Articles by Steve Semken

I receive lots and lots of queries and even more face-to-face questions regarding the idea of what makes a good book. People want to know if I’ll accept their book idea for publication. Sometimes I even wonder myself: how do I know what is good or not? How can an author know if they have […]

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I Might Become President: Doing Creative Work For People Is Good In this day and age of the internet the cutting-edge business community spouts off constantly about the value of what you can give away for free. There is much ado about something regarding podcasts and YouTube videos. There is a theory certainly that there […]

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As Thanksgiving rolls around this year I am thinking about a talk I just gave to a group of writers. I was telling them about my decisions and struggles to become a writer myself, the efforts to write during breaks at work, the need to promote my writing and how I finally made the jump […]

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Buy local, support local, go local, shop locally… these campaigns have all the potential in the world, but they are normally thin and lack much thought. They sound encouraging and many people see the “local” aspect and believe that just going to a farmer’s market will be enough, that just shopping at an independent bookstore […]

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If you had asked me ten years ago would I still be in business as an independent book publisher I would have laughed and said, “No.” But I wouldn’t have meant it. I am determined to do what I care about and it would take a lot to talk me out of what I do […]

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There is a part of writing and publishing that is entirely dependent on audience engagement. Like the tree that makes no noise if no one is there to hear it: that is, no writing is heard if no one is there to read it. In this case, it’s literally true, the book makes no noise […]

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After someone finds out you’re a publisher, (the first question, “What do you do?” comes the next question–“What do you publish?” This second question, as is the third question to come soon, is oftentimes a thinly veiled trick question. The third question, as you may have guess, almost 95% of the time takes the form […]

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The start of random thoughts: I recently spent three days as a faculty member at the Midwest Writing Center in the Quad Cities and lots and lots of ideas floated through my mouth for both wanna be writers and established authors. The field of being a writer is truly vast and inspirational. Someone could be […]

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Would I put a blurb on the back of book that was not positive? What do you think? People often say that they do not trust book blurbs? Readers, book buyers, reviewers even seem to wonder these days why publishers and authors bother. Worse yet, they do something even more peculiar, they believe that any […]

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I am frequently asked what I think the future of publishing is. As a book publisher I am somewhat nervous about the answer I might give. I am do absolutely believe that publishing has a future. On the one hand I do agree that the physical object we call the book is taking a beating […]

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As a beginning author and a beginning publisher, the most dreaded, insecure question you can be asked is: “Did you publish it yourself?” As I wrote in the previous article, sure, being self-published leaves you in good company and there is really nothing inherently wrong with it. In fact, if you look at the facts […]

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What do Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, even William Blake all have in common? Yes, they were each self-published. If you were going to choose some remarkable role-models these folks wouldn’t be the worst ones you could choose. So why the scorn for the self-published author? Much of it is warranted, but if […]

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Part Three: So I started my newsletter, got some remarkable feedback from some well-known authors and my confidence was high. I grew my mailing list to 500 for Sycamore Roots. I sort of used the newsletter as a business card really. That is, I presented myself in the writing world with it. It was something […]

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I left off Part One with deciding I would submit my newly thought-of newsletter Sycamore Roots to a variety of readers. The easiest part of becoming a publisher is actually saying you’re going to do it. The hard part, as it is with anything, is following through. Well, I decided that if I wanted to […]

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