I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Guy Kawasaki who has written 12 books, 10 of which were traditionally published. His newest book, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur — How to Publish a Book, which helps people understand how and why to self-publish. Guy shares his thoughts on publishing and why he decided to forgo the traditional model and go indie. In this first of a five-part interview, Guy talks about his decision to self-publish and how his book APE came to be.

An excerpt:

Penny: What do you think is wrong with publishing? I know that opens the floodgates and we could debate this for an hour!

Guy: It is endemic to any industry that there are certain habits and ways of doing things, and norms that people cannot break out of. Such as, “we will not sell direct” … I could just go down the list. My interpretation of the issue is this: back in 1930 or whenever, it was a world of limited resources. There was limited printing press access time, limited paper, limited bookshelf space. Somebody had to act as the arbiter of taste. Who was going to judge which book was worth printing? Random House, Putnam, Penguin, Simon & Schuster had people with good taste to look through all the crap and select the diamonds, polish the diamonds, and put it out for the hoi polloi [the many].

I understand the past, but the world is now different…

Get more of Guy’s insight here: http://huff.to/VHy5kz