At 08:11:37 hours on 12 February 2003 shepline: the journal was born. Actually, I think it might have been a bit before then, and if I’m honest I’m not sure what the situation is regarding time zones, but it was near enough then. Here, I should perhaps mention my LJ Mother (tinyjo) and Father (oxfordslacker) without whom this journal would probably never even have existed.
My first day’s posts can still be found here. Not the greatest works of literary genius I grant you, and far be it for me to say that things have improved since then, but it’s a start, and from small starts bigger things do grow.
So how best to mark this auspicious occasion? A deep and meaningful, friends locked post about the State of Thomas four years on? No. I think rather, a rant. A positive little rant, all things considered, but a rant none-the-less. This one, originally made today, by me, in a thread on the merits or not, the quality or not, of self-publishing over at the CritiqueCircle message boards…
I still think there is a confusion here about what self-publishing means. Yes there are the truly awful books that are published by their authors purely as an ego boost to make them feel that they are a ‘proper’ writer (whatever one of those is), but don’t forget there are also hundreds if not thousands of books published each year by the ‘big’ publishers which are also suitably awful but are published none the less, not for the quality of the writing, but because the author is a ‘name’ that will sell.
The days when publishing by the big publishers is about valued judgements about what is a good book are long over. It’s a business that’s all about making money, and if celebrity biographies and ego-trip-novels by wanna be celebrity writers is the thing that publishers can market easily then that is what they will publish. Which of course means that there is less money in the pot to publish the books of quality that publishers really ought to be publish. Where should these publishers be published then? Well, with luck there will be smaller publishers starting out who can’t afford the quick bucks of the celebrity novel/biography who will take a chance at the new/existing talent writing quality books…
…but it’s getting increasingly difficult. Publishers (even the smaller one’s) are not just looking for the good book these days, but for the ‘marketing hook’ in the writer that they can use to sell the book. It shouldn’t matter how many left arms the writer has, or what heroic they did back in battle of Waterloo before being rescued by aliens and transported hundreds of years into the future (although that probably would make quite a good story!).
It should be the quality of the book in question that is the deciding factor. So who can make that decision? Who is qualified to make that decison? As long as the decision is being made in an objective manner who cares whether it is an established publisher, or new one-man outfit making that decision. And who’s to say that the self-published author’s book is any worse than the one’s being published by the guys with a ‘track record’…?!!
It should be the quality of the book in question that is the deciding factor.
Why? Publishers are in the business to make money not to help improve the annals of English literature, which probably doesn’t put bread on the table.
The problem with this train of thought is that essentially it is a list of excuses and biased opinions cobbled together to convince a sympathetic audience (and most likely yourself) to undertake an exercise in vanity. As such, it is as much an act of ego as self-publishing is in itself. By claiming that publishers only want to make money and have no interest in quality, the inference is made that the self-publisher has a product of quality that has been overlooked purely because they are not famous or will not make money for the publisher. Yes, a lot of dross is published by established publishers. But that does not automatically mean that quality levels have fallen, that valued judgements are not made, and that publishers are not willing to “take a chance” on someone new. There is no mutual exclusivity here, much as some embittered non-published writers may assume this to be the case.
The real fact of the matter is, more books of more types covering more topics are published than ever before. With short-run reproduction costs falling constantly and Amazon et al. making “long tail” sales an ever-more lucrative market, the likelihood a quality first-time author will get a book deal has never been higher. But the key word there is “quality”. Unfortunately, modern times and modern publishing media – blogs, online writer groups and so on – also mean that everyone who thinks they can write a book is now trying to, and many labour under the mistaken belief that if they are not immediately snapped up it is the publishers who are at fault for not recognising their talents. This situation is exacerbated, again by such things as online writing circles and self-publishing sites, where wannabe writers engage in dreadful mutual backslapping exercises with equally “overlooked” authors, all eager to egg each other on in the hope of more ego-nourishing words in return and the opportunity to complain bitterly about the “bewildering” lack of recognition for their efforts.
Though it is inevitably true that there will always be some good and worthy work that is overlooked, the simple truth is still the same as it has been since the earliest days of publishing: most unpublished authors are unpublished and will remain unpublished because they’re just not very good.
Finally, a riposte to your paragraph:
“It should be the quality of the book in question that is the deciding factor…”
The problem with self-publishing is summed up perfectly there, albeit unintentionally on your part. The last person on earth who could and should be trusted to be objective about their own work is the author. They may be too harsh, or too protective, but asking them to be emotionless about something they have invested time and effort in is like asking a parent to choose the best child from a group of kids that contains one of their own offspring. That entire paragraph is basically one long pre-emptive strike to say if you self-publish as a “one-man outfit” then it is not because of matters of ego, but because you simply haven’t been able to get a book deal. Whereas to any truly objective reader the truth of this matter is blatantly obvious – you want to be published and you think your book has been overlooked, and you think that this is unfair and that publishers have made the wrong decision in your case.
Despite the tone you may feel I am taking, I must state that there is nothing wrong with self-publishing if you wish to do so, and should you follow this route I wish you every success. What is wrong, however, is attempting to make out that your self-published work should automatically be considered on par with commercially published efforts, and the implication that it is all the fault of others – for whatever reason – that you have not been commercially published already. If you are not willing to even entertain the possibility that your work is simply not good enough – and I see no evidence to suggest that you do – then I suspect you are better off out of the entire traditional publishing process, as editing, rewriting on the advice of others and of course peer review are not the sorts of exercises that I suspect one who holds such opinions would enjoy.
The problem with this train of thought is that essentially it is a list of excuses and biased opinions cobbled together to convince a sympathetic audience (and most likely yourself) to undertake an exercise in vanity
Not at all. It’s true that I have, from time to time, considered self-publishing as option, and with changes in technology that option becomes easier and easier. However one thing that remains a ‘significant’ challenge is marketing and distribution or actually getting the books out there. Primarily I write because I have to write, but I also like the idea of sharing my stories with other people. It’s a frightening and exciting thing to do when you finally let go of this thing that has been part of Yourself for so long and let other people read it. Just how many read it, I’m not so concerned with as long as people who want to or might want to read it can find it.
However none of this was the point of my post. My point was to try and address why it is that some, fairly large numbers of people perceive the quality of self publishing to be distinctly worse than conventional publishing.
It’s even more odd when you consider that their same stigma does not hold true for bands or movies. Actually, all the cool kids embrace the own label, or the inde-cinema. Why is it any different books?
Oh, and next time you comment in my journal, be so kind as to sign your name off. I know exactly who you are.
This line in matey’s comment caught my eye – “editing, rewriting on the advice of others and of course peer review are not the sorts of exercises that I suspect one who holds such opinions would enjoy”
This is funny because it’s so not true! I *know* how much time and work you put into your rewrites – I’ve seen the evidence – I know you *do* listen to the advice of others (not just mine, which is plentiful, lol, but that of other CC members) – and someone supposedly afraid of editing would never join something like CC in the first place!!
So true. Going through the process of “editing, rewriting on the advice of others and of course peer review” is probably just as scary a prospect than letting Jo Public read it – maybe even more so because it is at an incomplete stage.
And yeah, when I first started subbing my work to CC I was frakking scared – I still am – but boy is it exciting too. Yeah, you get told that that doesn’t work and there’s a problem with it there, but then you get to see the pleasure that the person has got from that other bit. And I go away and I work on it and try and work out what I did to a that made it so good so that I can do the same to b…
…and then after a few attempts you get comments back which show you that it is pretty damn good now. 😉