Some quick reading material, should you feel like following the bouncing ball and singing along:

My original post (“Why Your Self-Published Book May Suck A Bag Of Dicks“). Peruse comments.

The Kindle Boards topic (scroll down a few messages). Thanks to Lee Goldberg for mentioning me there and also at his own site — in fact, Lee has his own post (“Knee-Jerk Defensiveness“) worth looking at.

I was also interviewed yesterday about self-publishing. Spinetingler Magazine has the juice.

And here is a video of a puppy taking a bath in slow motion.

We all caught up?

Good.

I figure instead of hopping around the forums and comment threads and pollinating them with my opinion-dust, I’d just hunker down here and rattle off some further thoughts and responses. The blog post is generating a lot of discussion — some interesting, some curious, some downright mystifying. Seems then that the blog is a good place to hash it out. Plus, I need a blog post for today. The blog, it hungers. It hungers. If I don’t feed it fresh content daily, it gets bitey. I already lost a ring-finger when I missed a day of posting. I shall not sacrifice any more of my digits — with this beast, it’s a total policy of appeasement.

Let’s slap on some hip waders and ease into the swamp.

Your Rabid Badger Hate Will Not Be Televised

An up-front warning: I am Fonzie cool with you disagreeing with me on any point. I am not cool, however, with anybody leaving hateful (and occasionally violent) “fuck you” comments on this blog. Those will be deleted. You can’t bring anything valuable to the table, then I flush you. Whoosh. I will not “die in a fire.” I will not choke on a bag of dicks and die. Your comment will die in a fire as I delete your madman ravings.

I’m sure someone out there is thinking that I shouldn’t delete stuff like that and should respond to it. Well, that is my response: deletion. As the movie says, this is not a Cheerocracy. If you’re a raging froth-mouthed dick-for-brains that brings nothing to the table, then I have zero interest in letting your comments lurk.

I Am Not Whizzing In The Mouth And Eyes Of “Indie Publishing”

If you seriously believe I oppose indie DIY self-publishing endeavors, you either a) have poor reading comprehension, b) have possibly been kicked by a mule and as a result are hemorrhaging in your brain or c) are just a jerk who thinks what he wants no matter the evidence to the contrary.

Newsflash: See the banner? I self-published a short story collection, IRREGULAR CREATURES. (For the record, I’m pleased with its sales. It’s doing nicely and I enjoy the experiment.)

Newsflash: I have colleagues who have self-published. They seem to be doing nicely. Their work is also exemplary. Have you seen 8 POUNDS by Chris Holm? Gaze upon its wondrous cover. Then crack it open like a nut and feast on its sweet meats.

Newsflash: I also have colleagues who represent independent film, independent game design, independent music. I do not believe “independent” is a dirty word.

Newsflash: If you continue to claim that I am somehow against all of self-publishing, you are woefully ignorant and willfully misrepresenting my position.

The only thing in the crosshairs of my Crap Cannon are those who self-publish their little dumpster babies.

Which leads me to…

If You Feel Defensive, Then I’m Probably Talking About You

As Lee puts it, there exists a degree of “knee-jerk defensiveness” going on about self-publishing. Now, to be clear, I do not equate disagreement with defensiveness. You’re obviously free to disagree. I am not the arbiter of the self-publishing community. Hell, I agree that I picked an easy target.

But that’s what amuses me. My initial feeling was, “Well, I’ve picked so easy a target that surely it won’t have any supporters. Who could possibly defend self-publishing badly?”

Oops.

You find this with willful teenagers. I remember because I was one of them.

Your mother might say, “Someone broke the toilet when someone flushed someone’s old underpants down the pipes. Do you happen to know who that someone might be?”

And you, as Willful Teenager, stammer and gesticulate and feign persecution. “God. It’s like,  whatever. It’s like, I can’t not get blamed for stuff. God. God!“

Except, of course, you were still the one who flushed your underpants down the toilet on a dare made by your friend, Bad Influence Buddy. But that doesn’t stop your loud protestations.

This is like that.

Thou doth protest too much, methinks.

Badges And Sirens: What “Self-Policing” Means

I see some took issue with my notion that the community should self-police. You’re right, to a point. While a cruel little part of my heart would be eminently satisfied if we dragged all the rot-suck self-publishers into the light of scrutiny where they all burst into flames, their ashes caught in whorls on the wind, I do agree that such a thing is probably too mean and ultimately not that helpful.

It was, in part, a joke, but a joke born of some seriousness. Like most of my “bag of dicks” post, actually.

Here’s what I really mean by self-policing: you should stop acting like some entrenched fundamentalist community. Fundamentalists are never useful, never helpful. Stop being rabid cheerleaders for one another when it isn’t deserved. You claim that cream rises to the top? Alternate theory: shit floats. If you think the good stuff will eventually be recognized for its quality, then laud it, sing its praises — but don’t do the same for the sub-par low-quality nonsense. You don’t have to drag them kicking and screaming into the city square where we all pelt them with ice balls. But you also don’t have to pretend that you’re comrades. You don’t have to link arms. Youi don’t have to pretend that bad is actually good.

Don’t be the noisy minority that loudly cheers for any self-published tripe just because it’s self-published. “Indie” is not an adjective for “quality.” Neither, for the record, is “traditional.” The only trick to traditional is, those gatekeepers you love to hate so much are at the very least ensuring that what goes out into the world isn’t the artistic equivalent of a dead seagull duct taped to a brick and heaved through your living room window. Self-publishing may not utilize or even require gatekeepers, but it could damn sure use some taste-makers, some prime-movers, some exemplars.

Be that. Elevate good works, not crap. Be part of the reason why cream rises. Don’t let the shit float.

Do You Hate Books?

You have chosen to self-publish. Good for you. That’s a choice you have made. It may not be a choice others have made. Just as you are not an idiot or an asshole for self-publishing, others are not idiots or assholes for going the other way. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.

Why all the anger toward traditional publishing? If you’re not choosing that path, then what’s with the pissing and moaning? Did traditional publishing come and spit in your Cheerios? Are you stung because of a rejection? Tough titty. Even the best writers have received tough rejections. Some deserved, some not. Get shut of it. Harden up. Stop casting aspersions at those who have nothing to do with your failure or your success. Learn a lesson and move on.

I mean, how did you come to love reading, exactly? At bedtime did your mother go and download an independent children’s book onto her Kindle to read to you? Was your mother a time traveler?

No. She read you a book. From a bookshelf. Found in a library or a bookstore. And that book was traditionally published by a traditional author and a traditional publishing company.

That system still produces a metric butt-ton of truly excellent reading material. Sure, it also is the system that pooped out a Snooki book. And yes, the Snooki book creates other Snooki books when you splash self-tanner on it, and when the Snooki book drinks vodka-and-Red-Bull after midnight it releases Snooki — like the Krampus! — into the world. But holding up examples of authors you don’t like doesn’t mean the entire traditional system is somehow corrupt or devoid of quality in much the same way that holding up examples of shitty self-publishing was not my way of saying that all indie publishing is bereft of value.

Preaching To The Choir

I’ll cop to the fact that, by and large, I was preaching to the choir. Again, I picked an easy target.

Still. I have a tiny glimmer of hope that someone out there felt the scales fall from their eyes and they were able to realize, “Hey, you know what? Maybe I shouldn’t just foist this unedited story into the world. Maybe it wouldn’t be the best idea if I designed the cover myself in MS Paint. Maybe I should actually take myself and my craft seriously and see that my story has potential but that to achieve that potential actually takes work and thought and effort — and that the best way of me proving myself and proving that self-publishing is viable is not by sloppily belching my undigested meal into the marketplace but rather by exhibiting a little bit of patience and care.”

Further, maybe if you spent less time railing against the establishment and took more time becoming a better writer (and a better publisher), you wouldn’t feel so blindly defensive.

Standards And Best Practices

You want everybody to take self-publishing seriously.

They do not. Not yet.

Self-publishing and its proponents and practitioners will never get the respect it reportedly deserves while the vocal fundamentalist who-gives-a-shit-about-quality community is there championing the half-rotting deer carcass work of Scoots McCoy with the same triumphant horn-blows that they use to tout the works of Konrath or Goldberg (or Insert Your Favorite Self-Published Author Here).

Stop treating the Kindle marketplace or any other distribution system like it’s your own personal White Elephant sale. You want self-publishing to work, it needs to look like a bookstore, not a flea market.

Stop high-fiving shitty authors for being shitty.

Stop assuming that any critique is there to tear you down. Make hay of it. If you cover sucks, get a better cover. If your description reads like ass, write a better description. And for God’s sakes, always improve your craft. You want to be a pro, then act like a pro. Not like a mewling kitten who didn’t get a taste of milk.

Get better. Be better. Prove your way works or be saddled with the stigma.

Good authors and good books are out there no matter how they got published. Why wouldn’t you want to be among them? Why would you want to be the enemy of quality work?

Why would you want your book to suck a bag of dicks?

“A loser is the guy with a for sale sign on a dirty car just phoning it in.”

— Mark Burnett (seen via a tweet by Mike Monello)

Dear Self-Published Word Badgers,

I’d like to take a little time out to commend you for your intrepid publishing spirit! And by “commend you,” I mean, “slap you about the head and neck with your own bludgeoning shame.”

No, I’m not talking to all of you. A good lot of you are doing as you should. I have in the past week alone been exposed to a wondrous number of self-published goodies, whether by excellent writers seeking an avenue for their unpublished (or presently unpublishable) works or by tried-and-true DIY storytellers who have been honing their own punk-publishing endeavors to an icepick’s point.

I am, however, talking to some of you.

Some of you should be really quite floored by the quality — or, rather, the sucking maw of quality, a veritable black hole of hope and promise that leeches the dreams from the minds of little girls sleeping and replaces those dreams with nightmares where unicorns are stabbed repeatedly by interlopers on icy sidewalks and left to whimper and bleat until the police come and finally end their misery with a single round from a service revolver bang — that your work puts out into the world.

You think I’m being mean.

Okay. You’re not wrong. I’ll cop to that. I’m not being a nice man.

Here’s the thing, though. I (and I’m sure other capable writers) have noticed and noted that self-publishing bears a certain stigma. With the term comes the distinct aroma of flopsweat born out of the desperation of Amateur Hour — it reeks of late night Karaoke, of meth-addled Venice Beach ukelele players, of middle-aged men who play basketball and still clutch some secret dream of “going pro” despite having a gut that looks like they ate a basketball rather than learned to play with one.

Self-publishing just can’t get no respect.

This is, of course, in contrast to other DIY endeavors. You form a band and put out a record yourself, well, you’re indie. You’re doing it your way. Put out a film, you’re a DIY filmmaker, an independent artist, a guy who couldn’t be pinned down by the Hollywood system. You self-publish a book, and the first thought out of the gate is, “He wasn’t good enough to get it published. Let’s be honest — it’s probably just word poop.”

This is in part because it’s a lot harder to put an album or a film out into the world. You don’t just vomit it forth. Some modicum of talent and skill must be present to even contemplate such an endeavor and to attain any kind of distribution. The self-publishing community has no such restriction. It is blissfully easy to be self-published. I could take this blog post, put it up on the Amazon Kindle store and in 24 hours you could download it for ninety-nine cents. It’s like being allowed to make my own clothing line out of burlap and pubic hair and being allowed to hang it on the racks at J.C. Penney.

And so it must fall to the community to police itself. You cannot and will not and should not be stopped from self-publishing. But, when you self-publish the equivalent to a manatee abortion rotting on a reef bed, you should be dragged into the city square and flogged with your own ineptitude for gumming up the plumbing with your old underpants.

If, perchance, you don’t know if I happen to be referring to you, let’s see if you pass this easy test. Don’t worry — it’s just a handful of questions. Relax. Take a deep breath. And begin.

Does Your Cover Look Anything Like This?

Fond of the Papyrus font, are you? Or Comic Sans, perhaps? Do you enjoy book covers that seem to make no visual sense? That offer titles whose design and meaning are utterly indiscernible? That when seen at a glance are merely puzzling, but that when viewed up close accidentally provoke vomiting and dizziness in all but the most stalwart, war-tested super-soldiers?

Take your cover and compare it to these covers. Is it anything like this great cover? Or howabout this one? Or are you instead closer to this?

I know what you’re saying: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Mm-hmm. Sure, no, no, I hear you. Let’s try this experiment: I’m going to dress in a Hefty bag. Then I am going to roll around in a dumpster. If I’m lucky, I’ll manage to get a week-old Caesar salad stuck in my beard! Then I’m going to come to your place of work and try to sell you a sandwich. No? Don’t want to buy my delicious sandwich? It’s really good. Wait, what’s your problem, man? Does my smell turn you off? Hey. Hey. Don’t judge a book by its cover. You should look deeper. Beyond my eye-watering odor. Beyond my beard-salad. Gaze into my heart, and then buy my motherfucking sandwich.

No? Still not cracking the wallet?

Same thing goes for your e-book, pal.

Hire a cover designer. Your book should look like a book someone can find on the shelves at Borders.

(Or, at least, before Borders goes tits up.)

Does Your Book’s Product Description Read As If It Were Written By A Child, A Monkey, Or A Schizophrenic (Or A Schizophrenic Monkey Child)?

SET IN PRESENT DAY VICTORIAN ENGLAND, DARYL WALDROP IS PROTECTED AT NIGHT BY A GORUP OF INVISIBLE BEINGS NOWN AS THE HIGH COLONY AND THE HIGH COLONY UNDERSTAND THAT DARYL IS SPECIAL SO THEY SEND HIM ON SECRET MISSIONS TO QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN STEAMPUNK CLOCKWORK HORN OF —

*gun in mouth*

*brains form a middle finger on the wall*

I swear to Christ, you read some of these descriptions and I think, “I could write better than this when I was in the eighth goddamn grade.” This isn’t good. Because I was a talentless little shit in eighth grade (and may still remain one, but you keep your damn fool mouth shut, you).

I know, I know, I’m being mean again.

But seriously, somebody has to be. Your product description is designed in some way large or small to entice me. It is both a sales pitch and an emblem of your writing ability. If you can’t even string together three sentences without resorting to ALL CAPS HOLY CRAPS or without confusing me from the outset, I gotta tell you, you’re pretty much fucked.

Did Anyone Actually Edit Your Book?

Anyone at all? Your mother? Your evil twin? A semi-literate orangutan?

If the answer is no, well, then, your self-published book might suck a big ol’ sloppy bag of dicks.

Best fix: hire an editor. Or at least farm it out to a capable wordmonkey friend who will do you a solid.

Or: orangutan. I mean, it’s better than nothing.

Is Your Free Downloadable Sample A Testament To Your Raging Lack Of Talent?

Your sample is supposed to be representative of your work. It should be shining testament — an unyielding pillar — demonstrating just how much I’m wetting my man-panties trying to give you my money.

Unfortunately, when I click most free samples, my panties? Dry as a saltine cracker.

I see: bad grammar, awful spelling, opening paragraphs so flat and full you could use them to pound stakes into hard earth, hateful spasms one might refer to as “characters” (if one were being charitable), and other outstanding goblins that earn only disdain and dismissal.

It’s like the quote at the fore of this article says: don’t slap a for sale sign on a dirty car.

Don’t put your worst foot forward. Of course, with some of the self-published e-books out there, my worry is that your bile-soaked downloadable sample is actually your best foot forward.

In which case, uh-oh.

Yes, Blah Blah Blah, I’m A Big Blue Meanie

Not only am I a meanie, but I’m taking easy shots. Hell, I already told you, self-publishing has a stigma. I’m not making it up. It isn’t new. Everybody knows to throw iceballs at the fat kid with the ice cream on the ground and the self-published Book Seven Of Made-Up Fantasy Series under his pudgy wing. By this point, I’m just throwing snow on that fat kid’s long-decaying body.

You want self-publishing to stand on its own feet? Get your shit together. You think publishing is full of mean ol’ myopic gatekeepers and you can do it better? How is anybody supposed to take you seriously when you can’t even approach a fraction of the quality found in books on bookstore shelves, books put out by publishers big and small?

You’re going to put something out there, make it count. Don’t fuck it up for the rest of the authors — you know, the ones who actually put out a kick-ass book. Hell, some of this stuff goes for me, too. I can do better. I can always do better. We should always strive to improve our books, our sales, our connection to the audience.

More succinctly: stop splashing around in the kiddie pool.

And while we’re talking about, stop peeing there, too.

Because, ew.

So rude.