Reply to a NEPAT post
I decided to be a sport and to post this here rather than on the NEPAT, as it is more pertinent here, despite the PA references.
SC Harrison said:
...What we self-publishers do not deserve, however, is to be considered equal to those whose works are selected by a publishing entity that is willing to invest their time, money and reputation solely on the quality and marketability of said work.....
Allow me to disagree. You are putting all self-published authors in one bag. Wrong. Some choose to self-publish because that choice gives them a level of control over content, style, design, and marketing that commercial publishing does not, because they have a strong entrepreneurial drive that enables them to manage a business (which self-publishing is), or (ideally) both.
For example, Naida West is a scholar, writer, and publisher, whose books exemplify excellence. (I am currently reading her latest, a historical western/mystery titled
Murder on the Middle Fork, written with her uncle Don Ian Smith. It is a crackerjack story.) Naida contracts for cover art (paintings by talented artists), contracts for editing, contracts for book design, and manages her own marketing and distribution. She not only writes, she also runs a successful business, Bridge House Books. Naida could certainly find an agent or a commercial publisher, but chooses, for business and artistic reasons, to run her own publishing company. I could name other examples -- people I know personally -- with comparable accomplishments. One, Bill Teie, an authority on wildland firefighting, wrote and self-published--with printing done in China--a superb textbook on wildlife firefighting, a book that may be acquired by a commercial textbook publisher, if the author and that publisher can come to mutually satisfactory terms. Another, Alton Pryor, who writes primarily regional history and lore, has sold as many as
55,000 copies of a single title, and has about a dozen titles in print. That is his full time business because that is the business he chooses to be in, not one he has no option but to be in. Another, Janice Marschner wrote and self-published an award-winning book,
California 1850: A Snapshot In Time.
Please note: I am talking here of genuine self-publishers, people who own their ISBNs, contract for publishing-related services, have a properly licensed business entity, and focus on the production and marketing of books they have written.
Where does PA come into this? Not at all, really, except for the occasional confusion that PA-publication is self-publishing (it is not) and for the misguided contempt that some folks in the PA world (or combating PA's deceptions) hold for self-publishing, and their failure to grasp that self-publishing is not all one undifferentiated bag of dreck (it is not, although there is certainly bad self-publishing as well as good).
Now, having said that: self-publishing is a BUSINESS and first and foremost those who succeed at it must be savvy and industrious entrepreneurs. They must also have a product for which there is a market: a desirable book or books (with all that implies). PA undoubtedly has a share of very able writers who could succeed in the world of commercial publishing with the right kind of efforts, properly applied (including superb query letters and book proposals directed to appropriate agents and publishers). It certainly has a share of industrious entrepreneurs trying like the dickens to market their PA-published books, but doing so against the overwhelming obstacles PA throws in their path. Some of those folks might have become successful genuine self-publishers had they chosen
that path and if they had the resources (money, information, leads to quality printers and other support). Again: that is clearly NOT the best choice for most, as the combination of writing skills and entrepreneurial skills is rare.
Anyway ... this will probably earn me another thwacking from Uncle Jim, and the topic of self-publishing has its own (largely moribund) thread on AW, but I think it is important for folks to be aware of some of these issues and not to be confused by those who lump all self-publishing into one undifferentiated bag.
In closing, I would point out that self-publishers sometimes graduate to plain old small publishers (beyond their own books), and can even become significant commercial publishers. The poster example of that is Prima Publishing, which started with a
single self-published title by company founder Ben Dominitz, waxed large and successful (albeit specialized by that time), and was acquired by Random House several years ago. I would also mention that when you read the reviews in
Publisher's Weekly, you will find reviews of self-published books that you will not recognize as self-published. Because the author/publisher did
everything right, including sending out advance review copies (ARCs) sufficiently ahead of publication, the books are accepted as the products of small presses. PA makes that impossible, even for a fine writer and industrious entrepreneur. (POD in general, PA's version or not, is itself an impenetrable obstacle anyway.) PA's entire business model (selling to the authors) militates against success no matter how good the book or energetic the author unless the author's definition of success is shriveled down to selling a handful of copies and mostly in person.
--Ken
