This is something I see often enough: an author talks about losing a series or having some difficulties with a publisher or whatever, and someone from the crowd eventually says, “You should self-publish. We want more of you, the money’s better, we’ll support you. Plus, so many options! Amazon! Kickstarter! Bookflipper! Pub-Burger!” Sometimes it’s a polite suggestion, sometimes it’s double-barrel proselytization and they start spouting off “facts and figures” along with a dose of venom against the oppression of the traditional system.<\/p>\n
I like self-publishing. I like it as an option. I have explored it and will continue to explore it.<\/p>\n
But it’s not exactly easy<\/em>.<\/p>\n It’s not moving mountains or shitting pre-constructed Ikea furniture, but it takes a set of skills that are wholly separate from writing: marketing, design, coding, editing. Some of these skills are valuable to the writer regardless of which publishing road she walks, but that doesn’t mean every writer is eager to pick up every skill\u00a0nor<\/em> is it a guarantee she’ll be good at them.<\/p>\n To hazard the doofusly obvious: self-publishing isn’t about writing,\u00a0it’s about publishing<\/em>.<\/p>\n Some writers just want to be writers.<\/p>\n They don’t also want to be publishers.<\/p>\n It’s just that simple. Neither wrong nor right. It’s a personal and professional choice.<\/p>\n Further, despite what some feel are absolute guarantees, self-publishing is not automagically the way to MORE MONEY than you’d get with a traditional publisher. It is a fact that the actual royalties (if you want to call them that, as Amazon and other entities act as distributor to the self-published, not the publisher) are better. Once again to bludgeon you all with the Mallet of Obviousness, 70% (or thereabouts) is higher than 25% (or thereabouts).<\/p>\n The outcome of publishing, however, is more complicated than those percentages.<\/p>\n If traditional publishing yields more sales (also not a guarantee), then that advantage shifts — 70% of $100 is a helluva lot less than 25% of $1000. Plus: rights, sub-rights, blah blah blah.<\/p>\n As I’ve noted in the past, self-publishing is all risk. It’s the opportunity to make zero dollars or a million dollars and\u00a0potentially<\/em> burn down your chance of entering that novel into the traditional space because if your book lands with a poop-plop instead of a big money splash, it doesn’t matter how fucking amazetesticles your book is, because it’s done, game over, so sorry.<\/p>\n (I’m using that correctly, right? Amazetesticles?)<\/p>\n Self-publishing is an act separate from writing.<\/p>\n Not every writer has the time, the talent, or the interest.<\/p>\n Both writing and publishing take work. Self-publishing demands the work of both.<\/p>\n Worth it for some, tricky or undesirable for others.<\/p>\n This isn’t meant to dissuade any author from going that route. It’s more to dissuade everybody else from haranguing authors about self-publishing when it’s just not in their wheelhouse.<\/p>\n (We’re still saying “wheelhouse,” right? Can we change it? Howzabout “primate house?” I like that one better. “Sorry, Bob, I don’t think I’m the man for the dildo salesman job. It’s just not in my primate house.” Though maybe dildos and primate houses don’t mix.)<\/p>\n The great thing about being a writer in the year 2013 is that there exists no one path to success. But each writer has to find the path that works for\u00a0her<\/em> — we all have our tunnel in the mountain, our path through the jungle, our needle to thread.<\/p>\n We just have to find it and let other writers find theirs, in turn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is something I see often enough: an author talks about losing a series or having some difficulties with a publisher or whatever, and someone from the crowd eventually says, “You should self-publish. We want more of you, the money’s better, we’ll support you. Plus, so many options! Amazon! Kickstarter! Bookflipper! Pub-Burger!” Sometimes it’s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-4yz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17519"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17536,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17519\/revisions\/17536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}