie titles, or whether he was just going by hearsay. Turns out it’s the latter. Mr. Zacharias told me, “I’ve only read a handful of indie published books because it’s natural for a reader to go to the bestsellers where publishers have spent a lot of money marketing that author or book.” Hmm, well, I’m a reader, and I don’t read many bestsellers at all. It’s been years since I’ve found much of anything on the bestseller lists that interested me. Okay, I take that back. I really liked Hugh Howey’s Wool. Oh, that’s right – Howey self-published the series first, didn’t he? Continue reading “Do Authors Need Publishers?”