Roberson's Interminable Ramble

(Via BoingBoing) It appears that Diane Duane is considering self-publishing the final installment of a stalled trilogy, likely as a POD title. (She's doing a straw poll of her fans, to gauge what the interest might be. See the comments for some truly head-scratching responses, including the guy who has read each of the first two installments "multiple times," but who would never consider paying more than "paperback prices" for the long-awaited conclusion.)

I recall that a writer named Daniel Keys Moran (with whose work I was unfamiliar) had announced similar plans back in the heady early days of Print On Demand, though according to Wikipedia those plans don't appear to have come to fruition. Still, between Duane and Lawrence Watt-Evans, we've got a couple of canaries-in-coalmines, who might be good indicators whether an author with an established audience can successfully make the transition to self-publishing. It bears watching. (Of course, if too many in that established audience aren't willing to pay a few dollars more to buy a book published by the author, whether they've been waiting years for it or not, then the existence of the audience itself might prove to be a moot point.)