I started self-publishing after my third book done the old way - around 2008. Your take on the whole self-publishing deal is reifying and very timely. There's been a little bit of guilt hanging off all the stuff I've self-published, for myself and for other people, mostly from Papua New Guinea where a desperate horde of frustrated and un…
I started self-publishing after my third book done the old way - around 2008. Your take on the whole self-publishing deal is reifying and very timely. There's been a little bit of guilt hanging off all the stuff I've self-published, for myself and for other people, mostly from Papua New Guinea where a desperate horde of frustrated and unpublished writers stew in a country without a publishing industry and bugger all bookshops. Keith Jackson and I set up a national writing competition up there in 2010 and then when I couldn't get anyone to publish our annual anthologies I went to KDP/Amazon and set up Pukpuk Publishing to do it. The competition was called The Crocodile Prize, named after Vincent Eri's 1970 novel, which was the first novel published by a Papua New Guinean. All went well until Bezos stopped shipping books to PNG because so many got lost or nicked enroute and he had to replace them. We're still at it but getting friends to cart books to the writers in their luggage is wearing a bit thin. If anyone is interested, there are some bloody good books from PNG on our list, which now numbers some 80 titles. We've tried to get the PNG government interested but they've got bigger fish to fry (more mines and cuddling up to China mostly) and the Oz government just ignores us. I'll see if Keith will run your piece on his PNG Attitude blog, the PNG scribblers will be encouraged by it.
I started self-publishing after my third book done the old way - around 2008. Your take on the whole self-publishing deal is reifying and very timely. There's been a little bit of guilt hanging off all the stuff I've self-published, for myself and for other people, mostly from Papua New Guinea where a desperate horde of frustrated and unpublished writers stew in a country without a publishing industry and bugger all bookshops. Keith Jackson and I set up a national writing competition up there in 2010 and then when I couldn't get anyone to publish our annual anthologies I went to KDP/Amazon and set up Pukpuk Publishing to do it. The competition was called The Crocodile Prize, named after Vincent Eri's 1970 novel, which was the first novel published by a Papua New Guinean. All went well until Bezos stopped shipping books to PNG because so many got lost or nicked enroute and he had to replace them. We're still at it but getting friends to cart books to the writers in their luggage is wearing a bit thin. If anyone is interested, there are some bloody good books from PNG on our list, which now numbers some 80 titles. We've tried to get the PNG government interested but they've got bigger fish to fry (more mines and cuddling up to China mostly) and the Oz government just ignores us. I'll see if Keith will run your piece on his PNG Attitude blog, the PNG scribblers will be encouraged by it.
Go right ahead mate. And good luck with your endeavors. You are doing great work