Self publishing - is it worth it? Sucess stories?

I've noticed that most of the flack against self-publishing relates only to the market as it currently is. And I agree, the current market isn't exactly fruitful for self-publishing. I suppose I just see signs that this is a short-term condition. I am sure many who have self-published can rant against the traditional publishing industry with effective and slanderous rants as well. And they might be in the stronger position soon. To me, traditional publishing seems like it's going to have serious competition from self-publishing in the near future. Call it vanity publishing if you like. Call it whatever you like. It won't stop it. There are definitely a LOT of kinks to work out. But I think it's gonna be a viable option before too long. At the very least, I think it's gonna force traditional publishing to make a few changes. Right now, it feels a little bit like a joke. I'll stick with the traditional route for now. But I'm keeping an open mind when it comes to self-publishing. It would only take a few cards changing to radically level the playing field.

 

Not at all. The greatest flaw of self-publishing is inherent in the system, that there is no input anti-crap filter. That means that as long as every Billy Bob who can string together words can throw his hat into the ring, any quality piece gets lost in a cesspool of garbage.

Unlike the youtube model, quality writing will have a tougher time going viral because it takes more than a minute or two to distinguish literary gold from guano. And even youtube suffers from an adrenal jolt mentality, that most of what goes viral is not quality material either. It's just the quick emotional tug, gone as quickly as its star rises.

Meanwhile, the traditional publishing industry continues to exist, and although even there the ratio of gems to junk is poor, it's orders of magnitude more favorable than the self-published market will ever be.

The submission/acceptance mill is exactly what will forever make traditional publishing the better option.

 

He didn't say that. He merely said that vanity publishing is another way of saying self publishing.

Now, for my opinion.

I agree with what seems to be the general consensus of the thread. This being that while self publishing/vanity publishing does accomplish the most basic of the writer's needs in that the book is published it is sorely lacking in others.

For one, your budding writer must now act as a budding editor as well: with self publishing you are not given the assurance that your work is at all presentable and must iron out the creases yourself. Even then, the chance of mistakes appearing runs higher than the presence of a professional editor.

Nor does self publishing give any kind of publicity or distribution to your work. This could greatly hamper the chances of your book achieving renown or at least bringing home bacon. On the off chance that you do have the small fortune required to both adequately publicise and distribute your book, you are investing in a gamble. Even if they are both done to the best of your ability, there is no guarantee the book will sell. At least with mainline publishing, it isn't you splashing the cash.

Finally, self publishing, like it or not, has a very negative stigma attached to it. Thanks to the level of quality control, or lack thereof, of many vanity published works, people have begun to regard self publishing with a level of contempt. There is always the whisper that 'it wasn't good enough' for the publishers, regardless of the work's own quality. This will further drive down the chances for success with your book.

Perhaps writers like Joyce succeeded with self publishing but, like I would recommend no one try to emulate Finnegan's Wake, despite Joyce's success, I would not recommend self publishing under any circumstances. If you can't get your book published, hard cheese. Self publishing will only cause your book to flounder and become the victim of ridicule.

 

The Submission/Acceptance mill could very well be a factor in what dooms traditional publishing. Crap filters aren't all they are cracked up to be. Crap seeps through, and people buy it and swoon. The industry itself is a cesspool of garbage. And since I don't feel that "self-published books" needs to be a genre people narrow their search results by, I think it'll definitely be waters that can be navigated. Yeah, the trad. industry continues to exist, but even it has trouble adapting. I ain't saying it'll be easy and it'll happen overnight, but self-publishing isn't as inherently flawed as many seem to think. Yeah, there's still some stigma to it (clearly), but I think those stigmas will fade in due time. The market's changing and nobody can really know how radically it's gonna change before it begins to settle. It wouldn't take too much shaking to give self-publishing a decent boost. It might take a bit of creativity (and I know, that has no place in the mind of a writer), but I think it'll be quite doable. Only time will tell. If it did succeed, self-publishing would hardly be the first thing to succeed as everybody named a bunch of reasons why it could never work. I don't advise new writers to go with it right now. But not too far down the road? It's not to hard to see how self-publishing could at least become a viable option. There are a lot of things that might be breaking away from the system soon and it's hardly limited to books. All of it has similar criticisms and the older I get, the more I realize that said criticisms really have only as much validity as they're given.

Anyway, nothing left for me to say on this that won't end up boring me for redundancy. Have fun.

 

Ultimately, I'd want to go traditional as I'd want to see something I wrote on a bookstore shelf. But I see nothing wrong with doing e-books as well. It's not like we're all only limited to writing one book. Just glancing at my bookshelf, I can spot two classics (Of Mice and Men and Animal Farm) that probably wouldn't make the cut for 'traditional publishing' today, because they're too short. If I had a book that was of similar length, why not self-publish?

I'm kind of shocked by all the self-publishing hate. Here are some more self-publishing hacks to add to the list: Margaret Atwood, Leo Tolstoy, and Edgar Allen Poe.

I singled them because I love them D) but there are plenty more famous authors out there who got their start in self-publishing or at one point chose to self-publish. Seriously people get a grip. Both methods have pros and cons. If someone wants to become rich and famous off writing, than it’s their talent and what they have to say that will be the deciding factor, not the publishing route they take.

 

Not true. Not always anyway. Believe it or not, some good writers get through this crap-ridden minefield. And aren't we all allowed to have our own opinion as to what is good writing? Or is it one of these elitist things?

 

There's quite a bit of leeway for individual taste, but there is most assuredly such a thing as bad writing.

If you can't get a traditional publisher to publish your writing, suspect your writing skill before you start blaming the publishers for being narrow minded. If you think your writing needs little or no improvement (published or not), chances are you are wrong.

 

To be perfectly honest, my biggest problem with self-publishers are the 'leaders' of this so-called 'revolution'. They started this bandwagon of badmouthing trade publishing in order to justify their decision and build their reputation. Much of what they say is hogwash, pure and simple. And a lot of the rest of it proves out only if the author was already trade published and thus has a ready-made audience. But because they trumpet self-publishing while skimming over their trade-published history, and because they tell frustrated writers exactly what they want to hear, people will listen to them as if they were God herself.

I don't agree with all the statements against self-publishing - but I really, really do wish people would be more skeptical and realize that there are a lot of 'urban legends' out there. This is your book. This is your business. This is your reputation. It's not something to jump into because a few people have made it big. You hear about them because it's rare enough to still make the news. Do your homework - and don't dismiss people who voice doubts. They're doing the same thing as crit partners do - pointing out possible problems so you can be aware of them and make an intelligent decision on how to handle them.

 

I notice some people on this thread seem to think it's a sin to get paid for your work and for me writing is work. I can
spend aprox 4 hours a day writing, and a book can take me at least six months - that's about 720 hours invested.
In Canada min-wage is 10.25 - that ammounts to about 7,380 dollars. If I'm not making at least that - then
what have I been doing? Twenty dollars here and there wouldn't satisfy me not as a writer, Not for
someone that wants to be succesful and read. I don't expect millions to fall in my lap - if it happens, it happens and
it's the readers who make you a millionaire not some magic , sellout formula.

The trailblazers make the money not the clones.

My father has this same problem , he's an artist and occasionally he can fall into this thinking that getting
your art out there is more important than getting paid. This is in part due to the fact of a lot of manipulative
art buyers who never include his time , effort , thought , and supplies ( oxygen and acetylene isn't cheap. )
I keep telling him don't sell yourself short.

Self publishing is beginning to look like a way of selling yourself short.

 

I think all that's true. Of course there's such a thing as bad writing. I don't think I've ever denied that. Nor have I claimed that all self published books are worth reading. Most of them aren't. But that doesn't mean that ALL self published writers should be slated in the way that you did. And, of course I doubt my own writing. All the time. I'm not so stupid or arrogant to believe I have it right.

There are many reasons to self publish. But ..'.Surrendered'? 'Equivalent to buying a degree'? I found that insulting.

And rather than blaming ALL publishers for being narrow-minded, I think what I tried to say is that publishers are, of course, interested in the commercially viable book. Whether that is a book penned by a known and talented writer, a promising new writer, or a talentless so called celebrity with yet another biography or fitness regime to flog.

The difference between your argument and mine is that you have total faith in traditional publishing and are contemptuously dismissive of self publishing (whether you call it vanity publishing or not). I contend that neither is perfect and there is room for both.

 

Something to consider:

As a writer, imagine yourself in this situation:

You have a completed novel which one of the major publishers is offering you a well negotiated contract (through your agent, if you prefer), with a decent advance and royalties, guarantees and such--in other words, it's not a crappy contract.

You have your novel in front of you, with two choices: Go with the publisher or self-publish it?

Which would you select? Why?

If, in your heart/mind, you'd opt for the traditional publisher route, why consider the self-publishing route before you've given the traditional route an honest try? Impatience? Lack of confidence? Stubbornness? The route of lesser resistance? Instant gratification--or closer to it?

Of course there are writers who, for example, have a need for 100% control of their work, prefer to keep all profits their labor as possible, believe the traditional publishers are about to collapse and don't want their work to be caught in the rubble, have a solid platform where they can do better on their own than with a publisher (ie: maybe a motivational speaker who sells CDs and Books after speaking engagements)...who knows?

A writing career is not a one book thing (okay, there are exceptions but that's not the point). While your first novel/book is out there seeking a publisher, you can write a second. Odds are that your second effort will be better than your first. Heck, many writers discover their writing is much improved simply over the course of writing the first draft of their first novel. And putting that second novel out there to find a publisher would likely have a better chance of success, if the first didn't find a home.

As I see it, in the end, if a writer attempts the traditional route while continuing to write, what have they lost but a little bit of time with the early works--time in which they've likely improved their skill and story-telling ability. If they do decide to self-publish, they'll be in a much better position to revise that first work and put out a much better product than if they published it right after putting the finishing touches on it.

 

I would and will choose self-publishing because even if you have modest success with a publisher you're only going to get something like 17% out of the deal and you have to pay tax on that, plus you have a boss demanding you meet a deadline and telling you what your cover art is going to be. In my view 3d books are dead in the water anyway and most fiction will be cyber soon. You only have to look at the relative sales of paperback to ebooks of pro writers to see which they sell more of.

The fear self-pubs have is that the main houses will reduce their (outrageous) ebook prices from $15 or whatever down to $1 and put all the self-pubs out of business at a stroke. But this is a fear only if you intend on making a living writing, which I do not.

Increasingly common now is the little habit publishers have of trawling through Amazon to see what self-pubs are selling a lot and offering the authors contracts. If this were to happen to me I would consider it, but they would have to demonstrate my life would improve by moving over to them first. And this is the exciting thing - the grovelling from aspiring writer to publishing house is slowly reversing direction as it should because the main houses have got far too big a stranglehold on the industry and now the artists are fighting back.

 

I personally see a huge future in self-publishing, and I will be self-publishing my first novel exclusively in e-book form. Here's why I'm going this route.

I believe the publishing landscape is undergoing some massive changes right now. My entire library of current reading is not on a physical bookshelf of any kind--I now download and read almost exclusively on my phone. I don't read publisher's blurbs on book covers. Instead I read the critiques by other readers in the online bookstore and then read through the free samples to decide if the writer is resonating with me. If they resonate, I buy it. If they don't, I move on.

I see my book as the first in a series, and my target reader is completely being ignored by the publishing industry. My readers are not the people who are going to be stepping into Barnes & Noble and browsing around. The book is genre fiction, but publishers and bookstores aren't going to know exactly where to place it. Too mature and racy for YA, but too YA-ish to go anywhere else. Even if a publishing house took my novel, I cannot imagine them lifting a finger to promote it.

My basic take on self-publishing is this:

1) If you are self-publishing because you think your writing isn't good enough for traditional publishing, the real answer is to keep writing and get better at it.

2) If your dream is to be a published author and to be recognized as such, go the traditional route. Self-publishing is not a route to approval or acclaim. There is no self-validation in self-publishing.

3) If you believe that your writing is as good as or better than the published stuff you are seeing, then make your choice based on what you are trying to accomplish. Since the publishing company is taking a hefty chunk of whatever the top-line revenue will be, you have to weigh it against the value-add that they are bringing to the table.

My hunch is that you'll be doing this either way you go. At least until your book gets some traction. I don't think publishing houses do all that much in the way of promotion until they sense that the book is already starting to sell.

 

Percentages mean very little until you look at actual sales. And self-publishers also have to pay taxes, you know. With nonfiction you most likely do have a deadline (which you contractually agreed to); with fiction, you should have had the book completed before even querying. As to cover art, authors do have some input, but publishing companies have professionals in marketing looking at those, which is much better IMHO than non-professionals. Especially considering some of the covers I've seen.

Not everyone has or wants ereaders. As long as print books make money, why would a publisher drop them?

Doubtful. In fact, I haven't heard that before. (And btw, most writers - realistic ones anyway - never expect to make a living from their writing.)

Publishing houses have so few authors/agents sending them ms they have to trawl Amazon... And the use of the word 'groveling' is really insulting - and inaccurate. In fact, this whole "artists are fighting back" is overdramatic - and a lot of people, both in trade and self-pubbing, are getting tired of it. There doesn't have to be this 'us versus them' attitude. If people choose to self-publish, they should own it, and not have to wave pitchforks to justify it.

 

All I will say at this point is I'm seeing a lot of propaganda from the self-publishing service providers being parroted back here. And as shadowwalker points out, most of it makes very little business sense. The rest consists of vague claims about emerging trends for which there is no evidence cited from reputable, unbiased sources, such as the Wall Street Journal or other respected business or writing industry periodicals.

Vanity press has its place. If an organization wants to print a collection of inspirational stories from its membership to distribute to current and prospective members, a vanity press is a good choice.

If a grandfather wants to publish a family history to distribute to the extended family, a vanity press is an excellent choice.

If someone just wants to make copies of her story to give or sell to friends, family, and hot guys, and really doesn't give a crap about making a profit or a name for herself, vanity press can provide that instant gratification. For a price.

As for the profit margin argument, would you prefer 100% of the profit from selling 400 books, or 30% of the profit from selling 4000 books? (Don't forget your initial fixed costs that you will pay out of pocket before you sell even one self-published book). A traditional publisher has the marketing and distribution channels you will not have as a self-publisher, so a tenfold increase in book sales is conservative.

Obviously, the quick shortcut approach will appeal to some people, and any attempt to ground their expectations will be futile.

 

Who earns 30% royalties through traditional publishing?!

Tell that to John Locke, who famously sold over 1,000,000 books on Kindle (never having written or published anything before) in the first 5 months of 2011 alone. His perspective is that he had absolutely no chance of getting a traditional publisher, but might have a chance on Kindle, with very cheap pricing. So it turned out. "Ironically" (though not really?), like many other originally self-published authors, he now has a contract from an orthodox, traditional publisher, of course, whose interest was understandably aroused by seeing all the Kindle sales with which the author had already proved there was a substantial market for his books.

No "propaganda from self-publishing service-providers" involved in his story at all (nor in a large number of other, similar stories, of course).

 

I really wish all the standard outliers would quit coming up in these conversations. There will always be exceptions and they certainly don't mean one should expect those kinds of results, any more than one should expect to be another Stephen King. When self-publishing success doesn't make the news, then we'll know something of import has happened.

 

I think both sides have their merits, with the scales tipping in favor of traditional pub houses--for now.

 

To come back on your points, I would say that self-pubs pay tax, but not twice like trad pubs, which is essentially what they do because of the massive chunk taken by publishers. And cover art - seeing what is selling and working on a variation of a theme is not hard.

I'm a subscriber to the view that most agents don't have anywhere near as big a slushpile as is commonly believed, and even if they did, scrolling through Amazon to see which self-pubs are at the top of the list is just good business sense. It takes next to no time and can be done with a cup of coffee from the comforts of their own offices or homes. I think it is naive not to think they do this, especially as we know they do due to various high profile cases who were pounced on by houses. They are running scared right now, like the music industry.

 

This presupposes the purpose of the fiction is to make business sense, but beyond that I would say that I looked for evidence to support the hypothesis by trawling through the Amazon sales rank and comparing ebook sales to papersales in various authors' bestselling ranks and found that ebooks were coming out on top for most titles apart from stuff like Agatha Christie because of the demographic of her readers, etc. Also I have read interviews with a few writers who have been honest and said outright they sell more ebooks than paperbacks. Also, it is misleading to describe self-publication of an ebook as "vanity press" because of the negative connotations that phrasing has. The future is ebooks, even the traditional industry is waking up to that, and in ebookland there is no difference between the old artificially constructed divisions of "professional" and "amateur".

This position presumes that sales for self-pub will be much lower than pro, which isn't necessarily the case now the playing field has been levelled by ebooks. Lots of traditionally published writers sell far fewer copies of their wok than self-pubs simply because of the respective commercial viability of their works. It's not something we can make an arbitrary statement about. One might ask if one would prefer 100% of 4000 copies, or 17% of 4000 copies, as we cannot know how many will sell and shouldn't presume pro published books will sell more. I recall an interview with Dan Brown in which he said that he had to drive his first novel around fairs and markets and sell it himself and it did so poorly he was close to throwing in the towel - and this was with the backing of a major publisher who didn't life a finger to help him. I personally know someone who sells thousands of copies a month on Amazon. He does so by writing very commercial fiction (not my cup of tea) and A LOT of it. He prices his own work and enjoys the freedom. Why would he move to a professional publisher? Unlike some, he doesn't accept the carefully cultivated feeling that one's work must be endorsed by a publishing house either to have merit or sell, and I agree with him. Finally, I am not sure who uploads an ebook considers it to be a "quick shortcut approach" to anything. Anyone who intends to do this should have done their research and will now know that if they sell 500 copies in a year they will be very lucky, even if the work is superior in every way to pro-published stuff. We do not have the marketing power or range to expect anything else. On the contrary, I think those aimlessly firing off MSs to dozens on agents and publishers in the hope of getting picked up and distributed across the world are the ones looking for a quick shortcut.

 

That's what I thought. My understanding is that they earn far, far less than that and usually then have an agent's fee on top of it. But they put up with it because they have fallen for the idea that unless the work is endorsed by a "traditional publisher" is doesn't have any innate merit. Which is nonsense of course. If you look at the history of publishing it really is only through the late 20th century that publishing houses grew so powerful and got such a grip on the industry through buy-ups and mergers. All that is changing and some are going to work this out faster than others. The penny dropped at Random House in 2010 when they appointed a new digital director and told him to ramp up the digital sales to combat the increasing d=presence in the sector by self-pubs.

 

Can you clarify how this relates to self-publishing? Self-publishers can publish in paper or ebook. Traditional publishers can publish in paper or ebook. Yes, I'm aware that many self-publishers use ebooks, but that doesn't mean that you can assume that they're assured any particular share of a thriving ebook market - that market would likely still be thriving without the existence of even one self-publisher.

If you mean that professional design and editing and typesetting and marketing and connections with reviewers and booksellers are irrelevant to ebooks, so that the field is suddenly level, I really don't see that. There's nothing magic about paper, and there's nothing magic about getting rid of it. All you do by getting rid of it is take physical bookstores out of the equation, but Amazon was doing their best to do that already.

 

I'm not making a comparative analysis here between self-pubs and pro-pubs, but making a point to demonstrate how the ebook sector is increasing.

The point has been made by others here, and I will support it by saying that increasingly buyers are purchasing ebooks based on customers' reviews not publishers' blurbs. So yes, all the traditional forms of book ramping are deteriorating. The role of the so-called expert is diminishing and word of mouth recommendations are more important. A self-pub can benefit from this as much as a pro pub, so there is the levelling. We wouldn't be talking about this if self-pub ebooks were not making an impact on the industry. The more of them out there, the fewer trad-pub books will sell as readers can only buy and read so much every month and now their money and time is being spread across an ever widening selection of books outside the control of trad publishers. I say embrace it because it can't be fought. Look at what it's doing to the music industry.

I'm not sure why anyone would defend the right of multi-billionaire publishers to exploit writers in the way they have done for so many decades. It can't be an argument about gatekeepers and quality because I can point to an endless stack of pro published books that are the lowest quality possible.

 

With print I don't earn 30% royalties. With ebook, it's a different story. Of course, the cover price for print is higher than ebook--for my situation. My understanding is that traditional publishers pay far less in ebook royalties than small presses, which are often 50%, sometimes better, sometimes not quite there.

I know several traditionally published authors. Although their eboook sales have risen in recent years, their current and backlist titles still outsell print vs. ebook (or audiobook). My sales are roughly 50/50. I've not gotten a royalty statement with info on my first audiobook release. Will I be quitting my day job based on sales? Not even close.

Rather than use anecdotal evidence, such as some have in this thread, and I just did mentioning traditionally published authors I know, which can be used to illustrate a point (or exceptions to the rule), randomly picking 100 self-published authors and randomly picking 100 agented/traditionally published authors would be a better measure? Add up numbers/sales figures?

Unfortunately, I don't think those records are readily accessible.

I know trad authors who have sold very well, and some just average, yet still continue to get contracts for their works. I know self-published authors who do pretty well for themselves. Not enough that they can live off of the profits, but well enough that it's had a positive impact on their lifestyle.

Is there a right answer? Obviously not. Just like there isn't a right path for every career choice for anyone. A lawyer decides to join a law firm vs. one that puts out his/her own sign and sets up a practice. Same thing for therapists. Work for an agency or establish one's own practice. Author, attempt to work with a publisher or self-publish. Although it's not the completely the same (author submits work to publisher in hopes of getting a contract), still a therapist or a lawyer have to apply for a position (when there's an opening) and compete with others for the slot. If that makes sense.

 

Is anyone disputing that? Seems kind of a "Okay, and...?" thing.