Thoughts on Self Publishing…

Posted by bencooper | Filed under General

Is anybody out there?

I haven’t posted in quite some time, unfortunately I’ve been bogged down with essays and my dissertation and spending a lot of time in the library with my nose in books on subjects as diverse as Auschwitz, the poetry of Tony Harrison and books on the theory and nature of Sci-fi. It’ll all be over soon though.

I’ve taken a day off today to enjoy the lovely weather and had a thought about self-publishing that I wanted to get off my chest, so here goes. Buckle up it could be a bumpy ride.

As yet I’ve had no success at getting my stories published. One ‘zine has requested a re-write, which I’ll be tackling after Uni is done and dusted, two others have rejected me and I’m waiting to hear on two others. It’s a hard slog even at this early stage but everything I’ve been told by struggling and established writers prepared me as such, so I can’t really complain.

So, anyway, I got to thinking about self-publication. With technology advancing there seems to be a multitude of ways to get your work out there. There’s the traditional vanity presses, who will print a few hundred copies of your book in exchange for some hefty cash. Or how about print on demand, where you can print just a handful of copies. An e-book perhaps, which can go up on websites for download. But then I thought: “Self publishing is for people who can’t write”, but is it?

You don’t have to look hard to find “literary legends” who were self published: Horace Walpole, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling. All self published at various points of their careers and nobody would dream of calling them bad or failed writers. Who would call William Blake a bad poet? He printed all his own poetry, drew the illustrations and bound them. But these days it appears that self publishing is the domain of the failed writers. But it doesn’t seem to be that way in other fields.

As a musician you can get in a band, write some songs, record a demo or whole album at home (thanks to nothing more than some software and a PC), put singles up for sale on iTunes etc. and, although you won’t have the status of an act signed to Warner Bros. or Sony, nobody would say you’re a failed musician. Likewise and artist can sell his or her work through eBay and earn hundreds of pounds a painting (I know someone who does this and makes more money than selling through galleries)…are they a failed artist because their work isn’t in a gallery?

So why doesn’t this work for writers? If I publish a hundred odd copies of a collection of short stories, at my own expense, and sell them through a website or place them in a couple of local bookshops why would I be snorted at if I told anyone I’m a published writer?

I’m not sure I have an answer to this. It appears that for work to be of value people whose real motivation is the bottom line of cold hard cash must approve of your work. If you don’t think that agents, publishers, record company execs etc. don’t focus on the bottom line then consider why these days if a writer sells less than 10,000 copies with a big publishing house they’ll often be considered very lucky if a second book comes out (of course this doesn’t apply to more niche work like poetry etc. but then these are often published by small presses). Or think about the huge numbers of bands that get an album or two out only for it not to set the charts alight and then get dropped (again I know of a band from Devon that this happened to). And of course once you’ve proved you don’t sell it can be even harder to break back in than if you’re unproven. Years ago many novelists would write several “apprentice” novels before establishing a fan base and becoming a best seller, and don’t even mention that now endangered species the mid-list novelist.

Of course even trying to rationalise it this way I still can’t bring myself to seriously consider self-publishing.  Like everyone else I feel I need the affirmation that goes with having someone else think my work is worthy of publishing.

Perhaps in a way sci-fi is a harder nut to crack as so much of the entry level publishing (short stories in fanzines and magazines) is done out of a real love of the genre. As Philip K. Dick noted, nobody got rich writing sci-fi.

Later,

Ben

Permalink | April 19th, 2009

2 Responses to “Thoughts on Self Publishing…”

  1. Gareth L Powell Says:
    April 19th, 2009 at 7:37 am

    When you are published by a traditional publisher, the reader knows that several people – editors, agents, etc – have read and quality-checked the work, and approved it as good enough to make the grade. With self-publishing, there is no such guarantee. Most authors (myself included) need the objective eye of an experienced editor in order to weed out the cliches, mistakes and plot inconsistencies that may have crept into their work.

    See the latest issue of Vector for a scathing review on a particularly awful self-published book.

  2. bencooper Says:
    April 19th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    Hi Gareth,

    I absolutely agree. I’m not justifying self publishing and wouldn’t want to. As you say the quality control aspect is what makes it so valuable and important…although a lot of “classics” get rejected many times, with quite violent comments.

    I think I was just wondering out loud why in other areas self selling your work isn’t as sneered at as in writing.
    Thanks for the comment, as always your thoughts are appreciated. :)