Kenn Amdahl is the author of “There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings” and “Joy Writing,” which I am currently reading. He’s also the publisher of the aforementioned books. In fact, he hasn’t called anyone “Boss” in eighteen years, thanks to the success of Clearwater Publishing Company. Jealous? Read on to find out what he has to say about following in his footsteps. You can find the first part of the interview here and the second part here.

A lot of things have changed in the past 18 years. If you had to do it all over again, would you go the same route, or would you use a service such as Lulu or Amazon’s Createspace? Or would you give up and take that job at your uncle’s car lot?

People who hunger to write will find an outlet for their words. The outlets you mention did not exist when I started; on the other hand, bookstores were more common. I ventured into the marketplace that existed. Today, it’s easy to “publish” but harder to get noticed. Any tweeter or blogger might find an audience, but most can’t make a living at it. I think the world of words has expanded gloriously. I’m less sure about the future careers of “book writers.”

I haven’t published most of my novels, and I may release one for the Kindle. It’s cheap and easy; it won’t cost much to satisfy my vanity. If the book develops an audience, I can publish it on paper later. I’ve published dozens of poems in literary journals, but never released a book of my poetry. No one makes money at poetry, so maybe I’ll do a Print-On-Demand book to give to friends. Print-On-Demand is still too expensive per book for Kenn the businessman. But it’s about right for Kenn the egomaniacal poet. The good thing about today’s market is the rich variety of choices.

Had my uncle mentioned a job opening, I might have taken it. There’s good money in used cars and this has been a brutal year for book sales. If that job’s still open, have him call me. As to whether or not I would have written all the stuff I’ve written, I think Stephen King said it best. Someone asked him why he wrote such gruesome stuff. He answered, “What makes you think I had a choice?”

This article was written by John Roach http://prowritingtips.com John is a writer and copy editor. You can follow him on twitter at @johnwroachiii. To see more posts click here

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