Another Radical New Scheme for Publishing!

There's one every year, and 2014 gets its entry early from self-publishing superstar Hugh Howey.

As usual, he thinks that everything that has actually worked for many multi-million dollar companies, in the US and around the world -- and continues to work, year after year, producing products and paying thousands of salaries -- is completely wrong, but he, one guy in his basement, has The One True Solution which will be vastly better.

This post may expand, if I have time to dig into his list later on. And not all of his suggestions are completely stupid. But they represent the usual profound misunderstanding of what publishing is and does -- and, more importantly, what Amazon is and what kind of market it represents -- that we always see from self-published authors.

Just to whet your whistle, I'll note that his #6 is actually about "most favored nation" clauses, not "escalator clauses." And it would require a publisher to renegotiate all of its existing contracts to change language in a way that would be unfavorable to the authors and agents. Yes, that is likely to happen. Not even Chris Christie can strongarm people that much.