Eoin Purcell's Blog

I know it is only 1st June. I know it’s early to select a site for a month that has hardly begun but this one is well worth it. I read about Bloglines new Blogsearch today on Techcrunch and decided to check its ability.

I launched a search for feeds with just the word publishing and discovered Pod-Dy Mouth. Its tone is irreverent, its content entertaining and its subject fascinating. Here is a flavour from the about page:

So, why am I here? To tell you about an entire world of books we are all missing: self-published titles—specifically, POD titles.

For those who do not know, about four years ago the self-publishing world took an awkward and potentially regrettable turn: Publishing on Demand. This means anyone with a word processor and a few hundred bucks can create a book that can be distributed on Amazon, BN.com and various other online venues without having to pre-print a single book (at an inflated price—about $3 to $5 more per trade paperback.)

And some more from the most recent post:

Do you see? Vetting is much like torture. I want you guys to pick up the phone and call your agents and thank them for doing this miserable job. Editors have it easy; everything they get has already been cherry-picked and they would (probably) never have to suffer through the examples I listed above–because an agent somewhere did his or her job and found something better.

Next time you finish a book you absolutely loved, the kind of book you rush to tell your friends about, thank an agent–because, other than writing the book, the agent did the hardest part: They found it.

I do not know how I missed this; apparently it has been reviewed or at least mentioned in:

Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, the LA Times and Publishers Lunch.

Anyway! Go read, enjoy and maybe, just maybe get yourself one of those hidden treasures.