Robert Brockway writes regularly for Cracked, penning hilarious lists and indictments of culture (pop and otherwise), which means you’re probably already familiar with his work even if you didn’t know it. Brockaway penned a guest post about what it took to drop-kick his new DIY novel, Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity, through time and space and into your face.

The first thing you should know is that I am an author with a new book out, and you should not trust me. Everything an author with a new book says to you should be regarded with the same wary eye you might cast on an unsolicited email extolling the virtues of “PENIS DEMOLISH YOUR FOE!1!!.” Yes, the content may indeed be helpful to you — it may well contain information on how to destroy other human beings with an unyielding and merciless dong — but it also contains a sinister agenda. That link to wangholocaust.cz will certainly infect you with malware in the interest of making a cheap buck, just like every word you read from an author exists to infect you with the desire to check out their awesome new novel. It’s insidious, underhanded, impure, and if you want to write for a living, it’s going to be you.

You’re going to develop Marketing Tourette’s. Apropos of nothing, you’ll find yourself spewing:

“Hey, have I told you about my new novel, Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity? It’s about a dystopian skyscraper-city where the chief form of entertainment is a custom hallucinogen that simulates time travel and-“

Oof. Shut up.

In the abstract, writing is all about character, structure, metaphor and meaning. In reality, that’s the easy part. It’s easy because you want to do it: You want to tell your story, you want your characters to be compelling, and you want your story to impart both entertainment and meaning. And so the work, no matter how technically difficult and exhausting, comes easy. What does not come easy is finishing that book and finding out that you have to whore yourself out every single day for a paltry dozen sales.

“-the protagonist, Red, is a mixer: He assembles high-end custom drug cocktails for discerning customers, and tests new corporate prototypes on the side. After beta testing a mysterious new strain, he finds himself slipping away to-“

Stop!

If I sound bitter, I promise that’s not the case. It’s worth it, of course. If you’re lucky and persistent, you may get to write for a living, and reporting to Imagination Land without pants every morning sure beats dragging yourself into a sickly fluorescent office while being strangled by a necktie. But I’m fairly new to the publishing game, and the biggest jolt for me wasn’t how hard it was to write a book – I was mentally prepared for that – it was the realization that all those gross marketing and promotion duties fell squarely on the shoulders of the author.

“-with his disturbing and increasingly real hallucinations literally tearing him apart, Red must find the truth about this new drug, a truth that could topple the entire cit-“

GOD DAMN IT.

My first book was released via traditional publishing. They put forth a good initial marketing effort: Got me a few guest blogs, some tie-ins on a little sci-fi site, a handful of guest spots on small town morning radio shows. And all of that lasted…about a week. I have not heard a word from them since. It’s not that my publisher was bad. I spoke with other authors and that seems to be an industry standard effort – maybe even a little above. It’s just the unspoken rule that, beyond a small initial effort, all promotion (and therefore the ultimate success or failure of your book), is up to the author. I didn’t even know I had to build my own book’s website until a week before launch. I thought somebody would do that for me.

I had no idea how to build a website.

I did not know that particular skillset was part of being a writer in the modern world. I did not know I’d be staying up late looking up book bloggers and emailing them at random, trying to get reviews, pull quotes, or cross promotions. I did not know I’d be soliciting guest posts and trading feedback and researching distributor pricing schemes. And that was with a publisher. For my latest book, Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity, a mad, relentless charge through a post-cyberpunk nightm-

Ahem.

For my latest book, I decided to explore self-publishing. If I was going to do it all myself anyway, I might as well have complete control, right? This time I did it right. I exploited every avenue. I released Rx as an inexpensive serial novel to build momentum, and incorporated reader feedback into the final product. I held a Kickstarter to provide pre-order awards. I scoured review sites; I networked; I made contacts. I could have written an entire other book in the time I’ve spent promoting this one, and I’ve only just this month released the final version.

I don’t say this to dissuade you, or to complain about how difficult it is being an author. I worked at a gas station; I worked breaking down rundown buildings with a hammer; I even worked in customer service. I know how rough a real job can be, and I’d take writing any day.

I only say this in case you’re like I was: My conception of the modern author was somebody holed up in a romantically derelict office, banging away at a typewriter (never used a typewriter in my life, but it’s so much more authentic looking in my imagination) until they collapsed from exhaustion. And then, when it was done, they trudged to the open window and let their beautiful newborn book flutter away into publishing ether. When in reality, being a modern author is more like Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. When it’s all done, you pick your beloved novel up in your arms, wade out into the angry, uncaring crowd, and kick down everything in your way until you reach the relative calm and safety of success.

Or else you get distracted, and the apathy of the oversaturated market tears that novel out of your grasp. In which case you walk back to the beginning, spend a few years pouring your heart into another book, lace up your kickin’ boots, and try to hold on a little tighter this time.

I said this on Twitter but I want to say it here, too:

So, you’re sitting there as a writer and you’re getting sucker-punched by feelings of fear and doubt. You’ll find yourself face to face with uncertainty over whether or not you deserve success, and the certainty that one day you’ll be found out as an imposter and dragged out into the streets. Where hobos will pee on you.

WHERE HOBOS WILL PEE ON YOU.

I’ve got two books out soon — GODS & MONSTERS UNCLEAN SPIRITS and THE BLUE BLAZES — and this week folks are starting to get ARCs and e-ARCS of the latter of those books and all the while I’ve got that flurry of fear-bubbles in my tummy: egads they won’t like it they’ll despise it I’m going to receive hate mail people might punch me Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly will probably give me whatever the opposite of a starred review is like maybe they’ll rub a cat’s butthole on my face in public OH GODS THAT’S HOW BAD THIS BOOK IS.

I like to hope it’s a silly fear. The book is getting published. Early readers liked it. My agent let it out the door. The publisher let it in the door. How bad can it be?

But that doesn’t matter. That’s rational. Fear and doubt aren’t rational.

So, to all writers of all stripes —

We all feel this.

We all feel like stowaways on the ISS Penmonkey, sometimes.

We all feel like we don’t belong. That one day our clever ruse will be up.

It seems to lessen over time. It’s better now for me than it was ten years ago. But it’s still there. That haunting specter. That nagging goblin. That ghostly whiff of hobo urine.

Whenever you feel that sense of urgent doubt nibbling at your bowels like a gut-load of rats, know you’re not alone. Somewhere out there some other writer is feeling it. A writer yet unpublished. A mid-lister, a self-published, a Stephen King, the ghost of Marcel Proust.

We are all bound to one another by the ropes of our uncertainty.

Sharing that frequency of heebie-jeebies and jittery jangly nerves.

The best we can do is help one another dispel those fears.

Or, at times, just merely to commiserate.

A brief recent history:

Salon posted an article that said, “Hey, self-publishing is masturbation.”

I responded.

Salon posted a different article by Hugh Howey that said, “Nonsense to that other thing, self-publishing is full of success stories and it’s the better option going forward.”

I responded to that, too.

Then, another thing happened: I was getting a bucketload of views from Kindle Boards (kboards?), and so I popped over there to find out what was going on and saw that some people seemed to think I was bashing Howey (I wasn’t) or bashing self-publishing (I wasn’t), and I thought, okay, I’ll say hello, I’ll try to be forthright and clarify my position which is to say, “There’s no one path up the mountain, no one best way for everybody.”

A fairly uncontroversial opinion. Very moderate. So soft it might as well be marshmallow.

Some folks over there were very nice and well-reasoned and well-intentioned. Howey himself dropped in (as he did here at the blog) and made some polite comments of disagreement. The rest presented, to my mind, a hostile vibe that tells me I probably shouldn’t go to the Kindle Boards anymore because, really, what’s the value? That’s not the hill I want to defend.

What I want to do, however, is to talk a little more about this “indie first” path — the path that Howey and others feel is the best way forward for new authors. This was also echoed a number of times at the Writer’s Digest East Conference, where I spoke this past weekend. Lots of folks were suddenly presenting self-publishing less as a standalone option and more as the new gate (kept or unkept) leading to traditional publishing. Self-publish first, they say, and get attention and audience. You can even query the published story while it sells on the digital marketplace.

It’s an interesting shift. And not wrong or impossible.

But, is it “the best?”

Now, I’m going to quote Howey from the Kindle Boards, and in that I want to make clear that before any self-publishing acolytes get their genitals in a twirl over any of this, I am in no way bashing Howey. The guy should be celebrated. He did it his way. He tried new shit and embraced the options and powers available to the modern writer and it paid off in heaps and mounds, leaps and bounds. No one in their right mind should tell him he did anything wrong.

Hell, I did just as he did (though, erm, to far less success). My self-published writing advice? Coming to Writer’s Digest. Atlanta Burns? Coming to Skyscape Publishing.

The question for me is, does that make this approach automagically the best?

He certainly believes so. Which is not unreasonable given his success.

From kboards, Howey says:

It’s amazing that I’m being painted as an all-or-nothing Konrath disciple. Just because self-publishing is the best way to get started doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Signing away lifetime rights and control over works that could be available forever is always an option. Just an inferior one.

What I hope to see is that the changes hybrids are forcing on publishing houses will trickle down to the writers who despise us. They won’t even know it’s happening. Non-compete clauses will simply disappear. Finite terms of license will become the norm. Print and digital rights will be negotiated separately. And I won’t care one bit who causes this, only that it happens.

Some of this is pretty admirable stuff. Improving contract conditions for writers is a noble goal and — fuck yeah, let’s see that happen. Though, it should also be clear that some of this is already happening and a good agent will help ensure non-exploitative clauses. (I don’t think any agent worth the salt would allow the author to give over rights forever.) I’m also not sure what he means by “the writers who despise us” — I may be misreading but that seems to lend itself further to the Us Versus Them tribal problem in publishing. Regardless, what I want to talk about today are those two particular words above (italics his, not mine): best and inferior.

I have trouble with absolutes. They’re rarely true outside of, say, math and science. Calling something the best smacks of One True Wayism and does a good job at making authors feel stupid for choosing a path other than the superior one. It’s doubly troubling in the realm of publishing, where so many options exist right now. Which is awesome. Authors have a variety of ways to get their work “out there” — and I don’t just mean trad-pub versus self-pub. I mean, Kickstarter to query letters to slush pile to Amazon KDP to a recommendation from another author to… well, hell, my path began in freelancing pen-and-paper games and took a weird alleyway into screenwriting. Here I am now with over a dozen novels coming out.

My way was pretty rad. Totally worked for me.

Miiiight not work for you. For a whole lotta reasons.

“Worked for me” is not equivalent to “best way for all.”

So: just on the theoretical level, best and inferior sit unsettled in my tummy.

But I promised someone on Twitter that I’d write a blog post detailing specific situations where “indie first!” was not automagically going to be the best way forward — so, let’s detail it.

Here, then, are some reasons that going “indie first” is not necessarily the “best.”

First, genre can be a problem. Not every genre is doing fireworks in the self-publishing realm. Literary work? Crime? Books published in those realms sometimes go kerplunk. Consider, too, that age range is a consideration. YA (Young Adult) is not a “genre,” but studies show that while adults will read YA e-books, teens remain reluctant (though this may be changing as e-readers become cheaper or are passed along as hand-me-downs). Further, YA tends to offer larger advances than the adult market — so, going straight to traditional can pay off.

Second, not every agent or publisher is interested in your self-published book. You think you can just self-publish and start querying. And you can. But some agents and some publishers don’t want to see it. To their minds, you’ve already gone and published. This is doubly true if the self-publishing effort isn’t in some way a successful one: great cover, many good reviews, lots of sales. It looks like whatever audience you had, you burned through them already. If your book doesn’t land in the digital marketplace with energy behind it, with momentum, querying after that will not likely be successful. To clarify, it means you can self-publish a very good book that traditional publishing might have picked up had it not been for a less-than-stellar showing on, say, the Kindle marketplace.

Third, you don’t have the audience. That first Salon article was by a guy who basically tip-toed into a dark and empty room, left his book on the mantlepiece like some kind of Author Elf, and then wandered back out wondering why he didn’t become a millionaire. If you don’t have the audience and don’t have time to spend earning that audience, traditional publishing may be a smarter first step. By dint of being tradtionally published you tend to get a little energy and momentum and audience via the so-called “prestige” of that path.

Fourth, some authors have found success doing the reverse, which is to say, they use traditional publishing to build audience and then leap into that audience with self-published efforts. Not to say this is the “best” way either — but it’s one option, and for many, it’s worked.

Fifth, you’re not going to be a capable or interested self-publisher. Not everybody wants to self-publish. Not everybody is going to be good at it. Despite claims to the contrary, the skill-sets necessary to do traditional and to do DIY are not mirror images (I’ve done both, trust me, it ain’t the same enchilada). Self-publishing is equivalent to running a small business. You’re an entrepreneur as much as an author. Some authors are going to take to this like a monkey to a banana. Some authors won’t be good at it or just find the idea of hiring editors and designers abhorrent. Best for someone? Most definitely. Best for everyone? Most certainly not.

Sixth, you’re going to be a great self-publisher. Self-publishing can be its own reward. “Indie first” presupposes that now self-publishing is a gate into traditional, but some folks just want to do it all themselves. For them, “indie first” also means “indie last, too.”

Seventh, because you’re uncomfortable with the financial risk. Writing and publishing is always a risk, but self-pub and trad-pub offer different flavors of risk. Self-pub is largely financial: you might spend $500 on cover, editing, design, marketing. And it is possible you will never see that money back. Despite what some have suggested, the traditional path is more a risk to time than it is directly to money — there’s little to no money actually put out, and so the risk of losing that money is nil. The result of the traditional process is either “I spend no money and get no money,” or, “I spend no money and I get somewhere north of $5000.” This is not to say going traditional first is best, but it may be ideal for the risk averse.

Eighth, because you want to be traditionally-published first and only. Preference matters. The parameters of happiness and satisfaction are not universal across all of authordom. When you say something is best, you’re speaking in terms so simplistic they’re meaningless. Best how? Best for money? Readership? Respect? Happiness? Everybody has a different metric and so, if your goal is to get the agent, go to a publisher and get on some bookshelves, well, then go that way. Go that way first. Don’t dick around with self-publishing. Chase the dream you want to chase, not the dream other people tell you is best. It’s your life, not theirs. Really, at the end of the day, “because it’s what I fucking want, goddamnit,” is the best metric of them all.

We’re possibly on the cusp of a golden age for writers. We have so many paths up the mountain. Let’s celebrate that. Let’s cheerlead not one option but all the options — and let’s embrace the fact that each path has strengths and weaknesses that’ll suit some authors and repel others. We don’t need to shut down or shout down options. We don’t need to suggest one way is superior. Or that others should feel inferior for their choices.

We can walk the middle road on this. We can take the nuanced, moderate approach and reject solipsism and tribalism and realize that what works for one is not a guarantee for all and that anybody who digs their way into the industry and follows their goals using the tools that suit them should be celebrated. Are you writing? Are you telling the stories you want to tell? Have you studied your options and found the path that suits you? Then high-five yourself, go eat some ice cream, and don’t let anybody tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

As always:

Art harder, motherfuckers.

Play nice in the comments or I’ll bring out the orbital laser. This is not a Cheerocracy.

I don’t read romance. Nor do I read erotica.

I should, though.

You read the work of, say, Delilah Dawson?

Or Karina Cooper?

Or Tiffany Reisz?

They’re damn fine writers.

And they’re writing damn fine books.

Books that are, by genre taxonomy, romance or erotica.

See, it’s starting to occur to me that in a lot of ways even books that are “one genre” should really have labels where the genre components are broken out like ingredients. Horror is a genre. So is mystery. And yet, so many books contain both horror and mystery in some percentage. Further, some books contain romance and erotica (love and sex, baby) in some percentage. These aren’t mere categorizations; these are storytelling components.

Anyway. So.

I’m writing the second book in my YA trilogy.

And it has a lot more romance than the first book.

It even has some sexytimes.

So, I want to read more romance. And erotica.

And you’re going to tell me what to read.

Make recommendations. Excellent writing. Good story. Romance and/or erotica.

Make with the books. *slaps own ass then feels embarrassed about it*

Last week’s challenge: “The Secret Door.”

I love a good opening line.

You lead with a great first line in a story, man, that’s just hooks you right away, doesn’t it? It’s like a key to a door. Opens up the world and your interest in it lickety-split.

So, that’s what I want from you.

I want you to write one opening line.

And then I’ll pick three.

And if those three people are in the United States, I’ll send them a copy of my book, The Blue Blazes, when it comes out. If you’re in the UK or anywhere else across the big wide world, you may have to settle for a digital copy, but I’ll make sure to get you one just the same.

Now, some rules:

A line means one sentence, not two, not three.

You get one entry, not two, not three.

Put your entry in the comments below.

I’ll pick three of my favorites by the close of Thursday the 11th (11:59PM) and then the following challenge next Friday will be for you folks to pick one of the three opening lines and write a story based on it. Which means you also might want to take a gander at these suggestions:

Shorter is better than longer.

Try too to keep in mind that you’re writing an opening line for other stories; the trick is to write something engaging while still writing a line that could apply to a great many styles and genres of story. Something that appeals and hooks in this case not just readers but other writers, too.

You’re writing lines for potential, is my point.

That’s how I’ll pick my favorites. Based on their potential to make interesting stories.

So! You’ve got a little less than one week.

One opening line. Let’s see what you’ve got.

Forgive me if I sound a little exasperated.

Hugh Howey wrote a thing at Salon and it’s a very interesting article and you should go read it. It is, in my probably-not-that-humble opinion, a fascinating mix of artistic wisdom and business fantasy where anecdotal evidence once more becomes artisanal data and we are told that because you can meet 100 very successful self-published authors that is now officially the way to go and oh, by the way, it’s totally the future of all publishing ever.

I distrust fortune-tellers, to be honest.

Mostly because it’s made-up horseshit.

Further, you can’t just canvass a handful of successful people and immediately declare that their success draws the map to the One Shining Path Up Authornuts Mountain. If I talk to 20 traditionally-published bestselling thriller authors, they’re going to say, “Write a thriller, get published by the Big Five.” If I talk to 100 self-published successes, they’re going to say, “Self-publish everything.” If I talk to 100 self-published failures, they’re going to say, “Fuck that noise, I lost my shirt.” If I talk to 100 dentists, they’re going to say, “You should be a dentist, dumb-ass, NOW LET ME EAT YOUR TEETH,” then he’ll eat my teeth because my dentist is actually some kind of teeth-eating monster, but whatever, that’s a story for another time.

Here’s the thing: Howey’s by all reports a very nice guy. And obviously smart as hell. And more than a little lucky. His article is well-written and buried in there is a strong cry to bolster craft and for you, the writer, to write first and foremost for the love of writing.

To which I say: fuck. yeah.

But, he also says stuff like:

But what is becoming more apparent with every passing day is that you have a better chance of paying a bill or two through self-publishing than you do through any other means of publication.

Italics his, not mine.

I self-publish. I do pretty well at it with a number of books (and for those asking, I will have another writing book out within the next three-four months, alongside a book of recipes and essays and Search Term Bingo called Revelations of the Bacon Angel).

I traditionally-publish. I do pretty well at that, too, I think, and actually over the last two years have well-eclipsed anything I made self-publishing.

Just the same, I don’t think one is better than the other.

So, here’s my response, which you already know because I’ve said it a hundred times before but fuck it, I’m nothing if not a fan of reiterating my own bleating and barfing:

Hey, self-publishing is cool!

Traditional publishing is cool, too!

Both have strengths. And also weaknesses.

Not everybody is fit to be their own publisher.

Not everyone is fit to deal with a traditional publisher.

Something-something Kickstarter! And Amazon! And literary agents! And small presses! And big presses! And this genre and that genre! And Wattpad and Book Country and Goodreads and Bookish and Twitter and iBooks and Smashwords and Simon & Schuster and Barnes & Noble and blargh and flargh and zippity-motherfucking-doo-dah!

The reason we don’t put all our eggs in one basket is because broken goddamn eggs!

No one way exists!

Try lots of shit!

Leverage one thing against another thing!

Don’t join cults!

Self-publishing isn’t The Future, it’s One Possible Future!

Educate and inspire instead of segregating and pointing fingers!

Beware easy answers!

This isn’t a war! Nobody has to win!

Write your ass off!

Art harder!

Exclamation points!

Words!

Nap!

*zzzz*