When my first collection of stories, The Past Present, came out in 2001, it was with a a fledgling company called IUMIX. The young publisher liked my work, and I was eager to work with someone engaged in a labour of love. No worries, I’d checked him out.
TPP came out as an ebook. But the world wasn’t ready for ebooks then, so IUMIX added POD. It got TPP onto Amazon where for some strange reason it still can be found. But traditional review places sneered. They wouldn’t touch POD with a barge pole. Don’t mention the ebook. IUMIX, sadly, bombed shortly thereafter.
Today, I read in the SMH that things might be changing. Not about TPP, but about ebooks in general, and about POD. The technology has improved so much and POD looks no different from traditionally published.
In Australia there’s GST on books, which hikes up their prices. Then add freight to Mars, Europe, the US, anywhere in the world, and how much does your pubbed-in-Oz book then cost?
Many of the barriers we face are those of the mind. Munney, peeking over from the other side now, is hoping to make people see sense as it forces a rethink on ebooks and POD. Traditional books will never disappear; they smell too good. But, hey, there’s room for diversity, n’est-ce pas? Here’s an article from 2002, but no one was listening.
I’m glad that my second collection, Back Burning, will be available also in POD, maybe even as an ebook. It’ll be released tomorrow in Australia. By 2008, it’ll be available in Europe, in the rest of the world, and maybe even on Mars.
