And now for the news.
Highlights from this month in the world of self-publishing:
In what has been a relatively slow week for publishing overall, it’s really comforting to see that self-publishing hasn’t slowed down much, especially when compared to the traditional publishing market, which has seen publication dates pushed back up to six months and sometimes even more. It’s also fun to see a book that has been on our radar for a while, Sharon Traner’s A Striving After Wind, hit the new release lists. Doubtless you’ll be hearing more about her work both here on the blog and elsewhere, especially when Volume 2 is released.
Janice Gassam of Forbes brings us the week’s most interesting profile of an individual involved in the world of self-publishing: Jasmine Womack, a woman who “has made it her mission to ‘help leaders transform, communicate, and connect with others through storytelling.'” As she notes in her interview with Gassam, Womack’s specialty lies in identifying and encouraging leaders who have a story to tell establish a platform through which to share the lessons they’ve learned and widen the reach of their credibility by publishing books based on their expertise. Says Womack, “The laws that used to exist no longer exist. So, we have a responsibility to put meaningful content into the world because at one time, we weren’t even allowed to open up a book.” Her great, great, great grandmother was a slave, she points out, and her grandmother had to finish her schooling around the sixth grade in order to help provide for family. For Womack, the need to create is also a need to reclaim co-opted stories: “we have the power to create our own narrative and tell our own stories and not just rely or depend on the perspective of our stories about our people or about our lives to be told by other people who have no knowledge of us or no knowledge of what it means to be Black.” She points out that self-publishing allows Black authors a unique opportunity to skip the gatekeepers and maintain “control over your work,” a critical necessity when seeking to embrace authenticity and reclaim one’s story.
Gassam’s interview with Womack is well worth reading in its entirety, and we hope you’ll do so! She explains in even more detail the role that self-publishing plays in her work with authors and entrepreneurs.
Self Publishing Advisor 