IMHO, Any kind of publishing (trad or SP) which results in at least one sale, is a success. Particularly over anyone who has not penned/published a book. I recently stepped into an art gallery (there was a cafe on the first floor) and as it was free to look around, I looked around. There was one section devoted to an artist who, well, erm, how do I put this (bearing in mind I really don't like to slate people's work ...) lets just say it really, really was not my cup of tea, but in terms of success, I see that artist as being a hell of a lot more successful that me in their chosen artistic field. Those who can, write. Those who can't, wait ...
Try both! You say writing is your passion: so you probably have endless amounts of things you want to create. Write and edit an indie title while waiting for the results of a query, or write and edit a traditional title while waiting to see if you get any indie sales. I've always found that experience is gold.
Well, if the facts are faulty (such as examples used actually not being self-published), it does kinda defeat the purpose... I can't see where - especially when I would never say that. Why is it so many people get their hackles up when people say SPs should do their homework (and not just accept the hype without question)?
The cherry picked facts? You cited what, that EL James wasn't self published when she was popular on fan fic sites before a publisher picked her up? Except, no one said that.
If you're reading an article and find one glaring error, does that not make you wonder if you should trust, if not the rest of the "facts", at least the conclusions? Or do you 'cherry pick' the things that you like and decide to believe them without checking further? And if pointing out errors doesn't at least imply "do your homework" versus just accept what other people say, well, I guess some people have to have it spelled out for them.
It depends entirely on what the error was. I dismiss a lot of things based on a single thing about a cited source. But a list of successful indie authors is easily checked. And the reason EL James was on the list was the beginning half (a quarter?) of her book was read by more than 30,000 people before it was traditionally published. Had no publisher picked that book up, do you doubt it would have succeeded as indie published?
50 Shades was essentially self-published. The original fan-fic was online. The Fifty Shades book was published through an virtual indie publisher in Australia that did e-books and print-on-demand paperbacks. You know, the type of publisher that anyone can create with access to a computer. There are plenty of indie books that are basically self-published, because the indie publisher amounts to little more. That's why she's listed among self-publishing success stories. The first book was not initially traditionally published in any real sense of the word. You're not looking at the kind of distribution channels, etc. that traditional publishers provide, and the fact that the paperback was print-on-demand should tell you something about the publisher.
Going through an indie publisher is not self-publishing. Sorry, but it just isn't. I know a lot of people like to say that, I suppose to make the cheerleading squad, but it doesn't change the facts. She posted her fanfic, which was extremely successful among fans - but cleaning it up for trade publishing did not guarantee it would be successful beyond that fan base, though it certainly helped. That still doesn't make it self-published. But hell, if you guys want to call a cow a cat, go ahead. Just don't act so surprised when people look askance at you.
I don't know what this means. Are you saying that anyone who wants to publish through the same publishing company that published Fifty Shades can do so, without submitting their work and facing the possibility of rejection? That that company is merely a printer that will publish anything at all that anyone at all hands them? Or are you just saying that it's possible for people to buy the same technology that publishers buy? Edited to add: OK, I seem to have identified the publisher, and their website says that since they're inundated with submissions, they "will not be accepting new submissions for the foreseeable future". So it appears that they do take submissions, do decide what books to publish rather than just publishing anything that anyone sends them, and that they are therefore not a self-publishing printer. They look to me like a publisher. Traditional. No self-publishing here.
I can't tell if you're intentionally missing the point just to argue. Look back to 2011, and what these publishers were and what many still are. Yes, anyone can start a publishing company online. It can be done in an afternoon. If you think the initial publication and big success of 50 Shades was through a 'traditional publisher,' then you simply aren't familiar with the history of the book or what was going on with online publishing, and with self/indie publishing at the time. It's not an accident that the books were touted as big successes in self-publishing at the time, even though they were coming out of this Australian e-publisher. See articles like this one in the Atlantic, for example: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/after-fifty-shades-of-grey-whats-next-for-self-publishing/255338/ I have my own publishing imprint through which I self-publish, and yes I also publish some work from others. I set it up in about 2 hours with a laptop and a cup of coffee.
Also, this tiny publisher made a lot of money in 50 Shades. I'm sure their operation is different now than it was in 2011. To get an idea of how remarkable the success of 50 Shades was and how much this was basically akin to a group of self-publishers (heck, they had to use POD at very high prices) you have to look at what the operation was like in 2011 and how 50 Shades became so popular. Comparing it to conventional traditional publishing is absurd.
A small publisher is not self-publishing. You can coin another category for it, say, Very Small Publisher or Garage Publisher, and you can say that this sort of publisher has many of the same handicaps as a self-publisher and that their success therefore has indications for the success possible for a self publisher. I will to some extent buy that argument, though only to some extent. But if the party that did the writing has to persuade the party with the publishing experience to publish their book, and if that persuasion has to do with qualities associated with the book rather than just writing a check to the publisher, it's not self-publishing. Author persuades publisher, or author persuades agent who persuades publisher, is the traditional publishing model. Edited to add: To say otherwise suggests that "publisher" is about access to physical printing presses. To me, that has almost nothing to do with the advantages of a publisher. The mere existence of a quality gate, of the author having to persuade SOMEONE, someone who is not a friend or a relative, that their book is good enough to publish, puts the book ahead of the vast majority of self-published work. The extent to which it puts the book ahead depends on the ability of the publisher to recognize good work, and that ability is not measured by whether that person publishes only electronically or by POD.
@ChickenFreak This wasn't just a small publisher. It was essentially a small group of people who got together and electronically published books. They had a POD option, which is also easy to do. It was not a traditional publishing operation, even by small press standards. Tons of these popped up, many run by a single person or small groups as outlets for their own work. If you want to say that's closer to getting a contract with Harper Collins than it is to self-publishing, then I guess you can make that argument, but it's wrong.
So if we use Smashwords Print on Demand, are we not self-publishing? I don't claim to know the answer to James' publisher question. On dozens of sites, 50 Shades is cited as initially self-published. On James' webpage she says: And the Writer's Coffee Shop currently says after the publication of 50 Shades they were inundated with so many manuscripts they are no longer taking submissions. One does have to ask, why the discrepancy? This was the best historical account of the publisher I could find. A while back I hunted down a copy of the original fan-fiction. I had to find an archived site since the original's been removed by James. So I don't know if the Coffee Shop was where her original fan-fic was posted, but it looks like it was. That makes it just as disingenuous to claim, as James does, "The trilogy was picked up by an Australian publisher". On the other hand, the need to legally distance the books from the original fan-fic which was identified as Twilight fan-fic is a reasonable guess as to why James would say that. Publisher's Weekly It's pretty nit-picky to claim 50 Shades was merely picked up by a small publisher and not essentially self-published. You can say it's a gray area (pun not intended ), but it's not clearly and cleanly traditionally published. I've often thought if I ever do self-publish using a self-created publishing company, I'd offer to let other's publish under the company same if they wanted to. A non-profit publishing community is an attractive idea.
So how are you guys defining "traditionally published"? This is part of the ambiguity of terms that drives me up the wall. If you set up the false dichotomy of "traditionally published" vs. "self-published", and something doesn't fit into your "traditionally published" mould, you're forced to call it self-publishing, even though it isn't. So because this book wasn't with the Big Five, that means it was self-published? No, that makes no sense. Lots of small publishers use POD. Small publishers with NYT best-sellers (Ellora's Cave, Samhain, and I'm sure others) use POD. Their primary market is e-books, so they don't worry much about print. This doesn't mean they aren't publishers, and it doesn't mean the books they put out are self-published. I'm with @ChickenFreak - you can use 50 Shades as a pretty compelling example of a book that went big without the support of a large publisher. But you can't use it as an example of a self-publishing success story. So instead of using it as evidence that self-publishing is a good idea, I'd say it's possible evidence that self-publishing should be moved even further down the preference list for most authors. Try for the Big Five, and then try small publishers, if you want to follow the 50 Shades pathway.
Once again, a discussion about the pros and cons of publishing is misinterpreted as advocating one over another. Yes, I can't imagine anyone of us turning down a big publishing house. That aside, self publishing is not always a sign of a failed book and every small publisher out there is not necessarily better than anything self-published. And the 50 Shades was one example of many self-published successes. It hardly negates the point be it self published or not.
Once again, a post taken to mean something it didn't say. 50 Shades is not good evidence of the power of self-publishing. That doesn't mean anything about anyone's opinions about self-publishing in general, it just means 50 Shades isn't good evidence. If I say grass is green and I know this because I see ants paint it every night, and someone points out that ants don't actually paint the grass, they aren't saying grass isn't green. They're just saying my evidence doesn't support my claim. If someone says self-pubbing is a good way to get lots of sales because 50 Shades was self-pubbed and someone else points out that 50 Shades wasn't self-pubbed, they're challenging the evidence, not the claim. ETA: And if we DID support that idea that 50 Shades being self-published would have meant self-publishing was a good idea, and then found out that 50 Shades was actually published by a small press, wouldn't we logically have to shift our argument over to the idea that publishing with a small press is a good idea? (I don't really support any of those conclusions - I'm just talking about the structure of the arguments)
But was the author either (1) an owner of the company or (2) paying the company for the service of printing and distributing her book without having to submit the book for evaluation? If an author has to submit their work for evaluation, and there is a genuine evaluation process of the work before the work is published, then it's not self-publishing. I'm just fine, like I said, with Very Small Publishing, or Garage Publishing, or whatever you want to call those tiny houses. But if the author does not have control over whether their work is published, it is not self-publishing. To me, the most important difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing is the question of who decides that the work will be published. You don't seem to see that distinction as important at all. That's within your rights, but when you ignore it, I think that you're writing your own definitions. Naturally, when you write your own definitions, other people's definitions are likely to be "wrong", because you are defining what "right" means.
If you can simply pay Smashwords to print whatever you choose (assuming that the item is legal), and you have complete control over the editing and content, then you are self-publishing. If you have to submit your work to Smashwords for evaluation, and they go through a real evaluation process, deciding whether your work is any good, whether it might produce any sales, and there's a real chance that they will reject it, and if they don't reject it they have the right to demand changes before they will publish it, then you are not self-publishing. Edited to add: To the best of my knowledge, Smashwords is not a "publisher", they are a "printer".
What discrepancy do you see here? The fact that they take "submissions" makes it clear that the works that they publish are not self-published.
No, the discrepancy between dozens of sites that cite 50 Shades as being self-published, the fact the publisher started as a fan-fic coop site, the author's claim the book was never self-published and James' financial interest in downplaying the fact the book started as Twilight fan-fic. From Wiki: For whatever reason, that has not been corrected. From the second citation [2]: Do you know if E L James submitted her work to The Writer's Coffee Shop or was she a member of their group when they collectively decided to become publishers? I was unable to find out one way or the other, but the group was no more than a co-op as far as I can tell when she published 50 Shades. It would appear the first book they published was in Oct 2010. By June of 2011, Vintage Books published a copy of 50 Shades. So somewhere within those 8 months 50 Shades was published by the Coffee Shop. Or, it might have been the first book The Coffee Shop ever published. I can't find any copies by that first publisher so it may have mostly sold as an eBook originally. This discussion is a red herring, though. I cited a source with a list of best selling self-published books and 50 Shades was used to discredit the entire list.
I think it was used to question the validity of the entire list, not necessarily discredit it entirely. I don't want to go through and research every other book on the list. If I know that one of the books is listed in error, it makes me doubt the validity of the rest of the list. That's all. I've seen you dismiss studies out of hand because you didn't like some detail of the methodology - how come your standards are so rigorous with those, but you're not seeing any sort of a problem with this sloppiness? ETA: But, as I've started - the article also lists A Time to Kill, which the article admits wasn't self-pubbed, as an example of a self-publishing success story. WTF? That's sloppy.
So are you all contesting the fact there are successful self-published books or are you not? Its a red herring to discredit any of the self-pub. books on the list unless one is making the claim, there are no such books.
I don't understand your second sentence. Are you saying that... no, sorry, I don't understand that sentence at all. I'm saying that I have no idea about the validity of the other books listed in that article, and don't want to have to look them all up and see if they really are self-published. Given that at least two of them were not self-published, I don't think the list is a reliable source of information. Again, pointing out that evidence is not reliable has no connection to the validity of the premise. Based on other reading, not that article, I believe that there have been several self-published books that have done well. Is that all you're looking for?
My link was originally in response to this post: To which I replied with two citations: If you or anyone else wants to contest my challenge to @Lemex's "Very few self-published book have been fantastically well received" feel free to do it. But attacking a small fraction of one of two citations is cherry picking and turning the debate into whether or not EL James' book became popular before or after she self-published the work online is a red herring. "Very few" and "fantastically well" of course are judgement calls we could agree to disagree on. My point was just as much about the changing situation as it was about the existing one.
