Dan Gillmor has a pretty fascinating post over on his website, Mediactive, about his experience trying to publish his second book, and his decision to take it to Lulu (albeit a VIP segment of the self-publisher).
Gillmor (picture via his site) published his first book, We the Media, with O’Reilly, and was under contract to do his second book, Mediactive, with them, too. After he and O’Reilly “parted company” in January, he and his agent started looking for a new publisher for Mediactive, with one caveat: The book had to be published under a Creative Commons license. In Gillmor’s words: “In this case, as with We the Media, the kind of Creative Commons license would say, essentially, that anyone could make copies of the work for non-commercial use, and if they created derivative works, also only for non-commercial purposes, those works would have to be made available a) with credit to me and b) under the same license.”
This, says Gillmor, was an arrangement that most of the publishers were not OK with. Gillmor’s theory as to why: “To publishers, books are items they manufacture and send out in trucks. Or else they’re computer files to be rented to publishers’ customers, or customers of Amazon, Apple and other companies that use proprietary e-reading software to lock the work down in every possible way. In both cases, publishers crave being the gatekeepers.”
This was contrary to Gillmor’s philosophy – and, in fact, the philosophy he was writing about – so he signed with Lulu, under their VIP service for established authors. His book will be released this summer. We’re curious to see whether his experience with Lulu meets his expectations. Luckily, if this post is any indication, we’re sure to get a pretty detailed explanation of the process as it occurs.
Check out the rest of Gillmor’s post for his thoughts on the rejections and a more detailed explanation of his faith in Lulu.