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The whole "self-publishing vs. trade publishing" debate is as polarized and as acrimonious as are debates about religion. Unlike religious debates, however, this one isn't pointless.
In a nutshell, the article that I am linking to below that I came across last week says that you can't really call yourself a "publisher" unless and until you have taken responsibility for someone else's work. In the strictest sense that the word is defined, this does not matter, but I agree with the point that he made.
A publishing company is a business, and my favorite term that describes what a business does is "going concern," with an emphasis on the word "concern." (Never mind that in accounting this means that the business is thriving and not under threat of being closed down. I go by John Commons's use of it to mean any organized collective action.) A business survives and thrives based not only on market conditions but on the decisions and the day-to-day actions of people who care about the business and want it to succeed. They don't take a single flat dime home unless they can meet their expenses, especially payroll. Every decision that they make is based on that, including what they publish and in what specific condition or form it will be published. The corollary is that if a book gets published, it has met whatever criteria a publisher has when deciding whether or not that book is able to drive the business. The publisher's name and logo on the cover symbolizes the publisher's willingness to risk the viability of the business, in whole or in part, on that title.
A self-publishing author has none of these concerns. Such a person is interested in being published, and does so without taking the kinds of risks that a trade publisher takes. To a self-publisher, the books is going to be published no matter what, whether it meets market standards or not. (Please don't inundate this thread with "look at Twilight!" or other "but most of what gets published these days is crap!" posts; been there, done that, have the t-shirt, and I'm sick of the whining. Publishing is a business; live with it.) A case in point is that very few self-publishing authors are willing to spend a lot of money on their own work; they go for e-books, print-on-demand, and other options that entail little or no financial risk. Indeed, self-publishing flourishes today because of relatively new technologies that make it a low-risk endeavor. Few self-publishing authors are going to pay two or more professional editors to work on their manuscripts and fewer still would make sweeping, extensive, or even fundamental changes to them if the editors point out flaws in them; they're paying for it, they want it published, and that's that. (Again, please don't bore me to death with tales about outliers and others who are exceptions to this rule. They are as relevant to this discussion as are those who survive gunshot wounds to the head are to discussions about public safety.)
Trade publishers operate as any other business because they have no choice but to do so. Self-publishers don't. Trade publishers have the track record of everything else that they have published before as a guarantee to the consumers that everything that they are publishing now will be just as good, if not better. Self-publishers leave the onus of determining quality on the consumers, and only those consumers who actively seek out self-published books to read.
Take a look at the article, and then do a little thought experiment: ask yourself how much you are willing to do, how much time you are willing to take, and how much money you are willing to spend on your own book if you are going to self-publish it; then do the same thing for another book, that is written by someone who is not your friend. If there is any gap at all between those figures or if you make any equivocation or qualification at all to your answer, then you are basically proving every point that I made above and every point that the author of the article linked to below made, too.
http://publishingperspectives.com/2...lishingPerspectives+(Publishing+Perspectives)
In a nutshell, the article that I am linking to below that I came across last week says that you can't really call yourself a "publisher" unless and until you have taken responsibility for someone else's work. In the strictest sense that the word is defined, this does not matter, but I agree with the point that he made.
A publishing company is a business, and my favorite term that describes what a business does is "going concern," with an emphasis on the word "concern." (Never mind that in accounting this means that the business is thriving and not under threat of being closed down. I go by John Commons's use of it to mean any organized collective action.) A business survives and thrives based not only on market conditions but on the decisions and the day-to-day actions of people who care about the business and want it to succeed. They don't take a single flat dime home unless they can meet their expenses, especially payroll. Every decision that they make is based on that, including what they publish and in what specific condition or form it will be published. The corollary is that if a book gets published, it has met whatever criteria a publisher has when deciding whether or not that book is able to drive the business. The publisher's name and logo on the cover symbolizes the publisher's willingness to risk the viability of the business, in whole or in part, on that title.
A self-publishing author has none of these concerns. Such a person is interested in being published, and does so without taking the kinds of risks that a trade publisher takes. To a self-publisher, the books is going to be published no matter what, whether it meets market standards or not. (Please don't inundate this thread with "look at Twilight!" or other "but most of what gets published these days is crap!" posts; been there, done that, have the t-shirt, and I'm sick of the whining. Publishing is a business; live with it.) A case in point is that very few self-publishing authors are willing to spend a lot of money on their own work; they go for e-books, print-on-demand, and other options that entail little or no financial risk. Indeed, self-publishing flourishes today because of relatively new technologies that make it a low-risk endeavor. Few self-publishing authors are going to pay two or more professional editors to work on their manuscripts and fewer still would make sweeping, extensive, or even fundamental changes to them if the editors point out flaws in them; they're paying for it, they want it published, and that's that. (Again, please don't bore me to death with tales about outliers and others who are exceptions to this rule. They are as relevant to this discussion as are those who survive gunshot wounds to the head are to discussions about public safety.)
Trade publishers operate as any other business because they have no choice but to do so. Self-publishers don't. Trade publishers have the track record of everything else that they have published before as a guarantee to the consumers that everything that they are publishing now will be just as good, if not better. Self-publishers leave the onus of determining quality on the consumers, and only those consumers who actively seek out self-published books to read.
Take a look at the article, and then do a little thought experiment: ask yourself how much you are willing to do, how much time you are willing to take, and how much money you are willing to spend on your own book if you are going to self-publish it; then do the same thing for another book, that is written by someone who is not your friend. If there is any gap at all between those figures or if you make any equivocation or qualification at all to your answer, then you are basically proving every point that I made above and every point that the author of the article linked to below made, too.
http://publishingperspectives.com/2...lishingPerspectives+(Publishing+Perspectives)
