POD.

I've been reading quite a bit about the controversial PublishAmerica. Since I do not wish to receive a cease and desist letter, I will advise all writers to Google this one for yourself. I shall move on to the subject of POD in general. I can see that, for writers with a book that probably has a limited audience, POD makes lots of sense. What about the writer of more mass-market works?

Back when I started writing, there was no Internet. There was, however, vanity press. Which I didn't quite understand. I read. A lot. I read the good, the bad, and the ugly. I wanted my work to be good. When I started writing, it was bad. Really bad. Epic stink-o. I wrote bad science fiction novels for a long, long time. The first one I thought had some promise was number seven. That was the first one that landed me an agent.

Long story short, the novel that will be published this fall is number twelve. Do I want anyone seeing numbers one through eleven? Well, I think I could rewrite number eleven and get a good book out of it. The others will never see the light of day.

I was not a good writer. I did not deserve to be published. I had not earned the right to ask a fellow human being to give up hours out of their one life on earth to read those books. Nobody should have paid any money for those books. And they didn't.

I was learning. It took me a long time to qualify for publication. I am still learning. But I knew on day one that I was not going to buy my way to the goal. When my work was good, people whose job it was to find good writing would tell me.

Your mileage may vary.