St. Pete Times Festival of Reading

Re: writing and publishing I'm very excited about this weekend's Festival of Reading in St. Petersburg at the USF campus. I'll be there in the vendor plaza. It's a great event for the whole family. I'm bringing my six year old. Next year -- if it kills me -- I'm going to be one of the featured authors. There are many but I was not even permitted to apply because I own Hoyden Press, the publisher of my novel, Parvenue Throws A Party. Funny how that works. If my mom owned the company, or if it was any one of the other small publishers in the US, no problem (I could at least apply). The Festival has automatically weeded out anybody who is self-published. Now before you jump on the bandwagon and say that you can't blame them -- I ask you how often you have picked up a paperback at the airport and it turned out to be the lousiest book you ever read? Did you know that a lot of well-regarded books started out like mine? Why would a newspaper, of all sponsors, decide to let other publishing houses decide who is worthy to even consider? It's not sour grapes. My book is doing very well. You'll find it in a lot of stores where you don't normally find many self-published books: Borders and Barnes & Noble for example. It doesn't look self-published (whatever that means -- I just hear it a lot). In fact my printer, United Graphics, is probably going to pick up some extra business thanks to all the people who have asked me who did the printing. It's exciting to be part of this business and as I open my eyes about publishing, I want to share what I find with all of you.