Will Technology Ruin Talented Authors?

Jason Pinter has written an article about the effect that JA Konrath has had on epublishing. For those who don't know Joe Konrath, he's become a guru in publishing on the Kindle. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he had multiple books published traditionally. Joe is a go-getter. He works hard at his craft and his promotion of that craft.

Here's an excerpt:

On May 17th, it was announced that J.A. Konrath (aka Joe Konrath, aka Jack Kilborn) reached a deal with Amazon Encore to publish the 7th book in his Jack Daniels mystery series. Hyperion had published the first six installments in the series, which have seen a reasonable amount of success and been nominated for several awards. To his credit, Konrath has made himself into something of an internet and social networking behemoth. He maintains a hugely popular blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, in which he opines quite openly and honestly about his career trajectory, ups and downs, the peaks and valleys, with frank and often valid criticisms of the publishing industry. According to Konrath, he and his agent shopped the 7th Daniels book, Shaken, only to find no takers. For most authors, having a book rejected might mean it never seeing the light of day or selling a single copy. However over the last few months Konrath has blogged about the enormous success he's had publishing nearly a dozen of his previously unpublished novels, novellas and short story collections on the Kindle, Nook and iPad. Books that had been rejected dozens of times, but were now on pace to earn him upwards of $100,000 in royalties in 2010 alone.

You can read the full article here.

And you can read all about Joe's experiences here. He's not shy about sharing how he's managed to be as successful as he is today. It makes you wonder whether or not other Indy authors can reach such heights or do you have to make yourself known first with a traditional publisher to make a splash in the ebook world? Jason makes some good points in his article. E-publishing is easy now and many books are seeing the light of day and I'm not sure that's always a good thing. You have to put your best work out there not necessarily your first.