Genuine concerns about self-publishing

[Debbi Voisey]

Like many of us on these forums, I have been hoofing it for years. Working on my book, editing, sending to agents. Over and over you get the rejects. And these are hard times to get into print. SO MANY people writing books. So little money around that agents/publishers don't want to take risks. All very understandable.

So many turn to self publishing, especially on Kindle, which costs nothing.

But my feeling (which I have had all my writing life) is that to self-publish is taking a huge risk, not with money, but with your reputation. Who will tell you the book is not good enough? Because you are putting it out there with no advice. You know when a publisher takes a financial risk with your story that they believe there is genuine promise there. If you publish yourself then that element is taken away. There are so many bad books out there that authors have published themselves.

This is just a personal thing for me, but unless my book is published the traditional way, I will never know if it is really good enough or if I am just deluding myself.

I constantly battle with this, but have read a lot of posts on here with great interest.

Anyone else feel like me, or if not, got a convincing argument for me?

[Kitty Foyle]

This is just a personal thing for me, but unless my book is published the traditional way, I will never know if it is really good enough or if I am just deluding myself.

Couldn't have said it any better myself! Yep, I agree with you, Debbi.

*_*

[James North]

As usual, 100% BS from WN losers. If you can’t tell the difference between at least decent writing and WN crap you are not a writer anyway and you are just urinating in the wind. There is also the fact you can use a pen name, in fact, Amazon allows you to use up to three pen names and manage them on a single author’s account (this is a public account that is on Amazon’s site), but there is no limit as far as how many you use other than the author’s public account. Your private account with CS and KDP allows you to have as many pen names as you want. There is no way anyone would ever know your real name unless a publisher wants you to sign a contract, but most self-published writers who are successful enough to attract a publisher turn down those offers because they will make a lot less money by signing with a publisher; they would be just giving away much of their income for nothing. It is true that some people who self-publish are delusional, but no more than those who pester the agents with their crap instead. It appears to me you are afraid your writing is crap and do not want to expose it to public scrutiny. All those one and two star reviews might embarrass you. This is typical of Democrat Socialists who have no spine and think the government is supposed to take care of them.

Amazon owes me about $13,000 at the moment, and all four of my novels have a review average of 4.2 to 4.8 stars (bestsellers like Patterson and Clancy have averages of 3.1 to 3.9 stars), one has nearly 40 reviews. I have proven that people will buy my novels. I cannot see where I have “endangered” myself. What I have done is add substantially to my income. I do not want to be published out of New York, so I can be a midlister making $18,000 a year. I like making more than that a month and will be soon.

[Jena Grace]

[James North]

http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.co...bares-all.html


But, hey, at least she’s published.
Damn, you WNers are losers!

[leslee]

There's nothing wrong with self-publishing. At some point, the bias against it will subside.

The entire industry is evolving, and writers have to change with it. You don't need permission to publish.

[Kitty Foyle]

There's certainly nothing wrong with self-publishing, but as the author is expected to do lots of marketing either way, I'd be happier having a traditional publisher working along with me. Less lonely, somehow.

Maybe it's just my moon in Libra.

*_*

[Jena Grace]

At some point, the bias against it will subside.

90% of the SP fiction I've read was hideously written. I hold out hope for the other 10%.

[Frank Baron]

Being rich sure has done wonders for James. Hey! Maybe now he can afford a personality transplant!

[Gary Kessler]

Like many of us on these forums, I have been hoofing it for years. Working on my book, editing, sending to agents. Over and over you get the rejects. And these are hard times to get into print. SO MANY people writing books. So little money around that agents/publishers don't want to take risks. All very understandable.

So many turn to self publishing, especially on Kindle, which costs nothing.

But my feeling (which I have had all my writing life) is that to self-publish is taking a huge risk, not with money, but with your reputation. Who will tell you the book is not good enough? Because you are putting it out there with no advice.

Self-publishing doesn't ipso facto mean you are putting it out there with no advice. You can get all the advice you need--and most of what anyone traditionally published will get--before you send the book off to be produced. No one is stopping you from doing that. You can join writing groups and share critique to help polish it. You can get grounded in writing style and punctuation and grammar enough yourself to put it in the publishable-quality zone. It just takes time and effort--but once done it's in place for subsequent writings. You can probably even track down relative cheap editing help. You can take classes in cover design. You even have a whole lot advice available on marketing.

The e-book revolution helps you to level a the playing field a bit more than the print-only era did. And you can put it out in print more cheaply and with better quality now than forever. The online book store revolution also is largely competing well with the bricks and mortar stores for sales, so you aren't as much at the mercy of a mainstream tradtional publisher as you were before.

And if you don't want to do all the work yourself, there are far more publishers, digging deeper into the pile thanks to the e-book revolution than there were in the print-only world. The e-publishers won't take you to hardback, but I think that's a dying mode anyway. They can take you to paperback and put you in online distribution channels, where readers increasingly are going to browse and buy.

So, I think authors have better chances now than ever before--even if they are self-publishing.