Two posts caught my eye today that all authors should read if they are considering self-publishing.
Over at Patty Jansen’s blog, Patty asked Dan Holloway about When Self-publishing is NOT a good idea. On the same topic, Maria Schneider at Editor Unleashed taks about the No. 1 Mistake Self-Publishers Make. Maria encourages fiction writers not to self-publish hard-copies, an opinion backed up by author MCM in a recent analysis of the first month sales of his science fiction novel, The Vector.
Both authors agree that self-publishing must be a considered business decision, not a response to several hundred rejections or from general impatience to publish. Because self-publishing, for all its current “indie” coolness (and that’s a post for another day), still comes with baggage. Significant baggage, in the form of thousands and thousands of dreadful, unreadable, or simply mediocre works from people who, quite frankly, should have kept their ‘novels’ in the dark, dank recesses of their computer, never to see the light of day.
Whether or not you like traditional publishing, the fact is that, while the occasional lemon does make it to the shelves, most of the work you buy from publishing houses (whether paper or e-pub) has been through an editorial process, has been liked by more that just the author and the author’s nearest and dearest, and the reader can usually fork over the cash with a minimal ‘buyer beware’ clause involved.
When you self-publish, as I have said before, your book comes with no guarantee of quality or even readability. Readers have to take a punt on your work, and unless you have a great word-of-mouth campaign going on, you’ve got very little chance of being noticed and selling significant copies. Not that I’m disparaging all self-published authors; I’m just pointing out the facts. You are shoulder to shoulder with some of the worst examples of writing ever produced, and you will be lumped accordingly.
So what’s an author to do? Well, I’m currently having a discussion on twitter with @pattyjansen and @alanbaxter about how to filter the gems from the dross without resorting to a gatekeeper system, something I know most self-pubbed authors have the horrors about. So far, we’re not really getting anywhere, although Alan and Patty have finally agreed that it would be good to have some sort of stamp of approval, based on a number of independent reviews.
Of course for any self-published author, reviews of any nature are difficult to obtain. The best they can hope for is a friendly blogger, or friendly friend, and those reviews, from the point of view of the reader, are unreliable.
And, on that topic, everyone needs to check out Reviewing the Reviewers over at The Self-Publishing Review, and the kerfuffle related to a negative review (not a bad review – there’s a difference) by one of their reviewers, Carol Buchanen. It’s a perfect example of the fact that your book won’t be for everyone, and you have just as much chance of being canned by a reviewer as you do of being lauded.
Now it’s question time.
If you are primarily a READER: What prompts you (would prompt you) to buy a self-published work of fiction? (We’ll leave non-fic out of the equation for now.) What value do you place on reviews?
If you are primarily an AUTHOR: Have you self-published? Why? How do you get reviews?
For both READERS and AUTHORS: How would you feel about a “stamp of approval” system like the heart-foundation tick on self-published works? How would you envisage that happening? Would you support it? Would it make a difference to your buying habits?
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