You make some really good points. As a reader, I've pretty much stopped buying novels that appear self-published because it's so hard to tell which are good and which aren't. Even The Martian (Andy Weir) could have used a bit more editing IMHO and that was a pretty good book. Far too much cursing, though. Seemed gratuitous to me.
I was just curious about his obvious dislike for self-publishing. You definitely make very valid points, but would someone really know a book was self published if it was of traditional publishing quality? I agree, there are several books that are poorly self-published because the author just wanted to get it out. On the other hand, there are other authors like Tressa "Azreal" Smallwood. She self-published and now has a multi-million dollar empire. Of course there are those who are in between the two as well. I understand the pros and cons of self-publishing and going the traditional route. I was just curious if there was something seriously wrong with self-publishing.
You're right. There are no guarantees with either. And I may sing quite the different tune when my turn rolls around. It might turn out that tongue-in-cheek science fiction takes a major downturn before I've got this thing finished and I'll be forced into self-publishing myself.
If just the writing is of traditional published quality, and not every other aspect of the book? Yes. If the book doesn't have a professional doing the design, layout, and marketing, very few people will ever discover the quality of the writing. You say "several." There are tens of thousands, almost certainly hundreds of thousands, quite possibly millions. Only a tiny percentage of those ever could have been a good book, but the loss of those (because most of them are indeed essentially lost) is sad. The fact that a few self-published books are essentially struck by lightning and become successful doesn't really mean anything for the others. I think that losing the potential of what could have been a good book, or a book that could have had a decent readership ending up getting only a few dozen readers, is indeed "something seriously wrong".
@ChickenFreak Sadly, I've started to wonder whether traditional publishers aren't cutting back on how much they edit, etc. I just picked up a book that was subject to a lot of buzz around its national release. Put out by a well-known big publisher. As it happens, I'm enjoying the story a great deal, but only 20% into the book I have found numerous places where punctuation is missing, where spaces have been omitted so that words run together, where line breaks are missing (clearly inadvertently). It's a bit disappointing.
Yep; I ran into something like that a few years ago, in the latest novel in a series that I had been previously enjoying. I was worried that it might be the beginning of a trend, but it was more than a decade ago and I haven't run into a book (from any publisher; that book was the end of my interest in that particular series) that was that bad again. My evidence-free theory was that the editors at that house were overworked and they took the gamble that the nth book in an established series was the least risky work to starve of editing time. Your example is scarier. And it's an extraordinarily bad step for traditional publishers to take. One of their biggest advantages, (possibly THE single biggest advantage, because other things like good design and layout and art are primarily a signal of good writing quality) over self publishing is a sufficiently high minimum quality level; they should be making that a priority. If the quality of traditional publishing falls to the point that people have to start finding another way to identify quality books, and they do successfully create something (I've often imagined what that website would behave like, to the point of scribbling database tables and fields), then they've cracked the problem with self-publishing, and the traditional publishers will be in a world of trouble. That will be the day that I come over to your side and call self-publishing a legitimate option.
I return to note that there's an analogy to the perfume world, not that anyone but me cares about that analogy. In recent decades, it became clear that many corporations making perfume started focusing on bottle design and box design and snazzy ads and the correct pretty actress to star in the ads, and many perfume freaks felt that the corporations were projecting a sort of blank, confused, "Scent? What scent? Oh, right! There IS liquid in that pretty bottle. Sorry. Yeah. Whatever. I guess some people wear that stuff. We just expected you to sniff it once in the store, so we spent the ingredients pittance on the top notes. But look, we got (famous woman)! Isn't she pretty? Doesn't the way her hair flutters in the wind make you forget that the perfume smells like rancid Lemon Pledge after it dries?" And then those irritating customers who were supposed to be just saying, "Ooh, (famous woman)!" and taking out their credit cards, started communicating--blogs, forums, trading decants so that people could actually smell the stuff and then disobediently buy perfume by mail instead of at the department store, and so on. And my evidence-free belief is that that's how a lot of small, smaller, and indie perfumers manage to make a living. Now, the moral isn't all that scarey for traditional publishers, because the existence of good perfume hasn't eliminated the profitability of bad perfume--I think. On the other hand, I think that perfume has a much, much bigger profit margin than books. It might go the other way for traditional publishers.
I've made over $3 a word on my self-published children's book. Sure, that's not Martian or 50 Shades territory, but I'll call it legit
Traditional publishing quality to include EVERY aspect, not just the writing. If a self-publish author put in the time, effort and money to bring his/her book to traditional publishing quality, how could someone tell the book was self-published and in turn, not want to read it? Okay, tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands, fine. What it means for the others is that it is in fact possible if an individual desires to make it happen. When I said something seriously wrong, I meant something a smidge more...let's call it serious than your example my dear. There are pros and cons to both traditional and self-publishing. Just because a book is traditionally published, does not mean more readership is guaranteed. Is it more likely? Possibly. But why discount those self-published who put in the necessary resources and get great results?
If you and @ChickenFreak doesn't mind, I'd like to take a stab at this... You're right in that it's unfortunate. The one percent of good (perhaps great) self-published novels are tainted by the 99%. Even the ones that do find success aren't always stellar examples of good writing (Andy Weir's The Martian comes to mind). And to me that implies there's a healthy dollop of luck involved. On the traditional side, I didn't care for the first Harry Potter novel. I thought the writing left a lot of room for improvement, and yet Ms. Rowling became the first novelist-billionaire, the quintessential example to all those seeking to make a living from writing. How would Rowling have fared if her novels were all self-published? Perhaps luck would still have been with her. Perhaps she still would have struck a chord with millions of people and found the same, or similar, success. We have no way of knowing, although I myself doubt it. It's possible that readers trust traditional publishers more than the Amazon rating system. Or maybe, it's the 'legitimizing' factor of being vetted and published by traditional publishers that gives an author the ability to believe in him/herself just that fraction more so that they're more open to those other instances of luck when they crop up. Or maybe it all comes down to what we believe, all that Secret stuff Rhonda Byrne talks about. Attract success (and with it, luck) into existence and it doesn't matter which route is taken.
I think the point is more that so very few self-published books do achieve that level of quality in every aspect. Self-publishing doesn't necessarily mean a bad book - either in writing or production - but the two are definitely correlated, because so many people just don't put in the required work. In a world where there are already far more good books to read than you could ever hope to get through in one lifetime, I can understand someone just deciding anything that looks self-pubbed isn't worth the effort. I'm saying that, btw, as someone who has self-published, and would happily do so again if I had the right material. I decided self-publishing was the way forward because: 1. It was flash-fiction that was already available on my blog, so the chances of being trad-published could be summed up as 'lol' 2. I had a load of readers, so I was reasonably confident there were a chunk of people out there who thought I was passing fair as a writer 3. It looked like a fun thing to try And it was fun. It was a great experience. I'd put my book in front of @ChickenFreak and challenge her to say it was objectively worse than something from a traditional small press. But none of that changes the fact there's a lot of crap out there, and if someone passes over my book because they've tried a dozen other self-published books and they've all been rubbish, I can't say that's not rational.
@NigeTheHat I just signed up to your mailing list to get one of your books. I generally go for short story anthologies rather than flash, but I do buy a lot of them.
Hi Guys, Back into the fray I suppose. But could I just say that as many have said there are pro's and cons with self publishing. The real issue being discussed here however, is quality. Someone a page or two back said he'd never read a self pubbed book that he was satisfied with. And fine - on the face of it that sounds reasonable - a bit biased, but never mind. But the fact is that said poster probably doesn't actually know if he's read a self pubbed book that he was satisfied with. Because he doesn't know the publishers of all the books he's read. Chances are that unless he's absolutely pernickety and checks the publisher of every book he likes the look of (and even that isn't a guarantee since some indies are making up their own publishing creds for their covers) he has read some and just doesn't know it. And that's the take home message here for anyone thinking of going this route. You can't do half a job. You have to do the whole nine yards, cover design, blurb creation, marketing, editing, publishing etc. And if you do it right, no one will ever realise that the book is self published. If you do it wrong, if say the cover looks like crap, then readers are going to say - "hey, this book looks self published (code for shitty). I'm not going to read it." And they shouldn't either. Because what confidence should they have that a book where the author has clearly not put much effort into cover design is going to be well written or editted?! As I've said before, going indie is a big decision. You can't half-arse it. Expect a massively steep learning curve. And expect to fail if you don't get everything professional. But if you do do it right, don't expect anyone to even know that you did do it indie. And here's a poll sort of question. How many people would even know The Martian was self published if it hadn't made the news? How many would have taken that book, looked at it, maybe read it, and thought this is self published? The chances are most read the book, never thought a damned thing about whether it was an indie effort or not, they just liked it, and that's the secret of its success. But instead what we get is a sort of after the event judgement - "Oh I knew it was an indie book, because it had all these issues." It was just that they weren't issues before the readers realised they were reading indie. Just my two cents. Cheers, Greg.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who does indeed check the publisher of every book before I choose to download it, having been disappointed too many times...
Yeah, I check every publisher, too. If I haven't heard of them, I check to see if it's a screen for a self-published author. And I have read some self-published books that have worked quite well for me, but they're self-published by authors who started off with a publisher, learned the ropes/cut their teeth/proved their worth/whatever, and then gone off on their own. (This is quite common in Romance). I do some self-publishing myself. But if I'd started with self-publishing, rather than with a publisher, I think I'd have struggled to find an audience and to know how to write a book that will please an audience. That doesn't mean that other people can't do it. But I do think working with an established publisher (or several) is a great way to learn the ropes and establish a name.
I think writers tend to do this. I doubt there is a majority among non-writers who do. I was talking to my assistant at work about this because she's always on her Kindle at lunch, and it never even occurred to her.
I did it before I was a writer. My mum does too, and she's not only not a writer but a voracious reader.
It would be interesting to find out how many readers do this. I'll usually check, but I'm more interested in the sample. If it makes me want to read on, I'll buy the book.
I'd do that if I had more time for book browsing. But this is why I sympathise with agents and editors - I use quick and dirty filter methods too.
Hi, Well I certainly don't check publishers in advance. To me that's simply a bizarre thing to do. My process is simple and I would guess fairly normal. I check out the cover. It looks good - I read the blurb. It looks good - I take a squizz at a sample. And if all still goes well - I read the book. I might also look at the ratings at some point. The only reason I would check out the publisher is if the book caught me out in some way. Say after that, I found that the writing deteriorated somewhere or there were plotholes. Or alternatively if there was some conflict in the book - say the plot looked brilliant and the blurb read well but the cover was poor. Otherwise I really don't give a flying fart about who published it. And as I say, I should not know if a book is self published if the author's done his work properly. If he hasn't well I probably won't read the book because the plot sucks or the blurb is crap etc. Not because it's self published. What we're seeing here is a sort of reverse confirmation bias. People are taking the idea that if a book is poor quality it's likely self published - which is often true (though there have been some shocking exceptions), and reversing it to say if a book's self published it's likely poor quality - which in many cases is grossly unfair. Cheers, Greg.
We'll have to disagree there. I bought self-published books for quite some time and had no pre-conceived ideas about them. I stopped buying them after endless disappointment, realising that they ARE likely to be poor quality. I haven't bought any since I developed a bias, so there's no confirming of it going on. It's not grossly unfair. It's my experience and, from what I hear, many other people's. I also understand I'm missing out on some gems, but I'm okay with that. There are enough good quality traditionally published books to last me a lifetime.
Oh, come on. It's "bizarre" and not "normal" to have noticed a connection between who publishes a book and the likelihood that I'll enjoy the book? If it makes you feel any better, I don't only avoid self-publishers, I also avoid certain small publishers who have, in the past, put out too many books I've not liked. As @Tenderiser says, I may be missing some beauts this way, but there's no shortage of good books out there. Using a quick and easy way to improve my chances of finding them seems reasonable to me. (And, again, I self-publish. There are a few authors whose self-published work I'll buy because I know they put out good stuff. But a new-to-me author? I'd have to read an excellent rec in order to try a self-pubbed book).
In statistical terms, it's not unfair. A self-published book doesn't have to follow anyone's standards of quality. A traditionally published book does. Therefore, the statistical likelihood of a self-published book being good is lower. It could be great, just as the clothes that I sew for myself could be great or the chicken I fry could be great. But as it happens, my home-sewn clothes are less than adequate. The chicken is magnificent, but I wouldn't expect anyone to take my word for that. When I'm buying a book, I'm not in the position of an employer, who is required to follow rules about fairness. I'm going to go with whatever maximizes the odds that I'll get a book that I like.
