If you’re paying attention to this e-book revolution, I don’t have to tell you who Joe Konrath is.

Joe's latest e-book

But I will anyway, just in case.

Joe’s written (I think it’s) 24 books, been published by major publishers, been dropped by them and dropped them himself-Joe’s been to The Show, in baseball lingo.

Joe is now the John the Baptist of e-books. I met him in Chicago at Love Is Murder, where he sat alone on the biggest stage the conference had for an hour and mesmerized his audience with a disciplined rant about the state of publishing and the opportunities for e-publishing, particularly indie publishing. Joe knows whereof he speaks and he knows how to tell a story.

And since listening to him, I’ve been talking to and reading other traditionally-published authors and all I’m noticing are the horror stories: the publisher that bought their book and dumped it on the market, didn’t support their own efforts at publicity (if we’re doing our own publicity, what do we need them for?), decided to pulp the first two books in a series you’re still adding to (but their e-book version is still available at an inflated price so you can’t make it available yourself). Blah blah blah, on and on. Nobody wants to hear writer’s laments, except maybe other writers. But there’s a revolution here and it’s not brewing anymore, it’s boiling.

Count me as a recruit. I put up Howling at Wolves two weeks ago and my life changed the instant it appeared on Smashwords and Amazon. Suddenly, I was a business owner. This website has dominated my life since then because I needed a place to organize the job of putting my books up and getting readers. It’s my job now. I’m not interested in going begging to agents for handouts. I now have a ship; we’ll see how she sails.