I know precisely one person who managed it this way with a novel, and he devoted a huge amount of time and money to it, and persuaded stores into letting him hold events to which he brought copies and gave them a cut of sales. But 99.9% of people won't have his time and resources. It can work for non-fiction, but only if you've written to a very specialist niche (say a book on trams which the shop in the tram museum agrees to take) and aren't expecting high sales (or even to recoup costs). There are a handful of well-respected books in my academic field that were produced this way, but they were done for love and because the author felt the material was important, but not commercial enough for a professional publisher.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-11-22 01:31 pm (UTC)It can work for non-fiction, but only if you've written to a very specialist niche (say a book on trams which the shop in the tram museum agrees to take) and aren't expecting high sales (or even to recoup costs). There are a handful of well-respected books in my academic field that were produced this way, but they were done for love and because the author felt the material was important, but not commercial enough for a professional publisher.