The "publisher" IS the "publishing concern". So you're saying that the publishing concern can't publish what they want, because the decisions are made by the publishing concern. Which makes as much sense as saying that I can't do what I want, because the decisions are made by me. Or you're trying to not only take over the term "indie", but the term "publisher", and demanding that both terms refer to individuals rather than businesses. You do know that a publisher is usually a business, right? Because....you said so? You do know that no one put you in charge of the language, right?
This is all true, which raises a question I posed in some form above: I think we are agreed that a self-publisher and traditional independent publisher are both "independent." So which of them is a publisher? The trade group I referenced above seems to make the distinction based on the business aspects of what a person is doing - basically approaching publishing as a profession or not. That makes sense to me, because what we're talking about here is really a business distinction. It sets aside the person who publishes a book on CreateSpace and orders copies to hand out to family. On the other hand, if someone is truly approaching publishing as a business, from quality of manuscript through editing, covers, and the like, whether they're publishing just their own work or their own and others, then it seems to me they qualify as a "publisher" from a business standpoint. And then, having met the definition of both words, they're independent publishers. The only way to exclude them entirely is rather arbitrary. For example, you could have a person doing the exact same things from a business perspective (quality, editing, marketing, covers, and the like), but if they're doing it with someone else's book they are a publisher and if they're doing it with their own book they aren't. I can't think of a good reason to draw the line like that.
My reason is that I see the "vetting" process as a key attribute of traditional publishers, and self publishers don't have that. The key for you is approaching it as a business; the key for me is the evaluation (and acceptance or rejection) of the work by someone other that that work's author. If Simon & Schuster throws all of its resources at a book written by one of its executives--a sufficiently high level executive to decree that they WILL be publishing that book--I consider that book to be essentially self-published. It would be self-published at an extremely high level of quality, and I wouldn't be able to confirm the fact of the self-publishing without insider knowledge of the company, but in my view it would be self-published all the same.
"Independent Publisher" is a term of art - that is, it has a special meaning to those involved in a given field, without reference to the individual meaning of the words. If we're talking about burning CDs in the computer world, it doesn't make sense to start pointing out that nothing actually catches on fire - it's a term of art, and those involved in the field know what it means. Steerpike, this isn't a new idea for you, I'm sure (I learned about it at law school). So breaking it down into its composite parts isn't a useful exercise. The term, as a term, has an established meaning.
Terms of art change over time, and they often change when new or disruptive technologies come along and the traditional definitions start to get blurred. This term had an established meaning in the art, but I see it used more often these days to include certain self-publishers (as the IBPA did, for example). By way of another example, the President of the Bay Area Independent Publisher's Association wrote this article for the Huffington Post in which he identifies self-publishers as independent publishers: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kudler/what-is-an-independent-pu_b_4656448.html These two examples aren't nearly the only ones I've come across. These are all people or organizations "in the art," so the idea that "independent publisher" is a term of art that has the same meaning now it did twenty years ago doesn't work for me because, among others things, it is being used differently in the art today.
Hypothetical: I'm a self-publisher with the ability to do the same kind of vetting for quality, a good edit, marketability, &c. as anyone in traditional publishing. In that case, under your test, am I an "independent publisher?" In other words, exactly what are the boundaries of the term, and are there any exact boundaries we can define that exclude all self-publishers?
My exact boundary is that the person that wrote the work has no substantial influence on the decision to publish the work. If the person that wrote the work IS the person that is deciding whether to publish the work, that requirement obviously isn't being fulfilled. The same if there's spousal, parental, or other close personal relationship. The same if the person who wrote the work has substantial authority over the decision to publish it, as in my example of a Simon & Schuster executive deciding that the company will publish the book that he wrote. It's essentially a conflict of interest test. Considering this, I wonder if this means that if a low-level employee of Simon & Schuster is assigned to write a work on a specific subject and within specific parameters, a work that is then published, that work is self-published? I'd say no, because that low-level employee can't decree that his work will be published--the writer and the decisionmaker are to a substantial extent separated. But I would say that an important element of the usual equation is missing, in that the independent creative ideas of an author are not the trigger for the work. Some elements of authorship have come from the company, and therefore I wouldn't call this a completely standard traditional book publishing model either.
Hi Chicken, Please go back to my post before blasting me again for cherry picked half phrases. I said: "The point is that they make the decisions and not some trade publishing concern." Note the use of the word "trade" in there. Then you said: "The "publisher" IS the "publishing concern". So you're saying that the publishing concern can't publish what they want, because the decisions are made by the publishing concern. Which makes as much sense as saying that I can't do what I want, because the decisions are made by me." Note the way you completely left out the word "trade" in there. Self publishers are not trade publishers. That is the distinction I have been making constantly. The barrow you're pushing is that some trade publishers are somehow different or independant from other trade publishers - based largely on the criteria of size. Enough said. Cheers, Greg.
Your definition of trade publishers seems to be based on the fact that they're not self publishers. So this seems to be a circular definition. You seem to be saying that trade publishers are bad because they're trade publishers, and self publishers are good because they're not trade publishers, where trade publishers are publishers who are not self publishers. What is your definition of a trade publisher? A publisher that makes an independent decision of whether to publish a work, rather than an individual deciding to publish their own work? I consider that independent decision to be a GOOD thing, not a bad one.
Got it. The crux of our differences on the issue is this: the identity of the person(s) making the publishing decision is critical to your definition; my definition doesn't care about that but looks only that the level of professionalism involved regardless of who is making the decision. That seems to me to be where the dividing line is between our views (which isn't to say that your definition disregards professionalism, but that aspect of things is not sufficient to meet your definition).
Yep. I need a word for the concept that I'm expressing, and I'm going with nepotism rather than conflict of interest: Nepotism: "the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs." (No, I'm not implying that you don't know precisely what nepotism is and with your legal background know far more about its nuances than I do; I'm including it in case anyone else doesn't.) I'm including oneself in the definition of "relatives or friends". I'm saying that nepotism in book publishing is something that fundamentally changes the nature of the publishing instance--even if everything else is the same, as in the Simon & Schuster executive example. I hear you as saying that nepotism is OK, or at least doesn't fundamentally change the nature of the publishing instance, as long as there's some process to ensure quality. And I hear @psychotick as saying that if the word "indie" is to be used, nepotism is mandatory. Edited to add: And part of the distinction for me is that with nepotism, even with a quality safeguard (and I struggle to imagine a quality safeguard that would work), we're just at the work being good enough. Without it, the work has to compete against OTHER "good enough" works.
This seems like a satisfactory definition. The key, I think, is "favoring." To me, that implies going outside of the normal processes. If the head of Hachette decrees that her son's book has to be published, outside of the publisher's normal processes, that's nepotism. For a self-publisher, what does it mean to "favor?" If you're only publishing your own work, you can't be favoring it because there is nothing, by comparison, to favor it with regard to. If you're publishing your own work and also the work of others, then as long as you're using the same processes for each, then you aren't favoring one over the other. I think all of these points you are raising are well-considered, but no matter what definitions we pull in it still doesn't seem to exclude the self-publisher who is using the same standards as any other publisher in the profession might employ from being an independent publisher. As long as they're using those standards, it seems to me they fall within any of these definitions of the term. I see what you're saying about competition, but I'm not sure why competition should be a factor in considering whether you're a "publisher." If people are competing for slots, it may raise the quality of the output, but so long as the work is good enough to meet minimum standards of professional quality, then I think you have to qualify. And if those don't qualify, then do traditional independent publishers who publish poor quality manuscripts not qualify either?
I agree that terms can change over time and don't want to get into the discussion of whether this term has changed/should change. I don't think there's a prayer of that being resolved. I just wanted to point out that all the "define 'independent'" and "define 'publisher'" arguments were red herrings. It's not useful to have definitions for the two words operating independently; they need to be looked at as a term of art, both words operating together.
It means that there was no process in place to ensure that the decision to publish was objective. But "the same process" needs to involve an objective decision. I don't believe that there are many authors who can make that objective decision about their own work. But those standards, for me, include an objective decisionmaker. Books are complex. You can't eliminate emotional factors from judging a book. You don't judge its quality by the number of grammatical errors per thousand words, or by any other rule that can be applied objectively by a non-objective judge. I suppose if you had many tens of thousands of dollars, you could have some sort of "taste test" or lineup--hire hundreds of people to read your book and a few others, and pick one. But that's not going to happen. You could also hire an editor or reader, but I see a big conflict of interest there. If the editor/reader doesn't tell you what you want to hear, they know you're not likely to hire them again or recommend them. I think that another distinction here is that you're focusing on the individual results, and I'm focusing on the process. I believe that a process that involves a decisionmaker who is not influenced by the author, and that involves competition, will tend to produce better results. To me, "indie publisher" means a publisher that uses the traditional publishing process. And I don't believe that most authors can judge their work objectively. Some self-published books are no doubt of professional quality, but I think that the authors of the bad self-published books, and the good self-published books, are probably on average just as confident of the quality of their books.
