On self-publishing

13 comments on “On self-publishing”

1. ZW says:
   April 21st, 2006 at 10:00 am

   Okay, but what about the authors whose books are published by “legitimate publishers” for whom they work? Obviously, they don’t go around calling themselves “Published Authors”–the legitimacy of their publishers means they’re not insecure in such a way–but why are their books accorded a legitimacy (in terms of eligibility for grants, awards, reviews, etc.) that is witheld from less well-connected self-publishers? I’m not arguing that they shouldn’t be so recognized, but if they are, then the argument for excluding less ambiguously self-published work becomes pretty damn weak, no?

2. Akd says:
   April 21st, 2006 at 7:10 pm

   I dont’ think that happens very often.

   For an author to have never published work before, never in important journals or other publishing houses, who then goes to their boss and asks them to publish… if the company is going to publish them, then their work is probably good.

   publishing houses don’t just publish whatever crap someone who works for them or who knows someone high up writes. If they did, they would go bankrupt in a second.

3. L.S. says:
   April 21st, 2006 at 7:29 pm

   Is that a chip I see on your shoulder, Zach?

   What have you been reading lately, by the way, boyo? I’ve been missing your log.

4. Finn Harvor says:
   April 22nd, 2006 at 12:16 am

   Slush-pile’s argument is fine as far as it goes, but it would be a lot stronger if it dealt with the increasing tendency of the major publishing houses to substantially wall themselves off from emerging writers. This may not justify the increasing trend toward self-publishing, but it helps explain it.

5. Scott Pomfret says:
   April 22nd, 2006 at 7:50 am

   Generally, I agree with the commentary, although it sounds like of a “straw man” argument to me. How many self-proclaimed “published authors” of the kind described here really exist?

   This kind of comment above is ill-informed: “99.999% of self-publishers all tried to go the normal route. They just couldn’t cut it there.” My partner and I used POD not because we had been rejected by mainstream publishers, but in order to get their attention. We had a product (Harlequin-style romance novels for gay men) that we believed would be better pitched as a concept than any individual book. Thus, we created the website, brand, four novels (POD), and a marketing plan. Only then did we pitch agents (got one) and find a publisher (Warner Books). I know from my experience with other authors in a online writers group I belong to that this approach is not unique. So the commentator’s 99.9999 figure is silly and betrays a disrespectful and assured-of-my-own-preconceived-beliefs-and-damn-the-truth attitude that is irritating at best.

   Moreover, major publishers are often unwilling to take risks for certain niche markets (e.g. GLBT) and the few GLBT-specific houses are often too small and underfunded to take on all worthy books and, more important, help market them. Thus, for an entrepreneurial gay author, POD CAN make eminent sense. Thus our current publishing system may systematically underserve niche markets; it’s not a question of “not making it.”

   All that said, we would be the first to agree that self-publishing is not for everyone. In our first books, we committed some of the sins above, especially with regard to inadequate proofing. Moreover, if you are the type of author who is not willing to do marketing, then self-publishing is certainly not for you. (Of course, there is the problem of overly aggressive, actually physically abusive marketing described by the Irishman above… sad for that woman and sadder for the brush with which she has managed to paint other sane self-published folks.)

   At Romentics.com, we are equally proud of our self-published work as well as our Warner Books-published work. And we do not believe that we constitute .001% of our colleagues (assuming I did the math right).

6. Carla says:
   April 22nd, 2006 at 9:45 am

   The 99.99 might have been an exageration, but would you agree that at least a majority of people who do POD and self-publishing are doing it as a last resort?

7. mwb says:
   April 22nd, 2006 at 9:54 am

   In music, musicians self-publishing their CDs is far from the “mark of Cain” – that so many in the lit. world seem to think of self-publishing in the print world. In fact, it is taken as a sign of independence rather than patheticness. There are even retailers in music devoted entirely to indie and self published music.

   I’ve always found that interesting. I guess publishers have been more successful in, um, “convincing” the lit. community of the necessity of their monopoly than the music industry.

   Me, I don’t pre-judge. There’s more than an abundance of un-readable crap that I hate coming from the publishing industry, which makes me more open-minded about such things.

   Is there crap self-published music? Yes. And there’s lots of great stuff that would never be published by the big labels and I would have missed if I had been holding the same pre-conceived notion the lit. community has.

8. TT says:
   April 22nd, 2006 at 7:50 pm

   You can’t really compare different art forms so simply.
   Differen’t mediums have different cultures/methods/needs and goals.

   The music world has, for various reasons, become a place where all the interesting work comes from the independent world and the independent world is where the mainstream looks to. The publishing world isn’t like that at all, again, for a variety of reasons.

   One reason that you skirt near, however, is the community. An indie artist can actually sell work and sometimes as much as mainstream artist. Currently there isn’t a seperate thriving indie publishing world (and even if tyhere is, its something like McSweeneys, not self-published books)

9. amy says:
   April 23rd, 2006 at 8:19 pm

   A student asked me recently how self-publishing authors were thought of in the literary world. I was at a loss. Um, not taken very seriously at all? But the more I tried to explain why this was (this, after explaining how difficult it was to get literary fiction published and how they shouldn’t give up hope, etc), the more difficult it seemed to articulate. Like, yeah, Walt Whitman, whatever. And yet, I would never read a self- published book. I’d assume it was crap.

   Why?

   You all are getting close to it. I can’t quite put it in a sensible way.

10. TL says:
    April 23rd, 2006 at 11:53 pm

    The culture just isn’t there yet, it just isn’t legitimate under the current setting.

    mwb said something about music being okay with self-publishing. I’m not sure I buy that. When you see someone ont he subway trying to sell you a CDr of his rap group (POD), does anyone not assume its crap? I think we all do.

    “There are even retailers in music devoted entirely to indie and self published music.”

    I wouldn’t conflate indie and self-published. These terms have some overlap, but a lot of difference too. To make the analogy with the book world, there are lots of independet publishing houses. Like someone said, McSweeneys. I don’t think anyone in the publishing world regards McSweeneys as they do a random person with a Print-On-Demand book.

11. amy says:
    April 24th, 2006 at 9:07 am

    Yeah, TL. What you said.

    And also, the thing that unsettled me most about the student’s question was that it seemed to belie an unhealthy obsession with getting published, rather than with, you know, working really hard to hone one’s craft, be in the process of it, etc. Not to say that everything good gets published or everything that gets published is good…

12. TL says:
    April 25th, 2006 at 12:06 am

    I don’t see too much of a problem with getting published. The problem is with an obesseion with getitng the title of “published” no matter what.

    Being a real published author means two things.
    A) That an external person in th epublishing world declared your work talented and worth a financial risk.
    B) that you have sold a fair amount of books (anyone who gets published by a real publishing house is going to sell a fair amount, I think)

    Self-publishing, OTOH, doesn’t imply either of the above. You could easily be a POD author who no one likes and who hasn’t sold more than 10 copies of a book… yet on some absurd tecnicallity you are still “published.”

13. ZW says:
    April 25th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

    In response to L.S.’s post #3 above:

    No chip, no. I have a legitimately published book that was eligible for all the awards, have received grants, reviews, all the perks. The system has done no ill to me personally. But I find it strange that should I choose to follow a different route and publish/distribute the same work myself, it would automatically be exempt from all of this. And I find it equally strange, given these restrictions, that if I had my own “legitimate” small press and used it to publish my own books, they would be considered “legitimate” publications. It just seems to me that it’s a kind of guild-hall exclusivity that could and does punish those who don’t colour within the lines. Do I think that Ken Babstock’s latest book shouldn’t be considered legit because he’s the poetry editor at Anansi, which published the book? No, I don’t, nor would I had he self-published the same book without Anansi’s help. But it seems to me its legitimacy rests on Ken’s being a recognized member of the guild than on its merits as a book. Ultimately, these distinctions have a lot more to do with bureaucracy and trade economies than with art.

    I think that there is a lively “indie” analogue in publishing in the micro-presses producing chapbooks and broadsides. This brings up another arbitrary bureaucratic boundary: a book with fewer than 48 pages is not generally considered a book by granting bodies, awards juries, etc. This is stupid. I’ve published two chapbooks with independent micro-presses and I don’t consider them books any less than my trade collection because they’re shorter, have smaller print runs and no formal distribution. And collectors often value such publications, because of their scarcity, MORE highly than trade books. An out-of-print chapbook I published in 2004 is for sale on ABE for almost six times its original cover price.

    I’m far more perplexed and frustrated by all of this than angry or bitter. I think it takes the onus off the reader for determining whether a book is worth reading or not. Which might be useful, if the discrimination was based on thought and judgment instead of hidebound rules.

    And to answer your other question, L.S., I got behind on my log while I was on my book tour this winter, but have it all up to date now.

Discuss