Tea at Trianon: Self-Publishing – It’s About Breaking The Rules

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, May 13, 2018

Self-Publishing – It’s About Breaking The Rules

From Just Publishing Advice:

The rulebook governing the publishing of books has been thrown out of the window, been burnt on a sacrificial fire and converted into a Kindle ebook that no one will ever bother to read. Self-publishing is a new form of anarchy, which will change the face of publishing, reading and consumption of text for some considerable years to come. It will, and I could probably say, already has changed the way books are written, bought, read, marketed and sold by breaking the rules of publishing.

Why does a novel need to be 110,000 words? Who made that rule? Well, it was fine when books needed to look nice and uniform on a bookstore shelf, but who cares on the Kindle Store. Why do short stories need to be published in a collection? Why can’t they be sold one at a time? Does it really matter now if a writer uses single or double quotation marks? Are these ideas breaking the rules? (Read more.)