If you aren't sure whether to self-publish, ask yourself what you want.

jacket said:

. . . someone who garners that kind of success by themselves often has great leverage if they want to go the traditional [i.e., commercial] route later.
. . . .

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Neither that fellow nor the others I know with big sales (tens of thousands of copies -- one over 100k for a single title) have any interest in reducing their income by signing their books away to commercial publishers. Historical novelist Naida West explicitly rejected commercial publication. Two others I know (nonfiction authors / publishers) rejected buyouts of their companies. But it varies all over the map. Another was happy to trade in a self-published book for a contract from an independent commercial publisher for a revised edition of that book. Another self-published a book on his specialty, it was seen by a large publishing house, and he happily signed a contract for a bigger, flossier new book in the same subject area. (He was thrilled at the graphic design expertise they brought to it.)

And on and on and on.

Hang around with scores of self- and independent publishers for a few years and you learn a few things.

BTW, I do not offer myself as an example of anything but idiosyncratic learning experiences and low-key (sometimes frankly facetious) publishing efforts. But this year I am improving my game (upgraded software, block of ISBNs, Lightning Source account), and I have a couple of (relatively) serious projects in process (niche, but pretty good niches). I'm never going to be in the league of some of my publisher friends -- they are far more entrepreneurial and far more energetic, including the one in his mid-80s (he's the guy with the top seller at over 100k copies).

--Ken

jacket said:

. . .Did your friend try querying first or did he jump straight to self publishing? Does he intend to continue publishing this way? . . . .

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He is a businessman with NO interest in losing his work to commercial publishers. His business/technical books are integrally connected to his business. (And his other books are tangentially connected, and one involves a second business.) He will continue until his last breath.

--Ken

jacket said:

. . .it does still seem to me (or at least I have seen) that people often flock to self publishing out of impatience or desperation. . . .

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It seems to me that you are absolutely right. Sometimes I fight a losing battle to get them to slow down and do what it takes to pursue commercial (trade) publishing. Some have no realistic prospect of succeeding in that pursuit (for a variety of reasons -- limited audience, limited lifespan . . .).

--Ken

OK, on the speed up thing, here's my thoughts.

Right now, there is no financial imperative on the part of publishers to publish fast. They invest a lot in a book, so it's actually more to their advantage to push them out slowly, at a sedate pace. That's a major part of why writers who want to actually write full time often have multiple pen names, so they can write multiple books per year...

Digital publishing changes that. Each new book coming out does not effectively remove another book from the shelves; rather, the potentially profitable shelf life is basically the duration of copyright. So there is instead an imperative to begin recouping investment as soon as possible, because the longer a book has had rights purchased but is not in print, the longer it takes before the publisher will begin recouping that investment.

Digital is a very different business model, much more focused on long tail, building author names as brands, and focusing on writers who can produce a number of high quality books per year. I think we'll see publishers begin adopting some of those tenets as digital grows in importance over the next couple of years. The result would be somewhat faster time to publication - not talking about a month, here, but anything over a year is just too long. There's no reason for it. Multiple editing passes take weeks, not months. Layout takes days, not weeks (yes, I've done layout professionally, albeit not for books - and once you have a set of house templates in InDesign, book production for print should be a matter of minutes to set up, then hours to tweak and fine tune - one person in a day or two).

Point is, there was no financial imperative to move any faster before; so publishers did not move faster. I think we'll see a financial imperative to move faster soon, so I think publishers will react to that...slowly. But they'll react. When it becomes clear that publishers who are able to produce books in six months from contract to in-readers'-hands make back their investments much faster (and therefore are more profitable, if you understand accounting principles that makes sense) than publishers who average two years, publishers will start moving faster.

But that's just my guess. I could be wrong. Small presses are already moving in this direction, though. I think the bigger boys will come along too.

KevinMcLaughlin said:

. . . publishers who are able to produce books in six months from contract to in-readers'-hands. . . .

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Throwing away any chance of reviews in major venues in the process (they need ARCs four months before publication date) and throwing a monkey wrench into planning for seasonal catalogs and trade distribution procedures. There are other players in the process.

Some things just take time. (And, IMHO, it will be a long time before digital-only books get anything like the respect accorded to hardback first editions.)

--Ken

Some thoughts on the rest of those comments:

1) Self publishing is easy, that's why you should do it.
No, not really. Self publishing is hard. You have to first write the book, which is hard. Then you have to get it edited, by a competent person, which is not simple. Then you have to navigate the mess of scam-based "self publishing help" companies, realize they are scams, avoid them, and go direct yourself - this is not easy either. Then you need to learn digital formatting. Doable, especially for those of us with heavy HTML experience - hey, I used to hand code websites on Notepad. Formatting for Kindle? Could almost do it in my sleep. Not so easy for lots of other folks, though. (HTML? What's that?)

Then you need to get a good cover artist. No, not some guy with a hacked copy of photoshop saying he's an artist - I mean a designer, who understands book cover design. You can find these guys for $250-500, if you know where to look, but that takes time and effort and reasearch. Not easy. You can also do it yourself - which is even harder! Or hire a college kid to do a drawing for you, but then you still need to know good design principles. I studied design in college. I have done professional Photoshop work for game companies. Book cover design is still taking me a ton of effort to learn. Not Easy.

After all of that, you need to figure out how to market the thing. This is something all writers face, regardless how they're published - but not easy, not for most of us.

I miss anything? This is Not Easy. Most people will fail. Then again, most people who submit to publishers or agents don't see print, either. I'd guess the percent of solid self-pub success stories is a similar percent to that of people who submit to agents/publishers and win through to a contract for their book. I'd be guessing, but I think it's a reasonable guess.

2) Marketing is a big edge for corporate publishing.
Sorta true, if you can get it. Outside the marketing required to get into the diminishing number of chain bookstores, and if you're lucky a few copies of the book sent to reviewers, what does the average novelist get for marketing dollars from a publisher? I'm asking. The folks I've talked to told me"zero". My only book credit is non-fiction, and what we got was zero (although seeing it for sale in B&N was nice - and that in itself is a form of marketing, and still a powerful one).

If you want marketing, as a novelist, odds are pretty decent you will have to do it yourself. If you're a known name author, things can be very different; but for most writers that's just not the case.

So regardless whether you publish a book yourself, publish it through small press, or publish it with a big house, odds are very good that you will need to do most of the marketing on your own. Most writers hate that. Get used to it. It's part of the job, sorry.

3) A thought about the whole "sea of books" thing.
I hear that tossed out a lot. "But if you self publish, your book will be out there in a sea of other books; how will it get noticed?" How does any other book get noticed? The functional difference between being on a rack spine out in a bookstore next to 500 other titles and being one of a 30,000 new ebooks released in April is really not that extreme. Readers still are going to have a tough time finding your book over some other book.

And the higher that percent of digital sales grow, the more the balance becomes even between self published and corporate published books (assuming equal quality!). They're all plunked down in the same big "sea of books" for readers to sample and buy and review.

I don't have all the answers on this one. I know writing a good book helps (obviously). I know having a professionally produced cover and blurb helps (whether you make it or a corporation produces it). I know having a good price helps - again, regardless who publishes it, $4.99 sells better than $9.99. I know having a bunch of books out helps an author - each book acting as an ad for the others, so publishers will likely start thinking more in terms of wanting writers who can write a lot of books, not just one. But those are only some bits of the puzzle.

It's a big puzzle.
Nobody has all the answers.
Seriously though, if this is something you're interested in, go out and STUDY hard. Learn what the people who are doing this well are doing, and emulate them, or modify their tactics for your own use. There's a lot of random people out there spouting random advice. I'm one of them. My strong advice is to go learn from the folks who are doing this right, and are achieving success as a result. Just like you would in any other trade.

jacket said:

Perhaps I should revise my previous statement--I meant that it is easy to do in terms of not having to jump through any middle men or convince some agent/publisher to like it--you're the only one you need to convince at first to get the ball rolling. Also, one could slap something together haphazardly through Lulu, or epublish or whatnot easily.

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Based on the questions that people ask on the CreateSpace forum, even slapping it together isn't easy. Most people still (still!) are not proficient when it comes to their computer skills.

Focus

KevinMcLaughlin said:

Seriously though, if this is something you're interested in, go out and STUDY hard. Learn what the people who are doing this well are doing, and emulate them, or modify their tactics for your own use. There's a lot of random people out there spouting random advice. I'm one of them. My strong advice is to go learn from the folks who are doing this right, and are achieving success as a result. Just like you would in any other trade.

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Agreed. There are an increasing number of successful self-publishers out there. I don't think their success is due to having kissed the Success Fairy. They are all working hard to achieve that success. YMMV, and you may emulate them and not achieve the same success, but you'll probably do better than if you didn't try using the same process/techniques that they did.

Focus

ResearchGuy said:

Throwing away any chance of reviews in major venues in the process (they need ARCs four months before publication date) and throwing a monkey wrench into planning for seasonal catalogs and trade distribution procedures. There are other players in the process.

Some things just take time. (And, IMHO, it will be a long time before digital-only books get anything like the respect accorded to hardback first editions.)

--Ken

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Good point for things as they are right now, Ken. But...

Reviewers are already beginning to prefer ebook formats for ARCs. I predict in a year most ARCs to reviewers will be ebook versions. Why? Easier for the reviewer, easier for the publisher, cheaper to send, and fast to produce once the edits are done (like, an hour).

Plus, you're still thinking about book-as-event. Under current conditions, publishers need to treat books as events, because they need to crank up early sales as much as possible. So reviews need to come out around the same time as the book - a review six months after a book is out doesn't do much good when B&N has already stripped the book off the shelves.

But ebooks don't go away. So when ebooks (or even online book purchases in general) represent over half of the book buying industry - and it's close right now, if you add up all online purchases, ebook and print - book-as-event stops being so important, and books start becoming more valuable over the long haul instead.

Likewise, when more than half of your books are sold via stores that you upload the product to digitally, the catalogs will change. When you don't need to 'sell' the product to the retailer to get them to sell it, it gets a lot easier on the publisher, and lead times for catalogs can drop substantially.

But we're talking ahead to the future for this. Next year, maybe.

KevinMcLaughlin said:

Good point for things as they are right now, Ken. But.... . .
But we're talking ahead to the future for this. Next year, maybe.

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Indeed, we live in interesting times. Don't know about next year, but in five the landscape will be very different.

--Ken

KevinMcLaughlin said:

OK, on the speed up thing, here's my thoughts.

That's a major part of why writers who want to actually write full time often have multiple pen names, so they can write multiple books per year....

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Not only have I never heard such reasoning, I think it's wrong and for many reasons doesn't make sense.

KevinMcLaughlin said:

What's that?)

2) Marketing is a big edge for corporate publishing.
Sorta true, if you can get it. Outside the marketing required to get into the diminishing number of chain bookstores, and if you're lucky a few copies of the book sent to reviewers, what does the average novelist get for marketing dollars from a publisher? I'm asking. The folks I've talked to told me"zero".

Based on the assumption that your work is excellent--which more than likey it would be if taken on by a trade pub), things such as a professonal done work (e.g., vetting, editing,
proofreading, design, cover art, etc.), arcs,
promotion and marketing expertise, an advance, reviews (more than a few), subsidiary sales, and much more.

If you want marketing, as a novelist, odds are pretty decent you will have to do it yourself. If you're a known name author, things can be very different; but for most writers that's just not the case.

That's right, and since the overwhekmng majority of SP writers have neither the time, money, knowledge or expertise to do so it's no surprise tat just about all fail.

So regardless whether you publish a book yourself, publish it through small press, or publish it with a big house, odds are very good that you will need to do most of the marketing on your own. Most writers hate that. Get used to it. It's part of the job, sorry.

Yep.
And the higher that percent of digital sales grow, the more the balance becomes even between self published and corporate published books (assuming equal quality!).

I'm just tired of replying to such reasoning which attemts to justify and equate SP or e-publishing to trade publishing. Maybe someone else will reply.

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ss

scope said:

Not only have I never heard such reasoning, I think it's wrong and for many reasons doesn't make sense.

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That's the only problem you had with the whole post?

There's quite a few writers who use pen names so that they can write multiple books per year. Publishers tend to frown on putting out more than one, maybe two books a year from a writer. Writers use pen names to enable them to write more books. Happens all the time, has for a long time.

@Scope.

OK, we can discuss that, too. I was talking more about marketing specifically there, but...
Vetting: Consumers have shown, again and again, that they are perfectly happy to vet things themselves. More specifically, readers tend to read *authors* they like, and with a few notable exceptions not publishers they like. Most readers don't even look at the publisher of a book. So vetting is something a book gets by reviewers, friends, family, etc. It's never been something given by a publisher; plenty of publisher backed books fail because readers refuse them.

Editing, proofreading, design, cover art: Are all available for hire. Yes, they cost money. Copy editing plus design plus cover art can run a thousand dollars, which is a steep investment. Content editing, even more. But they *are* available for hire, at the same quality which large publishers use. This is not a publisher exclusive.

Advances: Advances are a loan against sales. Publishers do not pay you more in advance than they expect the book to earn in royalties. You just get it a little faster. It's nice to get the money up front; but it's not essential.

Subsidiary Sales: There's a number of self published books out there who've sold movie rights, and more who've sold audio rights, and even MORE selling foreign rights. Which subsidiary sales in particular did you think were only salable by corporate published writers? Yes, only the most successful self published books are having options taken on the movie rights; which is true in either form of publishing.

Back to marketing...
ARCs and reviews: Which small presses have done for decades now. And any self publisher can do as well as a small press. Do they have the reach of a large publisher pushing a book hard? No. But we're not talking about publishers pushing a book hard (in that case, you've got a huge edge! no argument - they can put hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions, behind marketing your book). We're talking about most books - which are often left to the writer to find reviewers.

"That's right, and since the overwhekmng majority of SP writers have neither the time, money, knowledge or expertise to do so it's no surprise tat just about all fail."
You missed my point. What I said was, most books require the same level of marketing from the writer, regardless whether they were published independently or via a large publisher. Why it's no surprise that most self published books fail is because most self published books are badly written in the first place, just like most books submitted to agents/publishers are badly written in the first place. The only difference is that in one method, agents/publishers weed out the bad books; in the other, readers do. The effect is the same in the end. Good books sell.


About the last bit (digital sales as a leveling ground), let me explain a bit. Digital - online sales in general - balance the playing field for *equally well made* books. That's critical. That doesn't mean any old self published book will do as well as any corporate published book. It means that if a self publisher - or, just as pertinent, a small press - is able to produce as high a quality product as a large corporation, they have an even selling platform in digital and online print sales. Before, small press was often blocked from getting into chain bookstores, and was usually blocked entirely from supermarket and Walmart-type store sales. Digital and online gives small press/independent writers a major retail outlet which will sell their books.

If 75% of the market is buying books online in some form (a number we'll probably hit in the next few years), then almost all of the market becomes an even playing field for any professionally written/designed/produced book. Big publishers can still spend massive dollars on huge marketing campaigns for the books they want to try to make into bestsellers, just like they do today. And often, they'll be able to do just that. But for the majority of books, they don't use that sort of muscle, and I don't see that changing. That means for the majority of books, the equality in being able to get into the selling space equates to the ability to compete on the same level.

Compared to before, that is an enormous change.

Hi all,

I just want to make one separate point here that I think everyone will agree with (or at least I am hoping).

I spent 18 months on the query-go-round with maybe four different drafts of my book. I got close to getting an agent a couple of times, and once, thought I had an agent, only for it to fall apart for reasons that are still mysterious to me.

Now, all of that sucked, but it made my book way better. I got some great feedback from professionals, encouragement from agents and editors, went back to the drawing board a couple of times, and now I am at the point where I can be confident in saying I have a strong piece of work.

I only seriously started considering self-publishing as an option in the last couple of months. However, if the market had taken off to this point a year ago, I would have considered it then, and published something that was very, very far from ready.

It would have sold poorly, been poorly reviewed, and I could have given up writing forever.

So, even though I had some agent experiences which left me feeling bitter, overall, the process improved my book immeasurably, and toughened me up, and now I know a hell of a lot more about the business.

I am still pursuing a trade publishing deal (I have four fulls still out there - all ticking on seven months now, agh!), but I am giving strong consideration to self-publishing.

I have decided to self-publish some shorts, some of which have been published already, some not. I am doing it as cheaply as possible (while still using professional editors and designers), and I hope to cover my costs eventually. What I am really hoping to gain from it is knowledge. Because, one way or another, I think this is all useful stuff to learn.

For me the biggest thing about self-publishing is a fourth potential income stream for short stories (after first rights, reprints, and anthologies). I am doubtful as to how much money is in it, but if I can cover costs, then I figure I am ahead, and the education I receive in return will have only cost me time. And I advise people to sell their short stories in that order - magazines first, then anthologies/reprints, then look to self-publish (assuming you can't get an agent interested in a collection, which is a tough market).

I know I have argued with people on this forum on self-publishing. But I know their motivation comes from a good place - they don't want to see writers making mistakes that could damage their careers and damage their wallets (and their work). I can understand that. But I want them to know that my motivation comes from a good place too, that I am only trying to share what I have learned, and what I hope to learn in the future (and I have a hell of a lot to learn).

In fact, one of my greatest worries is that newbies will publish their work before it's ready, which is why I emphasise on my blog, and on my posts here, and on the UK forum where I am active (where they have a lot to learn about the realities of self-publishing), that people must learn how to self-edit, use critique forums, use betas, listen to what they are being told, and revise, revise, revise, especially when they are starting out. And when all that is done, and you have the best story you can write, then explore your publishing options.

Also, if someone came to me for advice, I would still advise them to pursue a traditional deal. And if they were writing short stories, I would still advise them to submit to magazines first. There is a lot you can learn from that process, in your writing, and as a person.

After all, you can trunk a manuscript that agents reject en masse, and write it off as a practice novel, or return to it at a later point, but those Amazon one-star reviews are forever.

Dave

KevinMcLaughlin said:

The result would be somewhat faster time to publication - not talking about a month, here, but anything over a year is just too long. There's no reason for it. Multiple editing passes take weeks, not months. Layout takes days, not weeks (yes, I've done layout professionally, albeit not for books - and once you have a set of house templates in InDesign, book production for print should be a matter of minutes to set up, then hours to tweak and fine tune - one person in a day or two).

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In theory, what you've presented here makes sense. However in reality, no.

It's easy enough to say editing a book should take a few weeks, layout a few days, and bam! Book's done. The thing that folks who continue to argue this seem to forget is that editors work on more than one book at a time. They have a list of authors and they have a queue. They work on the books as they are received and in order of their publication date.

The only way to speed up the process as it stands now is to either hire more editors to get the job done faster, or to buy fewer books and cut authors from their lists.

KevinMcLaughlin said:

Advances: Advances are a loan against sales.

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Actually, no. "Loan" is the wrong word, because loan implies the money is temporarily given and it's expected to be paid back. Advances are just that--an advance against expected royalties. You don't give it back if the book doesn't earn out. Once you cash the check it's yours.

ChaosTitan said:

It's easy enough to say editing a book should take a few weeks, layout a few days, and bam! Book's done. The thing that folks who continue to argue this seem to forget is that editors work on more than one book at a time. They have a list of authors and they have a queue. They work on the books as they are received and in order of their publication date.

The only way to speed up the process as it stands now is to either hire more editors to get the job done faster, or to buy fewer books and cut authors from their lists.

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If that's the case (and it's really a 2-year backlogged queue of editors and staff working full out to get books done), then all they'd need to do is hire some temps, or send some of the work out to freelance editors, and catch up. Once they were caught up, say down to a nine-month queue, all they'd need to do is continue to trundle along at the same rate, just with a faster time to production.

Easier said than done, I agree! That costs money. And unless it's going to *make* the company money, it makes no sense. Under the print->bookstores model, producing books faster doesn't increase income, because each book they put out has to replace some other book they already put out, which then stops selling. But under a digital model, every month a publisher has a contract in hand but no book available for sale *costs* them money in lost sales, because its not out there selling for them, and once it IS out, it stays out earning money, potentially for decades.

Consider this model for a digital small press in the not-so-distant future. Every book you produce creates a revenue stream. Not a huge one, but it's more revenue. Ebooks cost you something like $3k each to produce and upload, so even though you're selling them for $5 a pop and making only $1.75 a pop (splitting income 50-50 with writers), it doesn't take a lot of sales to break even, and after that all income is profit.

Income on those books continues, for some unknown but really long period of time. Longer on writers who keep writing - and the more those writers produce, the more each of their books will sell, in general.

So your goal, then, is to produce as many of these revenue streams as possible. You'd also ideally like to produce multiples by the same author name/brand, if you can - writers who can produce half a dozen good books a year will be cherished. Your functional limits on book production are your available funds to produce books (at $3k a book, this means you can produce a LOT of books with very little investment); your available staff hours to work on books (which you will probably grow as your revenue streams grow - the more staff, the more streams you can produce per year, which means you can hire more staff - a self-feeding system); and the number of good submissions you get.

When a publisher is putting $200k on the line for a new book, they think very carefully about what book they want to produce. When a publisher is putting only a few thousand - OK, let's jump it up and say $10k, even - and those books stay for sale for duration of copyright - and those books don't replace other books, but sell alongside them...

It's a very different way of looking at publishing, let's just say.

Kevin,

Re your post #39. Without continuing to knock my head against a wall, let me ask you one question. Do you see any value in being published by a trade house vs self-publication? If so, does what you believe apply to both successfuly trade published authors and the unpublished?

jacket said:

There is a big difference between choosing between the two options vs failing to find an agent/publisher the traditional route (possibly because the writing isn’t there) and hence self publishing instead, hoping that somehow all those agents you queried failed to see your genius.

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It's a good argument, but I think it falls down because it assumes that agents and publishers reliably know what makes a good book, and that's demonstrably inaccurate.

They know what makes good books a *lot* of the time. Maybe even *most* of the time. But they print books with a big push that don't sell; and they miss books that would have (or do, when self published) sell.

They're human; and book quality is not an easily measurable thing. I couldn't do their job any better than they are, so I'm not *blaming* anyone.

In the end, I guess you have to ask "where's the harm in trying?" Worst case, you're out $100 for some cover art. Odds are good, you can coerce family and friends into buying at least 50 copies so you break even. If the story was pretty good, and just got passed over because it's a cruddy market right now, well, maybe you make a couple thousand from it. Maybe more.

But no harm in trying. Doesn't hurt you (if you get those nasty 1 star reviews, and write something better you want to publish or submit, Take The Old Book Down - voila, 1 stars gone; you can even take it down, edit and fix it, and put it back up again, also removing the stars and reviews of the old edition). Doesn't hurt anyone else. Why not try?

I think the harm comes in that if you don't succeed, you've pretty much hurt your chances for that book in the future. See, I can try to query agents and publishers, get rejected, and then choose to self-publish, but the alternative doesn't really work. If I self-publish and fail, but then decide that because it didn't work, I want to have a go at agents and publishers, it's going to be incredibly difficult to actually get anywhere (more so than usual).

It may not seem like there are consequences, but it can be a problem.

Can you actually remove one-star reviews and such on Amazon? I think it's more difficult to get things like that changed, but I could be wrong on that. But, think of this as well. You do the marketing, you plug your book everywhere, and get a few sites to do reviews. Well, what if the reviews are terrible? You can't take that back. That's still out there and still attached to your name. I know the same holds true for commercial publishing, but I think erasing all traces of an old, bad copy is a little harder than what you're considering.

I think the better thing would be to hope for obscurity if the book just wasn't good enough. If only a hundred people ever bought it, then you hope they forget your name, remove the book, and try to remove associations of it to yourself. Might be harder to do if you've done a lot of online marketing (since once something is online it's pretty much forever), but at least then you have a chance still of doing better with the next book.

Is there anyone on here who couldn't sell copies of an early book, but then found success with a later one? I'd be interested to hear what they did to accomplish it.

KevinMcLaughlin said:

It's a good argument, but I think it falls down because it assumes that agents and publishers reliably know what makes a good book, and that's demonstrably inaccurate.

They know what makes good books a *lot* of the time. Maybe even *most* of the time. But they print books with a big push that don't sell; and they miss books that would have (or do, when self published) sell.

They're human; and book quality is not an easily measurable thing. I couldn't do their job any better than they are, so I'm not *blaming* anyone.

In the end, I guess you have to ask "where's the harm in trying?" Worst case, you're out $100 for some cover art. Odds are good, you can coerce family and friends into buying at least 50 copies so you break even. If the story was pretty good, and just got passed over because it's a cruddy market right now, well, maybe you make a couple thousand from it. Maybe more.

But no harm in trying. Doesn't hurt you (if you get those nasty 1 star reviews, and write something better you want to publish or submit, Take The Old Book Down - voila, 1 stars gone; you can even take it down, edit and fix it, and put it back up again, also removing the stars and reviews of the old edition). Doesn't hurt anyone else. Why not try?

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You are right that agents/editors may pass up perfectly good books. Any book that does eventually get published has probably seen multiple rejections along the way. So the fact that a book has been rejected is not an absolute statement of it's quality. But if a book is pretty bad, it will (we'd hope anyway) most certainly get rejected. If a book is good, it may or may not find a publisher. What percentage of books that face repeated rejections, however, are actually missed gems vs actually deserving of the rejections?

Again, you are right that it doesn't hurt anyone to try (except you may be out of money--and a lot more than $100 from what I've read--if you tried to do it right). But in a way, this argument almost sounds like Pascal's wager--if you believe (that self publishing will work for you), no harm can come from believing (you either will succeed or you won't; all your bases are covered), and if you don't believe (that self publishing will work for you) then you will have forgone possible grand success. But I wonder if far too many people may be jumping to self publishing out of desperation or impatience at the expense of focusing on improving their writing. I wonder this because I feel like I see people doing this constantly. This is really the problem I have with it. How does someone determine that their stuff really is good and has simply been overlooked?

I have a hard time understanding why someone would put the effort and expense into putting out a self published book when that effort could have been put toward finding an agent/publisher and working on the writing itself. I get that people have their reasons and my own ignorance of the business of self publishing may not be allowing me to understand those at the moment. I concede that there may well be a good deal of viability to self publishing, it's just that it seems like such an easy way for people to delude themselves. What percentage of self published titles are actually successful compared to the percentage of traditionally published books that are successful? How do you know, as a self publisher, that you aren't deluding yourself?

Everyone has to make that choice for herself, of course. I was just reading this interview with John Locke about his self-publishing adventure and his attitude is that anyone who isn't absolutely certain that they want to self-publish shouldn't follow that path, because as with any small business, you need a level of confidence to succeed. Of course your confidence could be pure self-delusion, but that's true for every endeavor in life.

scope said:

Kevin,

Re your post #39. Without continuing to knock my head against a wall, let me ask you one question. Do you see any value in being published by a trade house vs self-publication? If so, does what you believe apply to both successfuly trade published authors and the unpublished?

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OK, that's a loaded question, but a great one. Can I answer "depends"?

Yes, there are some *huge* values in corporate publishing. No, not all writers published by a large house get all of those benefits; they don't apply equally to everyone.

Advances: Can be enormously valuable. For some non-fiction, an advance received before the book is written can be the difference between being able to write it and not. For fiction writers, a nice 5-6 figure advance can spell the difference between eking out 4-5k words a week or producing that much work per day over the next year. At the same time, even large advances are obviously not enough to tempt some writers (Eisler, for instance); and a small advance likely means a small print run, very limited marketing, and not a lot of return for your investment writing the book.

I would see very little point in taking a four figure advance, for instance - it's small enough to not be life-changing; small enough that the print run will be tiny and the book receive little if any marketing; and small enough that if the book is competent enough to print in the first place, it would probably make at least that much self published. But different writers will have different views on at what level advances are an advantage.

Editing: I've had the privilege to have some of my short fiction edited by experts before. It's an enlightening process. If you're getting an expert editor who is interested in developing you as a writer, I think the editorial experience can be incredibly valuable. One way to get that experience as part of the package is to publish through a corporation. I see this as one of the big benefits they offer, honestly.

However, I'm disturbed by things I hear. I talk to acquaintances who say they are no longer getting comprehensive content editing help. And I'm seeing a trend toward less competent editing in many books I read, even those from major publishers.

If you can get a good editor, it's a huge benefit.

Marketing: Related to the advance. If your book is getting a good push from a publisher, it's a huge help. Most books don't. One of the best ways to see if a publisher intends to push your book hard seems to be the advance they offer - the bigger the advance, the more books they need to sell to recoup their investment, so the more marketing dollars they will tend to spend. At $500k a book, Amanda Hocking is going to get a big push for each of her SMP books (which incidentally will REALLY help the 3-4 books she says she intends to self publish each year alongside the SMP on). At $5k for a first novel, Joe Newbie can be pretty much guaranteed limited marketing money. It depends.

Incidentally, the Ms. Hocking mention was intentional - I see that combination of using a big marketing push from a large publisher with multiple self published (and therefore higher profit margin for the writer) books as having great synergy. I think we'll see a lot more of that.

Trade Org. Membership: This is one that gets overlooked a lot. Most of the trade orgs (AG, NINC, SFWA, etc.) don't allow self published books as credits for full membership. Even those orgs like the RWA which do allow self publishers to join don't give them full membership. I think that will either change, or new orgs will form and solidify to fill this gap. But for now, at least, there are still some noteworthy advantages to membership in these groups, and they're limited to corporate published writers only.

I'm probably missing some, but this is already overlong. I'll be glad to respond to any replies or thoughts. These are just my feelings, and I'm certainly open to debating them.

kaitie said:

I think the harm comes in that if you don't succeed, you've pretty much hurt your chances for that book in the future. See, I can try to query agents and publishers, get rejected, and then choose to self-publish, but the alternative doesn't really work. If I self-publish and fail, but then decide that because it didn't work, I want to have a go at agents and publishers, it's going to be incredibly difficult to actually get anywhere (more so than usual).

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But if the book failed via self publishing, how likely would it be to have been picked up by a publisher? Even fairly mediocre books are finding audiences of thousands of readers right now. Many of those books would probably not pass muster at a major publisher, but they *are* finding readers. I think it's extremely unlikely that a book which outright fails in self publishing had a snowball's chance in heck of getting corporate publication.

Can you actually remove one-star reviews and such on Amazon? I think it's more difficult to get things like that changed, but I could be wrong on that. But, think of this as well. You do the marketing, you plug your book everywhere, and get a few sites to do reviews. Well, what if the reviews are terrible? You can't take that back. That's still out there and still attached to your name. I know the same holds true for commercial publishing, but I think erasing all traces of an old, bad copy is a little harder than what you're considering.

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Yes, you can remove a book from sale, and this removes all old ratings and reviews from the selling site. Good point about outside reviews; but then again, how many corp published writers don't have some bad reviews too? I do see what you're saying here; an enormous smashing pile of bad reviews could hang over your head for years. But how likely is that bad a book to actually get reviews by prominent reviewers in the first place? Assuming you don't do something dumb like start an argument with the reviewer on her own blog (like one writer did recently), I think you should be OK in the long run.