Helloooo,

What’s your view on the E-publishing phenomenon? I thought it best to ask someone in the know, so my May interview is with Author/Realtor and ordained Minister Timmothy B McCann! –

Here are his views on the self publishing phenomenon!

Would you find it hard to believe that the next Anna Karenina could have gone to the grave with its author? Would you find it shocking that an agent could have passed on the next Madame Bovary and said “This is not plausible?” Believe it or not a tale as powerful as War and Peace sits on a five inch “floppy disk” somewhere and the world will never hear the story. Why? Because of access.

The e-publishing phenomena is the greatest thing to happen to writers since Gutenberg invented the printing press. And before you consider that to be a hyperbolic statement allow me to explain.

Prior to Johannes Gutenberg creating what would be later known as “movable type,” disseminating information was very difficult. For approximately 4,500 years before the printing press, ideas were engraved or tediously written on surfaces such as stone, clay, papyrus, wax, and parchment. Can you just imagine how mind-numbing it must have been for a creative mind moving at the speed of light? To have to have the patience to share a story when it could take hours upon hours to write the first draft of a single paragraph? When some experts say we can mentally process over 600 words every sixty seconds, would you have the patience to carve one or two words a minute into stone?

Well, just as man made a monumental leap from stone to clay. From clay to papyrus, wax and eventually parchment. And from parchment to computers, we are in the midst of taking yet another leap when it comes to the dissemination of our thoughts and ideas.

As a writer, there is nothing worse than to have the following thought: The creative side of me is saying I should write it like this because I don’t think there has been a book writtenthis way before. But the commercial side of me is pushing me to write it like that because that is what the editor/agent feels the public will want to read. Regrettably, the way this is resolved by many writers is to simply sacrifice the creative side of their nature begging them to do this and simply do that in order to get published. This is literary blasphemy. 

The advantages of e-publishing are as follows:

INTIMACY: Because you do not have the corporate behemoth known as a publisher standing between you and the public, you can create stories that an editor may not know how to pitch to the powers that be in an editorial board room. FINANCIAL: Imagine this. Imagine receiving 70% of the sales price of your book in weeks! AVOID THE BOX: You can write anything you like whenever you like. This is frowned upon by publishers. For instance I have a book of love stories  –Nine Faces of Love– plus a book entitledWhat Does It Mean to be a Christian Part 1.  How many publishers would allow such a thing?  RIGHTS: You own them all!

My fellow writer you have the opportunity to tell your grandchildren you stood on the precipice of literary change and took advantage of it—without cursing the light of a new day. Why? Because you now have access and access is power. This is a moment we’ve never seen before and my parting advice to you is simply, carpe diem!“

Thanks Timm!

Timmothy B. McCann is a bestselling author and currently owns and operates a real estate brokerage and E Publishing company in Atlanta Ga. He has taught a course on the collegiate level entitled “The Art Of Commercial Fiction” and before E – publishing, penned four novels with Harper Collins and Kensington Books; Until… Always, Forever and Emotions.