Lewis Micro-Publishing Background

I have been writing for close to 25 years now, and have written over fifty books and other miscellaneous manuscripts. I write almost every day, sometimes quite extensively and intensively, and often just "casually." For the first 13 years, basically, I wrote with an electric typewriter, in fact several typewriters. For the subsequent 12 years I switched to computers, first an small Mac, then a Mac laptop, and then my shift into PCs. Publishing followed somewhat hesitantly. Don't do as I did, which was to type a manuscript, have it copied and spiral bound, and then conveniently throw it into a box in the corner and then move on to the next writing project.  My dissertation was published (on Microfilm) in 1995 and I actually received one royalty check from it a couple of years later. My first real publication (Robidoux History, 1998) was a considerable undertaking, and was one I copied and hand-bound myself (50 copies) and distributed to libraries, state historical societies and individuals pretty much across the US. If you can get hold of this text, hang on to it because it is worth some money now.  A year's sojourn in China teaching English in a teacher's college and trying to conduct ethnographic research interrupted my publishing trajectory, but I did do some writing during this time. I seriously took on the project of becoming a publisher in late 1999, early 2000, and organized Lewis Micropublishing at this time with even a fictitious business name. The first year I published probably about half of my extant manuscripts on-line, and I probably produced a series of about seven or eight books hard-copy in small limited edition runs. The following year I e-published most of the rest of my work on-line, but did not pursue much more hand-binding of limited runs. Other factors intervened in the following two or three years, and it has really only been of late that I've returned in any serious manner to the question of publishing.

 I have slowly been drawn into the publishing aspects of writing in the last decade, and in a more serious manner in the last five years. Publishing and writing are two separate but overlapping spheres of interest and involvement--those who write generally do not publish and those who publish generally do not write, though there are always noteworthy exceptions. Some successful writers have essentially become their own publishing houses, and some publishers maintain their bevy of writer's like a well groomed herd of stud thoroughbreds. One best seller can make a publisher's future fortune.

The Internet is opening the publishing world up considerably, and the conventional publishers have faced an up-hill battle to maintain their exclusive positions in the world. I do not see conventional publishing as becoming obsolete any time soon--I am yearly impressed with the volume, range, quality and costs of new books on the market. But I think the book market and the structure of readership has changed considerably.

The main lesson I've learned in my own limited manner is that if one is going to writing and publishing with the idea of being the next Pulitzer or having a best seller, then one is bound for disappointment. On the other hand, with increasing options available to writers for publication, I believe the publishing world is both more open and more saturated than ever before, and there are many more opportunities for producing one's work in a variety of forms and forums than ever before.