Mar
05
If everyone’s a writer, who’s reading? State Your Opinion on The State of Self-Publishing
By.
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We talk a lot here about the state of self-publishing.
This is the place where we want to hear YOUR opinions.
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If everyone’s a writer, who’s reading?
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If anyone can publish a book, has the quality of writing plummeted?
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Has the battle between traditional and self-published abated?
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POD. Where does this leave mid-list authors?
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What POD issues have been troublesome for you?
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Have a fav place to self-publish? (i.e CreateSpace, Lightning Source, etc.)
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Where do you have the most successful sales? (i.e. Amazon, your own blog, etc.)
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Where is it all headed?
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Please add your own questions & opinions
in the comment box.
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Facebook comments:
I spend a lot of time on the net doing a lot of technical research – that I used to do in print publications. I spend about 8 hours a day reading – about half technical articles for work and the other fiction at night.
While I’m sure there is a decline in the quality of writing, what I see and am concerned most aboutf is a decline in the quality of fact, truth, actual critical data and growth of unverified and generally inadequately informed opinion. We have long been subject to the bias of lending more credibility to the printed word than other forms of communication. Likely because it was at one time an obvious pre-qualifier for some level of advanced education. That same credibility bias toward the written word still exists – except now there is a deluge of printed electronic word far in excess of the average reader’s ability to critique adequately. It has caught literate humanity in the unawares – regarding being adequately prepared regarding well developed critical thinking skills. The resulting injury to our collective intelligence isn’t damaging because of the lack of good mechanics in writing skills, but in the accuracy of what is written and accepted as truth by the reader. Therein lies the dangers of self-publishing. Today’s reader has a much great responsibility to critically review the information they take in from any source.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I’m glad you stopped by. I do see what you are saying. There is one thing that I believe helps us curb these kinds of errors though: social media.
Invariably if I post something I did not research well enough, or more often the case is that I didn’t include all sides, someone in twitter or Facebook calls me on it.
I love that. I’ve spent years trying to surround myself with friends and followers with this kind of integrity. I put my stuff out there daily for this reason, and I can tell you value the same.
But I think some are wary of posting their articles on social media, especially non fiction, because of these checks and balances. True, at times you’ll encounter a bully, but most of the time I hear thoughtful advice (such as yours here) that helps me create with the most accuracy and quality.
I just started working as community editor at an online community site for teenagers who publish their own stories, as well as read and comment each other’s. To me this seems to be a much better solution than self-publishing on print. These aspiring writers get a lot of feedback and they use it to improve their writing, and then at a certain point, they might be good enough to seek out an agent or a publishing house. In the meantime they don’t have the frustrations and perhaps even economic risks that self-publishing might entail, but they DO get readers, feedback and a chance to improve. Perhaps sites like http://www.movellas.com is the future for writers that are not quite ready for or cannot find a way into mainstream publishing? Reading online “amateur” stuff, I find it much easier to forgive and ignore typos and bad editing. Online reading-and-writing communities might just be the perfect place for stories without editors!
Thankx for stopping by Sara. I enjoy these rousing discussions. I must say though that some of your comments confuse me a bit. You talk about “a better solution than self-publishing” is to get feedback to improve writing ability, and you mention that self-published authors are “not quite ready” and “amateur.”"
It seems you are assuming a self-published author is all of those things. This seems to be a pervuasive opinion, but one that is being changed.
Self published authors I know (and I know too many to count) are not only award-winning and bestselling, but highly educated in the writing field, highly professional, and most of them actually teach writing on their blogs and are invited continually to teach on other sites & webinars.
And a large portion of them are like me. I was twice published at Thomas Nelson, and they invited me repeatedly to submit more novels. But I choose to self-publish because I won’t submit to the restrictions on my work imposed by traditional publishers.
These are the types of Indie authors I was really referring to here, not teenagers just learning the craft. I might not have been clear. I can see how you misunderstood.
All that said, I think your site sounds superb for upcoming young talent to cut their teeth. And I really thank you for letting us know about it. Please do keep us posted. You’re doing a great work there, it sounds like.
The lines are blurring and agents and traditional publishers are concerned about the situation and I assume we’re talking here about the big six publishers rather than the scores of fine small publishers out there who publish traditionally but can’t publish legion titles.
But here’s the thing: to self-publish CAN be a mistake for a lot of reasons: your manuscript may not be perfect, even if you think it is. You may not write as well as you think you do – and who in the self-publishing arena is going to tell you that? (I once had a student who thought he could write but in fact that shlub couldn’t string two coherent sentences together or identify an adjective to save his soul.) Some of you who’ve responded above say you started out thinking your work was fine, but in fact you needed editing.
And then, who is going to market your book after you’ve self-published it? You, by yourself? You can self-publish and sit back and wait but what’s your plan to publicize the book? Do you have access to Publishers Weekly’s reviewers? Library Journal? How about the big distributors like Ingram and Baker and Taylor? Will you be riding around with a trunk full of books? Or will you hire a publicist so you can get back to the business of writing? If you do hire one, now you’ve invested in the publishing AND the publicity – the book has to be good enough to sell, to cover your costs.
Do you know enough about marketing your book to do your own publicity? About sell-through and buy-back and shelf position? About why the big newspapers and magazines don’t review self-published books?
Be very careful about self-publishing – it doesn’t distinguish you from the shlub in that writing class who did it too, and is wondering why his book isn’t on the NYT best-seller list.
I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago entitled “On the On-Line Slush Pile.” That unflattering term is being thrown around cyber space to describe the self-publlising/ebook explosion.
I say to the naysayers, deal with it. Don’t you think there was some concern when the printing press was invented because so many people got to exchange large amounts of information? The internet is the evolution of the printing press.
I don’t pass judgment on other authors publishing as they see what works for them. Also, what’s “good” is in the eyes of the reader. It’s about writing, and all writers can converge on doing something they love.
If you run across bad writing, click.
Good points, C.c. You should leave a link here to your article so we can all read it. I’d enjoy that. Thankx for your thoughts!
Richard – I agree, the quality has to be there, regardless of the route taken to publish. I explain poor editing like this – if I’m reading through a great story and hit an editing error, typo, formatting, etc., it’s like hitting a speed bump on the highway. It really takes away from the experience.
Thanks for the comment!
I am a self published writer with 4 titles on Kindle and paperback. Not made huge sales but selling a few and getting decent reviews. When I started out I did not do more than send the books through an online POD service with no editing and the quality was POOR. Having now used an editor and artist recommended by another Mainstream published author (also as times self published) I strongly believe in using professional cover artists and editors.
As a result the quality of the books now is vastly improved. SP does not have to equal poor.
There are indeed vast numbers of wannabee wtiters BUT there are many more readers. There will be a lot of rubbish published but also a lot of high quality material that would never reach the market.
I feel that the good quality writers can succeed whether SP or Mainstream. The route is NOT important – the attention to quality is.
I am all for self-publishing. There are so many genres/niches that don’t have a place in traditional formats. My friend, the poet, published his own book of poetry and has done well with it.
Currently, I am looking at the Kindle for publishing shorter info products and CreateSpace for longer pieces. Also, I am looking at these formats for clients who want to publish but have a narrow niche.
Has the quality of writing gone down? I can’t say if that is true across the board. I know many SP books could use a little editing and that is when a editor at a major publishing house comes in handy. For my future and soon to be published info-products I would ask people to send me corrections, etc? You know people love to correct grammar.
I completely agree Aggie. The readers decided what is in and what is out.
I started tracking the indie book market last year in preparation for finishing my first novel. If I decide to self-publish, I wanted to know I would be joining the ranks of quality writers, so I also started assessing book quality. My verdict on quality is a little mixed. I have pulled up more than a handful of 5 star rated books on amazon, read the first few pages, and found the writing to be poor quality. The SP model really needs more gatekeepers if it’s going to be a truly viable option for good writers who want to retain their rights. Now it still feels very much like a slush pile.
I think you’re right to look to the reviews. In all publishing fields it’s the readers who are the only acceptable gate keepers.
Thankx Deborah. I know how unfortunate it is though when readers purchase a bum Indie book. As you both pointed out, it gives self-publishing a bad name.
There are places to go that have their own Indie gatekeepers such the IndieReader ( http://indiereader.com/2011/02/rightfully-mine/ ) It’s one of the few places I paid to have my book listed. But they review all books before accepting them and then post the rating and a “Verdict” comment. That’s the link to my novel at IndieReader above.
Usually I believe in my work enough not to pay for being listed, such as placing them at Amazon, B&N online, the Apple Store etc. My books go through through stringent (and a little expensive) processes from the editor(s) I hire, cover designers and book professional format conversion companies etc. So I’m pretty confident of their quality from start to finish. A real Indie author will go through similar processes to insure the reader buys the best.
Aggie,
I had not thought of it that way, but I totally agree with you. Authors who are confident in their work will go the extra mile to make sure it’s seen and read.
Hi girls! I’ve gone both ways, and personally I’d never go back to being traditionally published. Not if they paid me, pun intended! Seriously, I can’t ever give up my rights like that again. The only time you have all your rights is through self-publishing — true self publishing like POD.
Tiffany, POD usually means you pay absolutely nothing. You might be thinking of the printing presses who can publish a large run your book for a fee. I’d also never go that route for the same reason — I won’t give up the rights to my own work, not even a teeny bit of them.
Tiffany, I’m with you — I also firmly believe in my work. That’s why I self-publish, but I also understand the many of my who friends don’t want to spend any time marketing, publishing and all that goes with the Indie world. That’s a valid alternative, though their book is not completely their own to do with as they please until their contract is up at the traditional publisher. But many authors don’t mind that at all. It’s a matter of preference.
Deborah is right, there is no way to prevent bad books from being self-published. But, I’m also thinking that most of the really bad Indie books are never even seen by the public. Authors who care so little about the quality of their books also don’t usually spend the time or the money to get that book publicized.
If you just throw your book onto Amazon, Smashwords, your own blog etc. and leave it to just sit there you can be sure that 99.9 percent of readers will never see it or hear of it.
For this reason I don’t give much thought to those really bad Indie books. What do YOU all think?
Hi Aggie (and others),
I think that you make some really good points. I’ve had to give up a range of rights when being published by traditional publishers, and am very much looking forward to setting up a publishing house and printing my own children’s book later this year. That way, we can hold on to all the IP, which will make it much easier to leverage off new technology. I’m sure it will be a great experience, if nothing else.
I agree with Deborah. Because anyone can publish a book now, anything can be published, good, bad or ugly. I have not published a book yet because I want to be mainstream published. I feel like there is more integrity in that. Although I believe firmly in my work, it is all about being selected, in the long run, and what others think about your work.
As far as POD goes, I just think it’s to expensive. They have to cut costs to our customers without charging us an arm and a leg. Period. With all the money these POD services are making they could cut back prices to customers, and maybe even authors. I am sure of it.
I have a hard time saying the quality of writing has plummeted, but in some cases it has. You just never know what you’ll get with a SP book. Sometimes they are a gem, and others they’re junk. It is difficult to lump all SP works into the same category, but I definitely think that because it is so easy to SP, a lot of sub-par work is making it onto the market and giving SP authors a bad name.
Is there a way to prevent this? No.
In fact, there is a lot of junk published by a traditional publishing house that makes me wonder why on earth it was picked up in the first place!
I guess it’s just one of those things.
I think people misunderstand the meaning of SP. When you self-publish it surely means you publish your own work, not pay a publishing company to do it for you. Yes, you might have to use professionals to upload your book to i.e. Lightning Source/Createspace, as you would use professional editors and proof readers.
I agree with Deborah about traditional publishing houses. Have you ever picked up a Best Selling book and wondered why it’s a Best Seller? On the other hand, I have read self-published books and thoroughly enjoyed the read.