The say a river creates a canyon through gentle perseverance – and maybe that is indeed the answer to the question?

I’m not too sure, or indeed consistent with the question, but I think, in this instance I know what it could be. 

In the last 12-months I have purchased more ‘on demand’ books than traditional – and it has been invigorating, it truly has.

‘Vanity Publishing’ is such a terrible statement, it is, so many snobby overtones…

‘Traditional Publishing’ isn’t about getting good stories to the world (odd exceptions exist), it is unapologetically about getting profit from investment, an investment that has both the minimal of risk and maximum anticipated return.

There is nothing wrong with this – it is the vey heart of business, and against this I have no complaints.

I wonder in years to come, with social historians wax lyrical about the freedom that ‘on demand’ has created in the literary world?

I hope so.

I hope they will celebrate the wonderful tales it has enabled to be told.

Look on your own bookshelves and wonder what joy could have happened sooner if your favourite writer hadn’t waited all those character forming years in a damp bedsit waiting for that unicorn finding moment of Literary Agent acceptance? 

Would JKR still have been a phenomenon on a global scale without industrial advertising? 

Who knows?

Arguments are equally valid and compelling whichever way you take the proposal.

And therein is the great unquestionable conundrum.

Do you publish on demand as agent of your own destiny, or hold out hoping that one day ‘Agency’ will arrive to assist in your noble quest?

And which will be the river, and which will be the unmoving stone?