Self-Publishing Mr. Lincoln

July 23rd, 2004 · No Comments
by Booksquare

Two years ago, at a conference, we listened as a publisher spoke about acquiring two previously self-published titles. Since then, we’ve written about this idea as it relates to various concepts (which we won’t bore you with today). The Literary Saloon offer thoughts on the subject while discussing recent reviews of two books on Abraham Lincoln (with amazingly similar titles), one of which was self-published. We were pleased to see them skate the edge of the judging a book by its cover meme before leaping back into the game:

The cover a book is published under should have nothing to do with how it is judged (sure, the first instinct will be not to take the Xlibris book quite as seriously, but it can’t simply be dismissed out of hand). How can readers possibly respect reviewers who pre-judge books solely based on how they are published ? Isn’t that exactly the sort of attitude that undermines and threatens a true literary culture (where it’s the words and the story and the art that’s valued, not whether the author paid to publish it or a major publisher put their stamp of approval on it (something that, in our experience, isn’t necessarily a guarantee of any quality whatsoever)) ?

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