{"id":20344,"date":"2013-09-09T11:31:54","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T15:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=20344"},"modified":"2013-09-09T11:31:54","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T15:31:54","slug":"why-i-like-the-term-author-publisher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2013\/09\/09\/why-i-like-the-term-author-publisher\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Like The Term: “Author-Publisher”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I wrote a thing about 25 steps one might take to become a proper professional-grade self-published author<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, but in that post I expressed a little distaste for the term “self-publisher,” and somewhat inadvertently coined a new term: “author-publisher.”<\/p>\n

I’d like to unpack that and defend it a little bit.<\/p>\n

“Self-publishing” as a term is one I’ve never really liked.<\/p>\n

A couple-few reasons:<\/p>\n

First, it’s already got a stigma from the guys who printed their own books 10-20 years ago and tried to sell them at farmer’s markets or on their Geocities pages. (I had a guy at an eyeglasses place in the mall push a free copy of his Young Adult Softball Jesus subgenre book — self-published, obviously. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever tried to read. Ironically, I think if I had read it all the way through it would have burned out the eyes that needed eyeglasses.)<\/p>\n

Second, it’s clunky in the mouth. Aesthetically, I just don’t like it.<\/p>\n

Third, it says nothing about actually\u00a0writing<\/em> a book. One supposes that the “self” part makes it implicit, but given that the problem with self-publishing is (or at least\u00a0was<\/em>) the failing quality of the material, I feel like we should have a term that\u00a0explicitly<\/em> states that first you gotta write a professional-level book. More on that in a moment.<\/p>\n

Fourth, “self” is very misleading — the best self-publishers make use of Other Smart and Instrumental Humans in the process. Cover artists and editors and copy-editors and author-wranglers and liquor store employees.\u00a0Self<\/em> sounds like you’re doing it all alone. DIY! Except not.<\/p>\n

So, author-publisher.<\/p>\n

Here’s why I diggit:<\/p>\n

First, it sounds like RPG MULTI-CLASS. I’m a warrior-mage! A rogue-monk! A drunken-sorcerer-bard-waitress-wombat-jockey! Author-publisher sounds like you’re buying points in both of these professional classes and you can wear the weapons and sigils of each house.<\/p>\n

Second, it’s more accurate. You are both an\u00a0author<\/em> and publisher<\/em>. Why not emphasize both?<\/p>\n

Third, I like hyphens.<\/p>\n

Fourth, while\u00a0author<\/em> is a bit of a pretentious term, hey, fuck it, I think we could use a little pretension. Maybe it’s a word that raises our noses up a little. Maybe it sets a higher-bar to counter the idea of\u00a0just click publish no really just do it who cares if you wrote the literary equivalent of a Target bag full of old poop-heavy toddler diapers fuck the gatekeepers dude just fling that up onto Amazon man and let the sweeeeeet money come rolling in<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, there you go:<\/p>\n

Author-publisher.<\/p>\n

Use it. Abuse it. Discard it. Bury it in a shallow grave by the train tracks.<\/p>\n

But I like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I wrote a thing about 25 steps one might take to become a proper professional-grade self-published author, but in that post I expressed a little distaste for the term “self-publisher,” and somewhat inadvertently coined a new term: “author-publisher.” I’d like to unpack that and defend it a little bit. “Self-publishing” as a term […]<\/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-20344","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-5i8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20344","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=20344"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20353,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20344\/revisions\/20353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}