I found an amazing thread about self-publishing on, curiously, a music web site. In it they make a comparison between indie film and music to self-publishing writers. It’s from ‘05, but definitely worth a read. Excerpt:
1. Both those mediums (indie film/indie music) have a tolerance, or appreciation even, of human flaws in the work — poor singing, sloppy guitars, handheld cameras. There’s almost an ethos where people are refreshed to find these little flaws in indie upstarts. When it comes to writing, however, I don’t think your ordinary person has as much tolerance for such imperfections. (I’m not saying you have bad writing, of course, but I’m making generalizations about the overall editorial, design, and print results I’ve seen in other self-published works.)
2. I think Juggles already touched on this, but writing can be a very solipsistic experience. Whereas music and film are typically very collaborative creations that are experienced in public settings (festivals, concerts, theaters, etc.), with writing there’s the perception that it’s all done alone in a room somewhere, with the end result being consumed alone in another room. It’s harder to break that sense of isolation and create a viable audience or sense of community around an individual’s book
March 13th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I think I followed a link in that post, but somehow I found out about Amazon’s Kindle offering a free way for authors to sell their works digitally to Kindle users. Given that Kindle users are technology beta testers and probably like SF/F, I wonder if this would be a good place to try and sell an anthology of your unsold short stories or maybe a novel. http://dtp.amazon.com
I found this podcast interesting, http://thewritingcast.com/blog/?p=39, especially since she said she sold thirty copies in the first week. Interesting, but I think this should be some kind of last resort. I will still be going the agent/publisher route for now.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
The link leads to the right place, you just have to read more of the comments; most of them are very interesting and informative.
I’ll have to listen to that podcast later, it’s late and I’m done for tonight.
March 16th, 2008 at 4:38 am
I agree with the article above. For self-published writers, quality control is paramount to success. If you screw up on the editing, you’ve lost the reader and they won’t spread ‘your’ word. Sometimes I get an editor to review my manuscripts, and thought it can hurt, it helps a lot more. No Pain = No Gain.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Simon: Indie writers would definitely have a better rep if a few more of them in the past would have paid a lot more attention to editing. But at least we know how self-publishing earned its reputation, and it’ll likely get worse before it gets better. Fact is, it’s just too easy for a hack like me to write something crappy and self publish it, even though I might be the only person in the world who thinks it’s golden.