Review: Monkey Business
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 13, 2013
The publishing world is going through, to use an overused cliché, a tectonic change. The advent of online and electronic publishing are changing the way that we consume and promote published words in the greatest such shift since Gutenberg."Be the Monkey" is a book-length conversation (or in fact a series of conversations) between the best-selling authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath on several topics relating to the current state of the publishing industry, and all the advantages of publishing your own works without the mediation of the large publishing houses. Konrath in particular has been writing and blogging on this topic for years, and Eisler has been "walking the walk" of self-publishing for quite some time as well. In fact, Eisler's own testimony might be the most persuasive argument in favor of doing self-publishing: he has turned down a half a million dollar book deal from one of the six major publishing houses. He has figured out, and correctly it seems, that being hamstrung with a contract did not make much sense for him any longer, either financially, or in any other respect. The freedom to choose your own book cover, distribution channels, marketing initiatives, and the price of your own books are too powerful of considerations to be left to third parties. Eisler's one big point, to which he returns repeatedly, is that historically the single biggest service that the publishing houses provided was the distribution networks for the physical books. With the demise of traditional bookstores, scaling back of libraries, the advent of Amazon, digital publishing, and printing-on-demand services this one big advantage for publishing houses is all but nonexistent. The publishing houses are still trying to leverage their historically dominant positions, but this is increasingly becoming a fragile and tenuous place to be.Aside from being very informative and insightful, this was a very fun book to read. This is in large part due to its format - both Eisler and Konrath clearly enjoy this topic and bouncing ideas off of each other. If you've ever heard either of them speak live (as I have with Esiler) then their voice will clearly come through while reading this book. They also seem to share a very irreverent and edgy sense of humor, which was the source of the title of this book among other things. (Sorry, I won't reveal it here - you'll have to read the book to find out about it.)This was definitely a fun and engaging read, and if you have any interest in the current state of books and publishing, then you will certainly find a lot of useful and intriguing information here.