Yahoo Publishing Discussion Lists

I did some soul searching over the weekend as to whether or not I wanted a public discussion space on this blog, and ended up disabling comments. While I really enjoy feedback, not to mention ideas for new posts, I'm not comfortable with posters arguing with each other on my site. To that end, I'm going to suggest three related Yahoo! publishing discussion groups.

The first is the Self-Publishing list, sponsored by SPAN and Marilyn and Tom Ross. The current moderators are all well known in the publishing community, membership is open, but all posts require approval (full moderation). There are almost 2000 members, including many names you'll recognize as authors of books on the self publishing subject, like Dan Poynter.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Self-Publishing/

Next is the Print-On-Demand group, which is squarely targeted for POD authors. They welcome subsidy press authors published by companies such as iUniverse, AuthorHouse, PublishAmerica and Xlibris, amongst others. Messages do not require approval, but there is a moderator whom I assume will remove spammers and keep the discussion civilized. This group has actually been around a few months longer than the self-publishing group listed above, and has a membership of about 800.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Print-On-Demand/

Finally, we have the Print on Demand Publishers group. This group includes both self publishers and small publishers who use print on demand printing technology. I founded and used to co-moderate this group. We also operated on full moderation, all posts must be approved by a moderator. While membership is open, we actively discourage posts by authors that don't contribute to the discussion of publishing as a business, referring them to the POD authors group above. The group is a little over 2 years old and we have 500 odd members.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/pod_publishers/

I hope some of those people who have been reading my blog and want to participate in a public discussion join one of the groups listed above. I don't really see this blog as part of the blogosphere, it's really just a content management system for me, giving me an easy way to write a post a day.