Published/Not Published..and the gray area of Self Published.

I literally just researched self-publication and was going to post a question about this topic! I was planning on submitting a piece to a publishing house but my husband thinks I should self-publish. He has no writing/publishing experience but he is a software developer and feels that is where the industry is heading. I would love to hear feedback from others, especially those who have self-published. Thanks!

 

I think that the average consumer looking at a product page on Amazon.com wouldn't know the difference between a self published book and a traditionally published book. Amazon treats them the same and if you make quality work, there is no reason for you to get passed up.

That said, as a person who has a self published paperback and ebooks available on Amazon, I have not had a single sale for my paperback. It's only been available for a month so maybe it's too soon.

When you self publish, your biggest problem isn't the stigma associated with self publishing, it's going to be your ability to market your own book. That's the hard part.

 

The problem I see coming is that readers aren't dumb. They will catch on - as in, A) "Who wrote this crap?" soon to be followed by B) "Who publishes this crap?". And that will make it even harder for those who do take their writing seriously (and not just as an ego trip).

 

No-one knows what books will be popular in two years. If they did, they'd be paying people to write them, not waiting for someone to submit them.

The world is full of writers who couldn't sell their books to trade publishers because 'everyone's selling that kind of thing, we don't want any more'.

 

You were in Los Angeles but made your way to Dallas. Hmm. That's the smartest move you could've ever done.

 

The real problem associated with the self publish/tradition publishing debate is that it polarises people. And it has to be said that those against self publishing are very dismissive of those who have taken or plan to take that route. I don't understand why. It's a choice - and everyone is entitled to make their own choices.
I really don't like the fantasy/vampire/horror genres - and I think a lot of what is written within that genre is total rubbish. But, other than in this post, I have never and would never diss anyone who chooses that path.
I have self published and I have to tell you that I'm not blinkered, not stupid and don't consider myself to be a 'crap' writer. I went into it knowing that the hardest part would be to get the book noticed. I know that I need to step up the marketing to gain more sales. There are drawbacks. And yes, I agree that there are self published books out there that are poorly written, poorly edited and poorly presented. So what? You don't have to buy them. And if the argument is that they hide those books that are good - well isn't that the case with everything. Look at the Turner prize for art. Don't you ever wonder why millions are given to people whose so called art could easily be replicated by monkeys when we have pavement artists whose skill and talent are amazing. Have you ever heard a truly talented musician and wondered why they are still playing the small venues - why they have never had the break they deserve.
As far as the self publishing process is concerned, I found it exhilarating. I learned a lot about the publishing concept and also about my own writing and editing ability. And I learned even more about myself. My book took two years to complete and another six months to edit. I designed the cover with the help of a graphic designer and formatted it using a formatting programme. I didn't dash it off in a week and bang it on Amazon.

I am beginning to get really tired of the attitude -'self published, must be crap!' There is an air of snobbery about it.

I would say to anyone who wants to self publish that, if you do it right, it's hard work. You do have to ensure that your book is the best it can be. It's not an overnight excersise, but then producing anything worthwhile isn't. You will have to market it if you want sales. And you'll almost certainly be dissapointed when it doesn't sell any more than a couple of dozen copies. All that said, it's a hell of a ride and a seriously satisfying feeling to have completed the process from the first word on the first page to the appearance of your book, suitable titled and with eye catching cover, on Amazon or any other ebook retailer.

Ignore the soothesayers, methinks that those who protest the most do so because they either lack the motivation and probably fear that they lack the talen- or have a greatly inflated opinion of their work.

 

I have read plenty of bad books. I've read books by authors whose novels read like a take-home assignment for group therapy. To use my earlier example, when I got to the point in my book where we were recapping episodes and casually dropping Ron White references to the detriment of the story, I returned the book.

Let me tell you how bad a book has to be for me to fish a receipt out of the recycling bin and get into my car to drive across town to return it. It wasn't just a bad book. It was a book that offended me as a reader and a consumer.

Yet, I didn't demand to know from whence the book came that I might forever boycott the publisher. To be honest with you, I don't know who published it. I could look it up on Amazon, but I won't. I won't look it up because there is no need. I cannot believe that someone published such garbage. But I am even more astonished that someone wrote it in the first place. I won't take out my aggression on the publisher for the misdeeds of the writer. Quite frankly, that wold be a lot of work for me.

Even if readers do begin making themselves a publisher blacklist, how are they going to reach when a major publisher put out a piece of garbage?

I think we just all need to face the facts that there are really bad books out there. They may be self-published or they may be published by a reputable publisher. There is no way to really avoid them. We minimize our chances of picking up a bad book by reading reviews (critics) and following recommendations.

Believe not in publishers, nor in Amazon reviews, for these shall not save. Use thy common sense. if ye shall read a book of inferior quality, set it aside and move on. -Deuteronomy 67:15

 

Throughout your post, you seem to be putting a lot of things together into a salad not intended by the original poster. I'm not against self-publishing. I'm against self-publishing when it's done out of ignorance of or anger at trade publishing, when it's done before the book is ready for publication, when it's done just because it can be done. I see so many writers get congratulated just because they've self-published - how many have looked at the book itself? Is it really cause for celebration? Give me ten minutes - I'll toss something up on Kindle and get all these accolades for self-publishing too! Oh no wait - look at what I tossed up there - it's crap! But I self-published, by golly! Then you have reviewers who openly state they will not give bad reviews to self-published books - they just decline to review it. The old "If you can't say something nice" routine. What does that do to help the overall quality of self-published writing? Not one thing. This is the cheerleading thing that allows (hell, encourages) anyone and everyone to self-publish before they are ready and yes, eventually readers are going to realize that. They're going to start looking at how the book was published.

At the end of my last post ("And that will make it even harder for those who do take their writing seriously (and not just as an ego trip).") I almost had "for those self-publishers who do..." but I didn't think I had to spell it out. Guess I was wrong on that.

 

The beginning of a thoughtful and thought-provoking post. It is a polarizing topic, and I think that may be partly because it is easy to see the publishing industry as destined to go in only one direction or the other, traditional publishing vs. self-publishing, and no one wants to be caught on the wrong side. It is easy to become so imprisoned by one's ideology that one misses the third choice.

I think the point Selbbin was making goes to the notion of volume. Because there is no "barrier to entry" of the self-published market, ie. no checking mechanism to say something isn't good enough, the sheer volume of bad self-published writing might completely overwhelm potential readers and make it impossible to cull quality writing out of the dreck pile. In essence, Mount Dreck might very well be shifted from the junior editor's desk to the reader's laptop. At the same time, an outfit like Amazon, looking to maximize their 30%, may very well develop a rating service to help readers cope with that. Of course, this raises the idea that maybe they might offer, for a fee, an editing service to writers. Maybe develop different levels of market - "Amazon Premium" or some such. Income potential on both ends - service fee to the novice writer, higher prices to the reader. Hey! Maybe I should be talking to Amazon about this! (just kidding)

Yes. Just as publishing via the traditional route is hard work. You still have to market, only you have to market to agents or publishers. You also, if selected, have to work with an editor and take advice. And if you do get published, you still have to do your part to promote the book.

There's one thing that I haven't seen discussed in this thread, and that's the way in which traditional publishing has evolved in this country. Time was, an enterprising editor at a publishing house would see promise in an aspiring writer and stick with him/her even if the first couple of titles didn't do well. Publishing houses saw themselves as responsible for the craft of writing and were willing to take lower profits in return for growth in the industry and in the art. But that was back when publishing houses were owned by individuals. Over the last few decades, the individual publishing house owner has gone the way of the dodo, supplanted by corporations. Well, okay, corporations used to look to the long term. But then came the huge corporate bonus, and corporate boards wanted measurable goals upon which to base those bonuses. Short term goals. Preferably within a year, certainly no more than three. As a result, publishing corporations, like their many cousins, look to maximize short term profits, and that has serious implications for the fledgling writer.

Where is it all going? I think that self-publishing will lose its stigma (and already is, as some of the previous posts indicate). I think the market will eventually become two-tiered. Entry-level writers will have to self-publish, and the ones that prove their worth in that market will find themselves welcomed, possibly even recruited, by publishing houses looking for a "sure thing". What of the writer who can really write but isn't much of a graphic designer, publisher or marketer? That's the bad news.

 

Tiers =/= castes

By that I mean, we may well develop a two tier system, but that doesn't mean that writers (or publishers) will be locked into place.

This provides an opportunity for writers to prove themselves in the marketplace. Great. But it won't be that many. Sme writers will rise to the top, most will remain as virtual unknowns. Does that mean that he unknown can never move u to the tier of publication? I don't think that will be the case and here's why. Publishers take a chance on first time authors. But they have been developing their method for analyzing risk for quite a few years. Unlike a certain Simpsons episode, publishers do not hand out a $1M advance to the first stranger off the street to have a book that strikes their fancy.

Let's look to an allied industry such as recording. Around the late 90's to early 2000's, Napster was king. In addition to serving as a vehicle for annoying Metallica, it didn't take people long to realize the marketing potential for their own musical endeavors. But these successes were relatively modest. After all, CDs still dominated the music industry. The dream of every garage band was to be on the shelves of Sam Goody or The Wall. Within a ver short period of time, we watched music stores make the shift from cassettes to CDs. Then, just as suddenly, the stores began to disappear. As Apple rebranded a piece of technology that had been around since around 2000 (MP3 Players). Their store set them apart. No longer was a person forced to buy a $25 CD just to listen to one song. The entire landscape shifted.

With the bulk of the industry shifting to digital media, one would think record labels would be obsolete. You might still argue that they are. But they still exist. Why? Because record labels (like publishers) bring marketing plans to the table. Sure, a few enterprising folks have made hits of themselves using MySpace. But the labels are still making money. The people they are making money off of may have tried to test the market waters themselves, but not always.

Self-publishing, no matter the media, does not necessarily provide a clear indicator of market success. Your book could be a flop as a self-publisher, or it could be a big hit. If it is a flop, it doesn't mean it isn't commercially viable. It could simply mean that you are a much better writer than brand builder. Publishers may choose to skim the writers who float to the top of the self-publishing pool, but that is not going to be enough to force publishers to give up on their own discoveries altogether.

Why not? Because if I self-publish a book and I am the exception and sell hundreds of thousands of copies, I don't need a publisher. If I become a millionaire off of my work using CreateSpace, all an agent or a publisher is going to do is start taking a bite out of my profits. As a self-publisher, you are pulling in much more money per copy than if you publish through a trade publisher. If the publisher isn't providing you with editing or cover design and your marketing scheme is selling lots of books, you just don't need a publisher. Otherwise, it is sort of like saying "I hope I can design a really great computer program and sell millions of copies on my own. If I do, then maybe Microsoft will hire me."

Self-publishing causes a flood. But, there has been a flood for a number of years and it shouldn't really be affecting your ability to find books. Self-published music has been around for years and yet, I have not been hard pressed to keep my iPod stocked. While the amount of commercially available music has gone up, my habits as a consumer have not changed. I only buy music that I have heard on the radio (or on television) or music that has been recommended to me by a friend.

It doesn't matter if there are hundreds or millions of songs available on iTunes. I don't have to sift through it. I go in and I get what I want. The same is true with books.

And even if we go to a two-tier system, I highly doubt publishers would completely abandon their present business model. They may dip into the self-publishing pool, but that will be in addition to their present method for discovering talent. That's because their present method still works and still makes publishers lots of money.

 

While I agree that as self-publishing becomes more professional overall, trade publishers will pay more attention to those authors. They're not exactly ignoring them now, but it's definitely not their focus. They already have their own slush piles. That said, I don't see self-publishing becoming the first hurdle to trade publication, and for the exact reason you mentioned. Not every good writer is a good designer, publisher, or marketer. Trade publishers and agents aren't going to ignore that fact and chance losing the next Stephen King or Tolstoy. Agents and trade publishers have a method of sifting out the chaff and it works very well - not perfect, but what is? I don't see them trading that in for a huge, unsorted slush pile of self-pubs. It's just not efficient.

 

One thing I learned in my decades in Corporate America is that no corporation will pay to perform a function themselves if they can get someone else to do it for free. Or for less. Similarly, if they can use a new medium to help perform an old function, I think they will adapt to it. At present, there is a stigma in traditional publishing on someone who self-pubs, with the occasional notable exception. I see publishing houses, with the assistance of emerging technology, monitoring self-pubs to identify the talent. My guess is that they will assume that if the next Tolstoy is out there, (s)he'll get with a good graphic designer, et al, if (s)he really wants to succeed. And if (s)he doesn't...well, what happens to that person today if (s)he doesn't go all out to hunt down an agent or publisher and do his/her part in promotion?

No, it doesn't. But corporations operate on the principle of maximizing this year's return. And I think that may well mean that they replace the junior editors currently in charge of Mount Dreck with a part-timer who tracks the online and self-pub markets. Because straddling both tiers will be more costly.

 

The medium has nothing to do with finding a good author. Sure, it's online, but they would still have to hunt them down. With the current system, agents are the first in line to cull out the herd. The publishing companies know that the agents generally aren't going to send them something that isn't at least plausibly publishable. Then their own editors take a look at it. Another culling.

Now, compare that to searching online through self-published books - no culling there at all. So what are they supposed to do? Lord knows they couldn't depend on Amazon's ranking system. Start checking out the sample pages of every self-published book listed? Look at the reviews? Fat chance of finding the really good ones that way. Sales? Right. Wait for someone in the media to notice how many books a particular author has sold, then fight to sign that exception?

One thing I learned in my decades with Corporate America is that they tend not to like going from 'mostly efficient' to chaos.

 

Absolutely true. My assumption is that it won't remain chaos. No, they couldn't depend on Amazon's ranking system...now. A few years from now, who knows? My guess is that Amazon will refine it for their own marketing purposes, and if they don't, someone else will.

Hey, if I'm wrong, I'll buy you a beer 10 years from now.

 

Consumers buy what is hot. That is a fact. It's like the old 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of books are sold by 20% of the authors, probably less. There could be literally billions of self-published books floating around and it won't make one bit of difference because people do not scour through those titles at all. They want to go for what is the big thing right now. Social media, online reviews, forums devoted to genres, etc have actually magnified this phenomenon. People are less apt to browse genre shelves. They go straight for the one "everyone's talking about". To get to that level doesn't happen strictly in a publishers market laboratory. It's a lot of factors, but the role large publishers play in that level of success is crucial. Consumers are becoming more discriminating, not less so. Even a modicum of success requires a ton of social buzz and marketing. No individual can generate that on their own, but like some said here, lightning does strike sometimes. The proliferation of self-publishing will never impact the consumers choices because they don't pay attention to anything that isn't already hugely successful. For niche markets and genres, the same can be said. Forums like this, facebook etc makes weeding out trash so effective it's incredible.