Rejected Again? Publish Your Own (e)Book

Getting a book deal, no matter how talented you are, is the elusive Holy Grail of most writers, and often has more to do with good timing and who you know. John Kennedy Toole tried desperately to get his wonderful novel "A Confederacy of Dunces" into print, then sadly committed suicide before it finally hit the presses. Perhaps Toole would still be alive today had he been able to upload a digital version of the book instead.

Sony, in a partnership with Smashwords, has just announced that it is opening its e-book platform to self-published authors. Amazon offers a similar open-ended platform for its Kindle e-book reader called Digital Text Platform.

Wired reported on the new development, which will allow virtually all self-published content to be sold at its online content marketplace:

"Sony’s eReader division — which runs second in the market to Amazon Kindle — will only vet content for hate speech, plagiarism, improper formatting or public-domain books offered by another other than the legitimate author. Other than that, they deny nothing."

Users simply upload their opus in Microsoft Word format and set a price. For most writers, at least those who are new to publishing, "free" is probably a good starting point.

What a wonderful opportunity to read some creative work by the undiscovered Herman Melvilles and Toni Morrisons of our day. However, you know that with greater access comes a greater deluge of material that never should have seen the light of day in the first place.

But if it helps just one or two otherwise unpublished wordsmiths quit their day jobs, then I'd say it's all for the better.

Photo courtesy of David Monniaux, via Wikimedia Commons.