Book Reviews
Amy Edelman •
Nov 28, 2011 What makes someone decide to go indie? Part of the answer would have to do with what they don’t need from a traditional publisher.
For Mark Cuban, the Internet billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, what he doesn’t need fills a 30,000-word e-book, titled “How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It.” Culled from Cuban’s blog postings over the years, the book is available for $2.99 via online book retailers.
So why go indie and do it with an ebook? In a word—control. A big advance from one of the Big 6 ties an author down to commitments that they might not want to fulfill. According to a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Cuban said, “I wasn’t up for doing a bookstore tour, nor did I like the financial risk reward of promoting a physical book.”
And what about the promotional muscle a Big 6 publisher can provide? Cuban estimates that his blog posts attract anywhere from 50,000 to one million readers. And with 335,000 Facebook friends and 760,000 Twitter followers, for Cuban, a PR person seems pretty expendable. Adds Cuban, “All I have to do is get them to pay attention and hit a link.” And while this strategy might not work for everyone, it certainly makes the case for building a strong online presence, something you don’t need to be an internet billionaire to do.
Read Galley Cat’s interview.
Purchase
How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It
“A big advance from one of the Big 6 ties an author down to commitments that they might not want to fulfill”
If you have a platform, you don’t need Trad Publishers at all. And if you don’t have a platform, they won’t pay you much of an advance anyway. So um, yeah. Thank you Internet for putting these guys out to pasture.
I saw a tweet about this saying Cuban had “self-published”. This isn’t correct. Cuban is publishing an ebook using the same indie publisher who did my book (a science thriller PETROPLAGUE). Diversion Books is NOT a self-pub service; they provide almost all the services of a traditional publisher, and they do not charge fees. Instead they split the profits with the author. Self-publishing and indie publishing are not the same thing; there are many new (and old) small presses using a variety of models (including ebook only) which are selective about the projects they take on, and which invest their own money (not the author’s) in producing and distributing the book.
Hi Amy,
We took the info about Mark self-pubbing from an interview/post, entitled “Mark Cuban Explains Why He Self Published” in the 11/23 GalleyCat:
“It seems like not a day goes by that another Oscar winner, business guru or reality star is offered a six or seven-figure publishing deal. So, when billionaire, Dallas Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban turned down all offers in lieu of self-publishing his book, ‘How to Win at the Sport of Business‘, tongues were wagging.”
I see you also posted a clarification there. Sorry if we got it wrong!
That’s cool. The vocabulary to describe publishing models is not keeping up with the number of publishing niches!
You said it!
Wow, with billions of dollars you’d think he could buy a better title.
HA! With billions of dollars he might not need one!