Okay, squiders, we’re back in the old blog post drafts again. This one comes all the way from 2010, almost a full (yikes!) decade ago.
Back when self-publishing was, while not the weird and stigmatized thing of elder days, still not as accepted as it is today.
Here are the notes I left myself:
- Doesn’t mean you’re a failure
- Put out the best product you can
- Be aware that you’re fighting an uphill battle
- Harder to get traditionally published
Let’s unpack this while I channel Kit of nine years ago. Man, that was a very different life.
Doesn’t mean you’re a failure
Interesting. Was I assuming people were only self-publishing because they hadn’t been able to get a traditional deal? Back in 2010 I’d participated in…at least two indie-published anthologies. Was I defensive? Maybe so. Or maybe I was trying to let other people know that it was okay, that traditional publishing wasn’t for everyone or everything, and that each project should be evaluated individually.
Now, of course, some people actively choose to self-publish without considering traditional publishing, since you retain greater creative control and better royalties.
Put out the best product you can
Still true, of course. A well-prepped self-pub is indistinguishable from a traditionally published book. Yet I still pick up books all the time that I can tell are self-published almost immediately. The most common indicator I see is grammar–bad punctuation, run-on sentences, clunky writing. All stuff any editor worth their salt can help clean up. Then there’s general bad writing, inconsistencies throughout the story, and bad plotting. Haphazard covers. Awkward book descriptions.
I’ve heard it said that you have to either put in time or money, depending on what’s easiest for you. But you do have to put something in.
Be aware that you’re fighting an uphill battle
Hm. Did I mean because you don’t have a marketing team behind you? Maybe. But a lot of traditionally published authors these days still have to do their own publicity.
Did I mean in terms of legitimacy? (i.e., whether or not you’re a real author, if a self-published book is a real book) I’m betting that’s what I meant. I think, if you put in the time (or money) mentioned above, this is less of an issue than it used to be.
Harder to get traditionally published
I’m not sure this was true back then, nor now. Someone probably has numbers somewhere.
Publishing is such a weird industry and really anything could happen. Is a publisher really going to turn down an excellent book because you self-published some cringe-worthy badly-disguised fanfiction five years ago? Probably not (though maybe they’ll ask you to use a pen name).
Alternately, people have gone on to traditional publishing deals because they’ve self-published. So it really seems like you should do what it’s right for a particular project and not worry about it.
Thanks for joining me for another addition of “Kit digs out half-written blog posts from the past,” squiders! Thoughts on my thoughts?
