John Green on the Need for Editors, Publishers, and Booksellers

John Green is the New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Stars. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.

Green writes and speaks directly to a huge online following, so you might think he'd publish his own work. He emphatically asserts that using a publisher is about the quality of the editing and the support he gets from the relationships between publishing, bookstores and libraries.

Green doesn't have an issue with self-publishing in principle. However, in the short video below, filmed as an acceptance speech for the American Booksellers Association Indie Champion award, Green refutes that he would be better off self publishing work himself, in his own very vocal, highly energetic, and decidedly adult-language filled way.