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Print-on-demand and electronic self-publishing options have made it easy for anyone to set up a business as a publisher whether they know what they're doing or not.

Self-publishing worked for me. Being able to put your work in print, even if it's a tiny print-on-demand print run of a dozen or so copies, shows publishers and editors a completed piece of work and that you can follow through on a project.

Print-on-demand publishing is the new farm system for new voices in fiction. Authors who have compelling things to say, who can market their stories in compelling ways, will succeed.

I did have a nice career in print, but traditional publishers don't always have the resources to create individualized marketing for their authors. Mine never figured out how to package books as hot as mine so that they found their full audience. Finally, I got frustrated enough over my lack of traction to walk away.

We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed.

It seems the world of book publishing is constantly changing. Whether it was the rise of chain stores or their decline, or the digital revolution... fortunately, we have been able not only to adapt but to thrive.

There's an obvious marketing component to doing something digitally where you're reaching out to new readers that you can't do in the existing print marketplace, or that it's difficult to do in the existing print marketplace.

I produced audio editions of 'Beneath' and 'Kronos' primarily to grow my audience. I'd seen it work for guys like Scott Sigler and J.C. Hutchins and thought their audience might enjoy my books as well. The goal was to get them hooked on the audio and hope they would migrate to the print books.

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.