I am a huge fan of Joe Konrath.
I first encountered Joe maybe fifteen years ago at a Backspace writers conference in New York. He was in one of the panels, making waves as I remember – in a good way. But what I remember most was him scurrying around sprinkling his books around everywhere. FREE BOOKS… with cool, eye-catching covers, what could be better than that? And a babe named Jack Daniels – yeah, bring it on!
Then I lost track of Joe for a while, until after I trad-published a book, had a less than satisfying experience, and started thinking about self-publishing. It quickly became apparent that Joe was the king of self-publishing – Hugh Howie being a distant second. Joe had it down – even had the James Patterson production line thing going with lots of co-authors and new books flying off of the POD presses every five minutes or so. (By the way, I mean that in an admiring, appreciative way… hey, why not sell every book, make every buck you can, right?)
What I also like about Joe is how free he is to tout his cover guy, his formatter, his copyeditor, you name it. Not only is it good for them but for other writers considering self-publishing who don’t know where or who to go to. Then there’s the iconoclast Joe: I like how he takes on the establishment titans – the Turow’s, the Preston’s, the whoever’s. I don’t have a dog in that hunt and don’t really know what all the issues are, but if I did, I’d probably be on Joe’s side.
So keep up the good work, Joe… us little guys out here appreciate you and want to grow up to be just like you.