Terry Goodkind to Self-Publish

Publishers Weekly reports today that Terry Goodkind will self-publish his next book, The First Confessor, in July.

No word about format, pricing, or retailers, but one assumes that you'll be able to get it, somehow, from that big online bookstore named after a river. (The title leads me to assume it's a prequel to the "Sword of Truth" books, but I could very easily be wrong; I haven't read any of them in quite a while.)

Goodkind is famously...how can I put this delicately?...perfectionist in his dealings with publishing companies, so perhaps he will be happier being his own production manager, copyeditor, marketing director, publicist, cover artist, shipping coordinator, editor, publisher, shipping clerk and general factotum. Good luck to him, I suppose: the most successful self-published authors tend to be those that already have an established audience, and "multiple New York Times bestseller" is definitely an established audience.

(Other things that characterize highly successful self-publishers, which may be less germane to Goodkind: being female, writing romance, being highly and directly engaged with one's readers.)