SELF PUBLISHING – BUT/COUNTERBUT
PART ONE: GET OFF MY LAWN!
Maybe I’m viewing the publishing business through a pessimistic lens lately. It seems to be in a much deeper state of uncertainty than when I started writing, certainly different than just before I was published.
The reason? You’ve probably guessed. Please note — I mean to address both sides of the issue. Stay with me.
I’m troubled by the self-publishing explosion.
Logic dictates that when an industry is suddenly oversaturated with product, overall quality – and reputations – will suffer, It’s not a biased or shocking statement to say that self-pubbed books IN GENERAL lack the quality and polish of their trad-pub counterparts. Some self-pub authors approach their work with nothing less than painstaking, loving care. I know and read a few of them. In my experience – they are the exceptions.
Without the input of editors and publishers motivated to make a book as accessible (yes, marketable) as possible, and a distribution system that filters out less… refined work, publishing becomes less viable as a vocation for those who have dedicated years of their time and energy to perfecting the many facets of this discipline known as writing.
In short strokes — many self-published authors are simply polluting the market and thereby taking away the income of sincere and professional writers, for the mere sake of satisfying their own vanity.
Never judge a book by its cover! …unless it’s this one.
BUT…
Like the film industry, the publishing biz has gotten too big. Publishers wield a daunting power over the very writers who make for them a comfortable living. It’s a power like that wielded by dictatorial governments of third world countries. The principals make sure to pad their own pockets before addressing the needs of its lowly citizens.
Self-publishing wrests back some of that power, allowing aspiring writers an avenue to widely release their work, which otherwise, by bad luck or unskilled politicking on the author’s part, would languish at the bottom of some slush pile stacked in an overworked intern’s bedroom corner.
Besides, not every reader requires their stories to come in slick, demographically conscious packaging, jammed and shaved into a state of perfect obeisance to the antiquated, seemingly arbitrary established boundaries of an industry that is itself growingly obsolete in many ways.
Many – maybe most – of us writers are introverts for whom even email interaction with a publishing representative – let alone the prospect of rejection – is terrifying. As a screenwriter, I was reluctant to write follow up emails or worse, place actual phone calls to even student filmmakers who expressed interest in my work. I’m ashamed to admit that I could be quite sycophantic.
BUT…
NEXT TIME! WHY YOU SHOULD WRITE WITH A HAMMER!
Patrick C. Greene 