Self publishing is an industry that is growing rapidly, from those printing companies who take care of all aspects of your book’s design, layout and printing, to Amazon, who allow you to whack pretty much anything on the Kindle store in a matter of seconds (even the instruction booklet to a very old toaster, disguised as a complex romance between man and sliced bread). It’s incredibly easy to do now, and negates a lot of the barriers that are still present in getting a book published via the traditional route.
I could have my novel, Politics in Blood, up for sale on the Kindle store in about ten minute’s time (if that), but I won’t. Why not?
It’s nothing personal
Or should that be impersonal? Either way, whilst I do find something dislikeable about self publishing, my more reasonable and objective side points out that I am perfectly fine with bands recording their own songs and posting them on Myspace or Facebook, and selling them through iTunes. I can’t really believe that is a fair and sensible thing to do for musicians, then say that authors should not be allowed to try the same thing. After all, some self published books sell hundreds of thousands of copies, and there are even a few self published millionaires. If the publishing world wouldn’t let them in, then obviously the publishing world was making a mistake.
It’s personal
Every time my book gets rejected, or people ask me how it’s coming along, they always tell me about this great new thing called self publishing (as though, as a writer who has been dreaming of getting published for about 8 years now, and has just finished a 3 year degree course in Creative Writing, I wouldn’t have known anyway).
“It’s brilliant,” they say. “You could put your book up on the Kindle store and sell it there.”
And I nod, and smile politely, and try in the nicest possible way to explain that A) I already know about self publishing, and B) I don’t want to.
See, I’m driven by achievement. I get fidgety if after a few weeks I don’t feel like I’ve done something of note, whether that’s complete a load of market research, get a short story published, save an orphan (this one has yet to happen, but it would still count) etc. To me, self publishing my novel is too easy. There aren’t enough barriers to get through. (Before any of you self publisheds jump up and start talking about making it sell well and doing all the marketing etcetera is in no way easy; hold on, I’ll come to that in a minute). My book needs to get published in a way that proves to me it is good; I need that validation otherwise I’ll never be happy. I have been writing versions of Politics in Blood for eight years now, since I was fourteen, and after all that hard work, to simply upload it to the Kindle store would be rather anticlimactic.
I don’t have the skills to make it a success
The other problem is that putting your ebook out there into the world is not enough. This is one of the biggest mistakes that self-published authors almost always make (if you look at Lulu or trawl through Amazon). They upload their book and then sit there, twiddling their thumbs, wondering why, seven months later, they’re still not a millionaire, and have only sold 4 copies (three of them to their pet cat). To be a successful self published author you have to be able to market yourself and your book and chase sales, not wait for them to happen (self publisheds, you can sit down now).
Eight years of my life went into Politics in Blood, and it would be enormously more crushing to whack it on Kindle and have it sit at the bottom of the charts, selling a copy a week, than it is to keep receiving rejections from publishers. People seem to think they’ve achieved something by putting their book out there, even if it sells nothing. Surely, all they have really done is swap one kind of failure (being rejected by publishers) for another (being rejected by readers)?
I don’t have the time or necessary marketing skills to make a self published Politics in Blood a success. I’m very happy with this blog and how it’s progressing, and very grateful to the 32 people who deem it worth following (thank you, you guys. Also, those who aren’t, the button’s at the top right of the adjacent column 
), but it’s being going 8 months; if I was any good at marketing/had the time, I’d have hundreds of followers and thousands of hits. I just haven’t learned those skills yet.
It’s not you, it’s me
As I say, it’s a very personal reason why I don’t want to self publish Politics in Blood. Like any industry, medium or genre, self publishing is a sea of rubbish in which some pieces of pure gold struggle to get to the surface. It’s the same with music, film, television, fruit. I don’t believe I have the marketing skills to make Politics in Blood shine (or float, for that matter), even if the Beta feedback I’ve had so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and I strongly believe in the novel.
Besides, I may not have the skills to make self publishing work for me, but I’ve got the drive and tenacity to keep pounding at the gates of traditional publishing until someone lets me in. Self publishing isn’t for me. Maybe that’s because traditional publishing is?
Only time will tell…
What’s your view? Have you self published? Are you thinking about it?
Tweet with me: @RewanTremethick.
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Although I’m not in that position yet with my unfinished novel, I’ve already asked myself the question. Like you, I’ve put several years work into this project, and seen it grow from a stand-alone work to the first part of a quadrilogy.
For the record, I haven’t come to a decision yet, but I’m going to keep an open mind. I’m seriously toying with the idea of self publishin a short story collection just to test the water.
I think testing the water is a great idea, and I’m actually planning a project at the moment that will allow me to try my hand at marketing and see where it gets me. I think most of the publicity stuff is just skills you have to learn through trial and error, and so publishing a short story or few short stories allows you to get that practice without wasting all your hard work writing the novel on not getting it right first time. Also, if self publishing some short stories works out well, you’ll already have a fan base for when (/if) you decide to self publish your novel.
Either way, good luck!
I feel the same. I’m trying to sell my first novel at the moment, and ‘Have you thought of self-publishing?’ is almost as frequent as ‘Do you know how hard it is to get published nowadays’. The answer to both is usually ‘I know’ between gritted teeth.
Mainly, it’s for the same reasons: I don’t think I could make my book stand out from among all the rubbish cluttering up the self-published market, but more importantly, it wouldn’t prove that the book is any good. I want to be published not for the money or so I can call myself ‘a writer’, but because I want concrete proof that what I produced is worthwhile, that all the time spend writing it was worth it.
You hit the nail on the head there, Rachel, when you talk about worth. That’s what a lot of the people who want me to self publish don’t understand. I know that obviously selling thousands of copies would suggest it is worthwhile, but it’s the fact that getting a book published the traditional way is precisely the reason I want to get it published that way. I need that moment of being able to think ‘Oh, so I guess it is good, then’, and I won’t get that from self publishing. What genre is your novel?
Good luck on your publishing journey
I have considered self-publishing an anthology of my short stories and one or two of my novellas. I have not made steps to do this yet but have thought about it. I want my long pieces to get the nod of approval in the same manner as you otherwise I will continue to doubt my writing skills even if I earn money from the sale of them.
Exactly. I just get fed up of reading people’s bios on Twitter and them saying something like ‘author of 7 ebooks’, and you check out their ebooks and they are the most atrocious pile of rubbish, obviously each one churned out over a weekend, with a clipart front cover, and I find myself thinking ‘there’s no achievement in that’. Self published authors who go through a rigorous regime of copy editing, Beta feedback, cover design (utilising a professional graphic designer) and marketing strategy in order to sell thousands of copies deserve every success. It just annoys me the amount of people who upload the story they haven’t even spell-checked to Kindle and then sit back, selling no copies, but thinking they’ve somehow done something great.
However, having said that sales aren’t as important as validation, I’m not suggesting I would be unhappy if I sold 100,000 copies of my debut novel published through a traditional publishing house
I love this post. I really like what you have to say about needing the extra barriers, because in spite of what self e-publishers say, it IS easy to throw anything up on Amazon. It’s hard to say that without offending many who self e-publish, and I do respect any of them that really go through the necessary process to produce a high-quality novel.
But I’m a hold out, too… in the end, I really want my novel to make it through the gatekeeper. That IS validation, and it is a very strong one.
Thanks, and very true. The bottom line is, it’s all about working hard. If you work hard to perfect your ebook and to make it sell, and to ensure you have a high-quality novel, you deserve to be respected. Self publishing should be a way of allowing people with stellar talent in both writing and marketing to get books that are too ‘out there’, too undefinable for mainstream publishing to accept, and to make a living from their skills the same way a published writer would. It’s not a way for people too lazy to send their books to agents to get something published. I’ve read a lot of comments from self published people who claim to be ‘throwing off the shackles of traditional publishing’ only to go on to read that they’ve never actually tried to get their book published the traditional route in the first place…
I like the phrase ‘the gatekeeper’. I’d never put a name to it, but it’s perfect. They let you in if you are deemed worthy, very apt, and also covers exactly the reason I respect their presence in the first place. Thanks for your comment
To the blog post and comments above, I say, “PRECISELY!”
Seriously, you guys have pretty much summed up my personal feelings on the matter, and why I continue to hold out on self-publishing. I don’t say “never”, because I like to reserve my “never”-s for stuff like homicidal rampages. Open options tend to be a good thing, and it’s nice to know that I could self-publish a novel any time I choose. But I’m choosing not to, and you folks obviously get my wherefores behind it — also nice to know. (:
Firstly, it’s reassuring to know that, even though you had to sit down and decide what your thoughts were concerning homicidal rampages, you chose to give them a miss
Secondly, I agree that thanks to these comments, it’s great to know I’m not being tenacious and pigheaded (or I am, but so are lots of other people…). If you put the issue of my precious first book aside, self publishing doesn’t seem *as* bad, so you never know what I might one day choose to inflict upon the world (I’m still talking publishing, here, no some kind of plague). It’s good to keep your options open though.
This post has become like a self-help group for writers who don’t want to self publish. “Hello, my name’s Rewan, and I’m a traditional publisher-aholic. I’ve been struggling with traditional publishing for several years now.” I’m stopping there, partly because that train of thought is inspiring another blog post
Thanks for your, as ever, wise words 
*performs the “Hooray, I’ve been inspirational!” dance*
The only reason why I chose to self publish is that I just thought some of my short stories might make a buck or two instead of just collecting dust. I would rather be with a big publishing house and an advance in my pocket, but at least this is something.
I do cringe at the thought of what kind of self published books there are out there. Promotion is also tough. I have them on all my blogs and hope maybe to have someone stumble onto them. I’m also going to try something a little different to promote them very soon.
Great post. Keep on pushing that novel. You’ll eventually get published if you try hard enough.
With short stories, I think things get a little less black and white. The fact that publishers don’t really do short stories, and the wealth of magazines out there who don’t pay (I understand why, and do think it’s a fair exchange; they get free content, you get a publication credit and publicity), mean that self publishing becomes a good way of, as you say, actually making some money out of your short stories, rather than just giving them away for free. And if you put all the hard work in, then no one can begrudge you wanting to make a little money from it
I know, it’s scary the stuff that’s out there! I was doing some market research a few months back, and I was trawling through Lulu reading dozens of blurbs and previews, and the stuff that was there was shocking. Even worse was the fact people were trying to sell 90 page paperback ‘novels’ for $20. Whilst I think that 99p ebooks maybe somewhat devalue novels, that is definitely taking things to the other extreme.
Thanks man. Hope your promotional efforts pay off for you
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