Top all-time · #1888
A Newbie's Guide to Publishing
Personal blog · jakonrath.blogspot.comwritingbusiness
A Newbie's Guide to Publishing is a personal blog at jakonrath.blogspot.com about writing and business. Since 2010, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 56 times, most often “The Acquisitions Editor”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (28) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link J.A. Konrath's blog for its posts on self-publishing and e-book economics, especially A Newbie's Guide to Publishing. Commenters cite its sales numbers, pricing arguments and publishing-industry critiques.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 28 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /13 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2010-08-24
- The Acquisitions Editor3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-09-30
- Why Creators Shouldn't Fear File Sharing3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-05-29
- A bedtime story (about the publishing industry)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-28
- How to deal with piracy as a publisher. 2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-05-30
- Guest Post by Guido Henkel2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-12
What Hacker News says?
- The DRM of Netflix is irrelevant. The people who want to download the movies will do it anyway, but their number got way lower once Netflix (and probably Hulu and others like them) got a large enough catalog. People like convenience and are willing to pay for it. - I couldn't immediately find the article where he announced that HE uploaded his books (as an experiment), but here is one of the many articles where he…
Comment linking /2010/05/piracy-again.html
on ““The books will stop working.””Submitted You Should Self-Publish as a story · 133 points
HN discussion> Rule of thumb, never start a sentence with "There are people", it's very vague and almost meaningless. Always refer to specific groups of people. This from the person who claims the supporters of our current copyright system are by necessity "Writers, researchers, artists, architects, musicians, composers, filmmakers, actors, podcasters, even a lot of software developers" Not a terribly specific list there either,…
Comment linking /2010/05/piracy-again.html
on “DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results”Submitted Time Investment as a story · 72 points
HN discussionMeanwhile, thousands of authors support Amazon, and question not only Hachette but the "Authors Guild" which only protects the 1% of super-rich authors (who, coincidentally, are mostly signers of the Preston letter.) For a different viewpoint on all this, see the posts of Barry Eisler and JA Konrath who've been covering this issue for YEARS. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “Plot Thickens as 900 Writers Battle Amazon”Submitted Why Creators Shouldn't Fear File Sharing as a story · 60 points
HN discussionRead this blog: "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing" http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “How I Wrote and Self-Published a Book: Step by Step”Submitted A bedtime story (about the publishing industry) as a story · 42 points
HN discussionYou're going to want to go read every post on http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “Lessons learned from a year as a self-published author”Submitted The end of the betseller (by J. Konrath) as a story · 24 points
HN discussionSpeaking of monopolies, anyone heard of JA Konrath? http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ He wrote the blog a newbie's guide to publishing. During that time he discovered publishing his refused books on Amazon KDP because the big 6 publishing companies had rejected them. He used to be an advocate for signing with a big publishing company, and suffering their 17.5% royalty + marketing costs. Most large published books never…
Comment linking /
on “Competition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism with It?”Submitted How to deal with piracy as a publisher. as a story · 17 points
HN discussionI've been watching the self-publishing world lately since reading Jon Konrath's blog here: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ and I have to say, why can't I get all the programming books I want for approximately $1-$5 per book in electronic format? I'd probably buy at least 1 book/week at that price! So here's an idea for what I'd pay for, as a more technical reader: technical ebook purchasing for $1-$5 per book with th…
Comment linking /
on “335k downloads of Learning Python The Hard Way”Submitted How To Succeed as a story · 7 points
HN discussionAuthor of the featured blog post here, and a long-time HN member. I would like to share a few observations about the nature of the independent author community, based on the Internet discussions that preceded the suspension of LendInk (see https://www.facebook.com/pages/LendInk/124974504234948 and check out the threads and comments from August 2), as well as my own experience as an ebook author: * Even though indie…
Comment linking /2012/03/barry-joe-scott-turow.html?showComment=1331421267759
on “What happened to LendInk? The owner responds.”Submitted Self-Publishing - A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath as a story · 4 points
HN discussion#1 blogging mistake: treating it like an info dump and bragging platform. Blogs are a place to share and gain knowledge. For a business, they're a place to demonstrate your competency to the market and to attract new customers. Example: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ 99% of his blog is him yelling at the traditional publishing industry. That it sells a lot of books is a happily encouraged byproduct.
Comment linking /
on “Common Blogging Mistakes Made by Startups”Submitted The Bestseller Shift as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBut the thing that the traditional publishers won't be able to counter is pointed out in Konrath's recent blog post about time is money: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/02/time-is-money.html . And until I actually investigated it, I wouldn't claim that editing and such takes a four-figure outlay. I would defer to patio11 there.
Comment linking /2011/02/time-is-money.html
on “The Very Rich Indie Writer”Submitted The Acquisitions Editor as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis all ties in with a blog that I just started reading yesterday. It's written by a genre fiction writer that has also made the switch to predominantly ebooks. I guess the most relevant post is http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/08/beginning-of-end.html but the whole blog is really interesting and worth reading. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth Godin”Submitted Print is eternal, and will never be replaced as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe actual, non-aggregated, article: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/03/guest-post-by-john-loc...
Comment linking /2011/03/guest-post-by-john-locke.html
on “Crime Writer Makes a Killing With 99 Cent E-Books”Submitted An author's open letter to DOJ as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've been following this blog: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ It's by a traditionally published author that used to hold much of the same opinion as you and has now moved to self-publishing and argues that newcomers should do the same. If what publishers provide is good editors it would seem a simple solution would be for good editors to go freelance and take a direct cut of the sales.
Comment linking /
on “Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book”Submitted The Agency Model Sucks as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think it's not a good solution unless you are yet pretty "famous". IMO you should look to Amazon or other service with a well estabilished community you can get advantage of. Relevant read: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is the most profitable way to self-publish e-books?”Submitted Guest Post by Guido Henkel as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI don't know, but talking to tech professional writers I have responses similar to this: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/12/bedtime-story.html Long story sort: If you get more money with the digital version than with paper you don't need publishers, or editors at all, you don't need to give away your copyrights in exchange for access to market by the gatekeepers(publishers) and a minority of the profits. You don'…
Comment linking /2010/12/bedtime-story.html
on “Why do ebooks cost so much?”Submitted Things you can do if your book is not selling so well (2011) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
