The changes aren’t mine. I had a ordinary week last week. I wrote 2088 words on the novel, which is average for me though slow for many others. That brought me to a total of 74429 words so far. I worked in the yard and garden enough that my knees are very stiff and sore. I went with Mr. Jnfr to see Ironman 3, and enjoyed it very much.

So my personal world is plugging along, being ordinary in its usual wonderful way. The world of publishing, on the other hand, had some very interesting changes come to light last week. In fact, an entire segment of the publishing business shifted in a way that promises to be very good for independent authors. Here’s what happened.

First, understand that self-publishing is not all about ebooks. Paperbacks are still a large share of the book market, at least 60% in most categories, much more in non-fiction. But the big print distributors — Baker & Taylor, Ingram’s — have always segregated print-on-demand books into a separate section of their catalog with relatively terrible purchasing terms, and so most self-published and small press books never make it into bookstores in print (because most of us use print-on-demand exclusively).

In response to this, Katherine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, who have been involved in writing and publishing for decades, decided last year to set up a separate distribution outlet especially for those books that B&T etc. were doing such a poor job of distributing. This outlet was Ella Distribution, and with a lot of indie authors hitting the best-seller lists with their ebooks, a better distribution channel for indie books in print looked very promising.

In a blog post titled Shifting Sands, Kris says that B&T started following all their social media channels as soon as they began to develop Ella Distribution. Ella had great feedback from the growing network of independent bookstores, and went live in February.

Right away, Kris and Dean noticed that the books they were distributing were starting to get loads of paperback sales, but not one order came through Ella. So they investigated, and that’s when they found that B&T had integrated print-on-demand and self-published books into their main catalog, with terms equivalent to those given to books by corporate publishers.

This is incredible news for indie authors, since it breaks wide open a whole distribution channel that was closed before. And sad news for Kris and Dean, since they had to shut down Ella. In less than six months from concept to market change, the big distributors had out-maneuvered them.

Dean also has a post up describing their experience, Books Into Stores. Read it for more details.

I’ve been following their progress with Ella since they first mentioned the project. It’s quite a shock to see it collapse so suddenly. It’s also remarkably good news for all independent authors that our print books will now be more widely available on decent terms for all bookstores to buy.

So remember: self-publishing is not just about ebooks. Don’t neglect any potential venue for getting your work into readers’ hands.