It’s All About the Wine

The Financial Times, of all papers, has an article about wine books. Even if you don’t want a book about wine or don’t drink wine, it’s an interesting article about publishing and self-publishing.

For instance, there’s an interesting tidbit about Allen Meadows, apparently a “burgundy guru,” whose wife helped him publish his book.

What she had to do was “put together the entire team – and cover all the costs – featuring several artists, photographers (including taking one up in a helicopter for specific aerial views), mapmakers, book designers, copy editors, printing, computer programming for shopping cart and sales, indexing, book production manager, storage facilities, all fulfilment, etc”.

Or this opinion from Benjamin Lewin, who wrote a book about Bordeaux wines:

There are two general problems to conventional publishing. One is the general incompetence of the publishers: all they really know how to do is to publish more books following exactly the same model as in the past. The second is the way the cost of the book becomes enormously inflated by their overheads.

You might want to click over to read the full article and hear what one author thinks of Lulu.

Me? All I think about is the wine.