It looks like we might schedule another speech for those who did not make it to the Frankfurt Bookfair a week ago.

Also I want to apologize for not staying for the Q&A. I was told I just had 45 min and so wanted to clear the stage for the next speaker. Only later was I told that they had actually reserved 60 min for me!

Anyway, I sat next to the stage for another 2 hours answering to questions. But I fear I did not have time for everyone.

If you happen to read this and still have a question related to the content of my speech, please leave a comment or drop me a line. I’d be glad to answer.

In addition, I’ll be rehashing parts of the speech here and going more into detail – because obviously I had to leave out a lot. I also did not want to get too technical, because others had already covered the technical part on wednesday. My speech was more about the new possibilities (and the riscs) of this new publishing market.

Freedom always comes with a price-tag.

For some this price might be overwhealming, for others it is a no-brainer. I am somewhere in between, I guess. While I might find our new freedom awesome and would not trade it for anything, I am overwhealmed by all the things I need to do to actually get things done. I do not know about you, but when I started out, I really wanted to know everything (!) and did not know anybody who could help me sort it out. I ended up wasting a lot of time trying to tackle everything, learn everything, being informed about everything … Until I finally knew enough to start to prioritize and decide, on where to invest my time.

It was not easy.

And my decisions might not be your decisions. Every company is different because every product is different.

The most important things you need to know are:

Who you are doing this for? Who are the people you are trying to help?

How can you best help them? How can you be part of the solution?

Once you can answer this, all the rest will eventually fall into place.

Try it!

By the way, this (long) report from Porter Anderson for Publishing Perspectives made for an interesting read.

In general, they talk about “writers” when they talk about self-publishing. But most of it does not need to be about text – we could be talking about illustrated books or photography books as well. Even though, granted, publishing (e)books with images as main content right now gives you more limited choices. We’ll get there eventually.