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Even less fathomable is why you need "publishers" once you fully reach the ebook era.

Publishers are about as useful in the digital age as record companies.

You need publishers because you cannot get on sites like Fictionwise (biggest current eBook seller) as an individual, and that's where people are buying eBooks. While I recommend not dealing with Fictionwise in my above post (worth reading why), you can't just show up at a lot of big sellers yet, eBook in hand, and make your fortune by having them list it for you. They deal with established publishers, and they set what terms they want to define what makes for an established publisher.

And why don't they want to deal with your as an individual? The costs are simply too high. They have to list your books, deal with complaints about them if they contain inappropriate material (i.e. stuff publishers filter out if they want to remain listed), provide quarterly royalty reports and send out checks with those reports. For a publisher they send out one check for the publisher to distribute according to that publisher's contracts with its writers. They don't want to have to deal with thousands of individual authors when they can keep it down to a few dozen publishers instead.

If you want to find a publisher that suits your particular topic matter and want a relatively impartial listing, I recommend visiting Piers Anthony's Internet Publishers page. He has dealt with a lot of publishers over his long writing career, fought with many of them, and can provide a lot of information on where you might want to start.

Piers Anthony's August blog/newsletter is worth a read. He isn't the most technical person and I thought it was interesting to read someone of his skill level comparing a handful of Linux distros.

SF&F author Piers Anthony, http://hipiers.com/publishing.html maintains a directory of various POD services. It's quite informative and pulls no punches regarding the bad apples.

im interested. let's see it. after THGTTG, LOTR, & HP's success the sci-fi and fantasy genres are more prominent.

i hope this movie is good if they make it

next should be something from Piers Anthony.

I think Xanth would make a great "magic MMORPG". Everyone could choose to have a unique magical talent that would be weak to begin with, but unlike the books, with experience you could "level up", and make your talent stronger or different. The game software could keep track of assigned talents and make sure no two are exactly the same (one of the base assumptions of Xanth).
Imagine- fighting the Gap Dragon or dueling with another player who can create holes under your feet. Way cool :-)

He's up to about 26 right now and the last few seem to be out of print on the Amazon site. I assume that's because they suck. Proof: this quote from the Amazon.com page on Yon Ill Wind, the 19th in the series:

"Anthony incorporated about 150 suggestions from fans in Roc and a Hard Place (1995); he uses and credits another 100 here, including two major premises."

The guy couldn't even care enough to come up with his own plots! He was a contractor, for pete's sake! He's even got his books planned out, by month, on his web site! And he's got an erotic fantasy novel due out this year called (and I'm not making this up, check the site) "The Magic Fart"!!!

I rest my case.

-- MarkusQ

P.S. Seriously though, what about A Canticle for Leibowitz?

He's a sf/f writer.
Follow the link of this name to http://www.hipiers.com/.

I've been on Linux over a year now, using KDE 1, and StarOffice 5.2 as my word processor, and though making the change from Macrohard Doors has been a headache, I am comfortable and like it here. But the things of Linux are still new and evolving, and I believe I can get a system that will be better for me. I don't want to try to upgrade this one, lest it lose what it has; I prefer to start from scratch, as I did when I moved to Windows 95. I'm in dialogue with Griz Inabnit of Outcast Computer Consultants of Central Oregon griz@outcast-consultants.redmond.or.us who will assemble what he calls a MoNsTeR system with KDE 3, OpenOffice, which is the successor to StarOffice, said to be like a race car instead of a sedan, and software to facilitate my activities. It's all open source, meaning mostly free and constantly updated and malleable, but it's not price that interests me. I want to be all the way independent of Macrohard, so that no more Doors slam on my tender fingers. We'll see; stay tuned for future reports. Linux is spreading internationally and through US government agencies, who like its stability and versatility; a new business version is being developed. Linux is now the world's #2 server operating system, with about 27% of the market, behind 40% for Windows. It remains far behind on personal systems, but at such time as the Linux nerds catch on to the importance of user friendliness, that should change. Before too long I hope to get the ear of some of them, even if they don't necessarily like what I say.

So it seems that he isn't interested in free as in beer.. but some other reasons - namely being free from Microsoft. So that is my first and obvious question:

Why do you want to be free from Microsoft? - I can understand why from a technical perspective a move to Linux would be rewarding, but as a professional writer, what was it that made moving to a new and, as you say, problematic system worth while?

Piers makes some statements about his opinions in his newsletter, where he talks about Harlan Ellisons battle against piracy. He's not really in favour of file sharing.

Having said that, if he is aware of the situation, I would be interested in his take on the battle Linux has had to incorporate DVD support and still remain Open Source. If he's made aware of some of the "cons" that increased copyright legislation is having on the operating system he has decided to use then he may adopt a more balanced viewpoint.....

Bingo. Plus, what can Piers tell "the community" about his switch that would lead to making the switch easier for others in the future? What should be kept, what improved, what hidden by pretty GUI wrappers, and what should be tossed out? What pushed him through the problems? Which distro? (Asked only to gauge how hard those problems were. When I installed RH 7.2 I found it easier than my last Windows install.) I guess this question(s) goes beyond an interview, maybe a short description on his website.

I want to be all the way independent of Macrohard, so that no more Doors slam on my tender fingers. We'll see; stay tuned for future reports.

It remains far behind on personal systems, but at such time as the Linux nerds catch on to the importance of user friendliness, that should change. Before too long I hope to get the ear of some of them, even if they don't necessarily like what I say.

Many of Piers Anthony's books are no longer in print, and the publishing companies only want more Xanth...so Piers has resorted to using internet publishing. Check out HiPiers for more info if you like The Bio of Space Tyrant, The Cluster series, Cthor, Macroscope and any other of the wonderful books by Piers Anthony besides the Xanth series.
ttyl
Farrell

A wrinkle in time. by Madeleine L'Engle
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - (Note: get a copy of The AQnnotated Alice by Martin Gardner
The hobbit. by J.R.R. Tolkien
Anything by Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Alan Dean Foster, or Piers Anthony
Darkover (any of the books) by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orsen Scott Card
The Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.

A decent collection of Science fiction, mostly suitable for children

Also, Please attend the Worldcon, this year it's in Chicago followed by Philadelphia, PA, then San José. We have a lot of things for you and your children.

of course, our little one is only 6 months old. Mostly he's an excuse to reread Harold and the Purple Crayon

I aplogogise for any redundancies. This list took awhile to compile and find the links, especially as the co-author was breastfeeding at the time...

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Gee, I've always thought Phillip Dick was the greatest hack of all time.

And when talking of hacks, who could forget
Piers Anthony, the hack that keeps hacking.