Quote for the day

"It used to be an elite few. Now anyone can make a book and it looks just like a book you buy at the bookstore."

Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, a print-on-demand company.

There's a whole article on the subject, if you care:

In 2008, Author Solutions, which is based in Bloomington, Ind., and operates iUniverse as well as other print-on-demand imprints including AuthorHouse and Wordclay, published 13,000 titles, up 12 percent from the previous year.
This month, the company, which is owned by Bertram Capital, a private equity firm, bought a rival, Xlibris, expanding its profile in the fast-growing market. The combined company represented 19,000 titles in 2008, nearly six times more than Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books, released last year.

Otherwise just go buy one of my books (published via Booksurge and CreateSpace, thank you very much.

And there's always hope:

"When Lisa Genova, a former consultant to pharmaceutical companies, wrote her first novel, Still Alice, a story about a woman with Alzheimer’s disease, she was turned down or ignored by 100 literary agents. Ms. Genova paid $450 to iUniverse to publish the book and sold copies to independent bookstores. A fellow author discovered the book and introduced Ms. Genova to an agent, and she eventually sold Still Alice for a mid-six-figure advance to Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, which released a new edition this month. It had its debut on The New York Times trade paperback fiction best-seller list on Sunday, at number five."

Rico says he'll take a 'mid-six-figure advance' for any of his, especially the upcoming Cowboys & Indians...