Why do people choose to publish themselves, when they could certainly have been published “properly” (ie, by others)?
Matthew Butterick explains:
Before I set to work publishing this book online, a book agent got me a very nice offer to turn this material into a paperback for a name-brand publisher. Tempted, I was. But when I asked whether I’d be allowed to design it, her answer was swift. “Of course not,” she said. “Why would you think they’d let you do that?”
Oh, I don’t know.
I walked away. The agent was flabbergasted. To her, my job as an author was to produce a sequence of words that other people would shepherd to market. Perhaps if my topic was different, that would be true. But a book about typography necessarily involves showing, not just telling.
- The Economics of a Web-Based Book, Year Two
Butterick is a writer, typographer, programmer, and lawyer. If you visit his website1 you will find a menu of typefaces. Choose the one you like most to read what he has written.
The book he mentions was about typography. My own most recent book is full of illustrations made during my breakdown. It’s personal. And it’s visual.
I wanted the liberty to make all the decisions myself.
1 Visit his website. I knew nothing about Butterick till I followed a link shared by John Gruber. As I’ve noted elsewhere, blogs were the first social media, because they involved freely sharing other people’s work.
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