Last week we wrote about author Scott Sigler‘s provocative Tools of Change presentation, Who Needs You, Big Publishing?

This week, Sigler (pictured, via Amy Davis Roth) wrote in with additional commentary about how he self-published a science fiction football novel called The Rookie–stressing that his audience building work: “what’s missing from the condensed version of the presentation is the 15 minutes I spent on audience generation and retention (out of a 25-minute presentation). I have given away eight full, unabridged audiobooks, two audio novellas and three audio short story collections. Over 100 hours of story content, all for free, which is where I generated my audience.”

He continued: “Crown Publishing has done great things to help advance my career, but my core audience has been with me longer than I’ve been with Crown. The point of the presentation was that authors who embrace free content can generate an online audience, and maintain a connection with that audience can look to sell books directly from author to end reader.”

Our readers had some passionate responses as well. Read more after the jump.

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At the Tools of Change conference in New York City this week, author Scott Sigler delivered a provocative presentation entitled: Who Needs You, Big Publishing?

After publishing the thrillers Ancestor, Infected, and Contagious with Crown Publishing, Sigler (pictured, via Amy Davis Roth) founded Dark Overlord Media to self-publish a science fiction football novel called The Rookie–”a limited edition hardcover with a 16-page, full-color insert.” According to the writer, he earned 10 times more per unit with his new strategy, but managed to sell one-tenth of the copies he could sell with a major publisher.

Nevertheless, he speculated during his presentation about a future where bestselling authors could defect: “The bigger names (if they wanted to do this) they could bring in a crapload of money and not have to share it with anybody. Stephenie Meyer in particular–if she was to write a book of short stories about some of the Twilight characters and sell that directly from her website which gets a massive traffic, she could clear 200,000 copies on her first day without batting an eyelash. So that’s the kind of kind of thing that could take away from big publishing and put some of that control back into the hands of authors.”

What do you think? Is this an inevitable future or a pipe dream?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The conversation continues at this post, complete with additional commentary from the author.

PW Daily reports that Scott Sigler‘s INFESTED, just signed to Crown as part of a major three-book deal, has been selected as the next book-to-film project for Random House Films. The book will be brought to the screen in partnership with Rogue Pictures (a sister company to the studio aligned with RH Films, Focus Features). The deal was arranged by RH Films president Peter Gethers and the co-presidents of Rogue, Andrew Karpen and Andrew Rona. Random House Films will also get filmmaking rights to the unpublished second novel in Sigler’s series.