Unabashed

There aren’t many success stories out there, that’s for sure. John Scalzi, Cherie Priest and David Wellington are the few that pop to mind who’ve put their work on a website and then sold the work(s) for print. I know there are others, but they are few and far between, and the numbers of writers getting published in the traditional manner is still the steady king as far as sheer numbers are concerned.

But it’s just so hard, and I’m just so lazy, and hey, I’m 38. If I have to wait six months to get my rejection from Tor and then another six to get my rejection from (publisher #2) and then a year to get one from (publisher C) then I’ll be 40 and still sitting on my book. Worse, unagented works rarely get a fair shake, so the really real route to ramble through would be to shoot for an agent and hope she’ll sell the book. I just don’t know if I have it in me. The patience, I mean. We all know rejections are a part of the writing life; I don’t fear rejections, I just don’t want to get bored in the waiting.

It might be different if I was doing this for a living, but this is my hobby. Sure, I want to be a published author–and I am, in short stories–but it’s not like I won’t be able to feed my kids if I don’t sell this book. Having sold a few short I at least have enough confidence to say “I do not suck” with some authority. At least three editors have liked my stories enough to publish them, and one of them did so three times. Some considerations:

• The positive: Publishers will and do buy books that have been posted online. They may ask you to remove it immediately, but if they like it, and if it has any kind of readership, they’ll buy it. It’s proven.
• The negative: I’ll be missing out on the valuable editing process. Sure, some writers churn out work that doesn’t need any editing, but I’m not those writers. For a publisher to take me on she’d almost certainly have to refine my writing. I’ve got style, oh yes, but I’ve got some bad habits too, that have been hard for me to kick. I know I wrote a story that I’m proud of, and it’s something I would read myself, but then I’m invested in it. It’s my baby. You, though, you are the ones who would–or wouldn’t–read it. An editor could ease me through that process, help me fashion it to suit the market. But. But.
• The other negative: People don’t respect web-published authors. I’ve seen sites myself and sneered at my screen for having the audacity to show me a web-published author.
• The what if: I found David Wellington’s books through a BoingBoing post. David is a good writer who sold his books, which are still posted on his website. Linkage from a site like BB would be huge. Huge. But very unlikely. Their safety net intelligently requires that they read any fiction before posting a link to it, and as you can imagine, Cory is swamped with requests and isn’t accepting any new ones for the foreseeable future.

So I’ve got a positive, two negatives, and a what if. In dealing with the first negative I can only say that I would have to really focus on editing it down myself, and that if it’s a good enough story it’ll sell itself. Right? And I can edit; of the five shorts I’ve sold every one was posted/printed in the shape I submitted them in. I’m just not particularly good at it and, again, I’m basically lazy.

For the second negative I can say that when I saw David Wellington’s site I didn’t sneer. Why is that? Why does he automatically garner special attention as a web-published writer? And this was before I’d read the first word of any of his stories. Was it because I’d found it through the BoingBoing link, and therefore it was automatically presumed to be a “qualified” read? Or maybe it was because it was presented very well, with a cool dedicated graphic header. I don’t know, but something about the site said “writer” all over it, and therefore I bookmarked the link and referred back to it later. After reading some of his stuff, I found it to be very good and I gladly recommend it. So.

To self-publish or not to self-publish. All I know is I’m building the website now, and I’m dreading the prospect of querying this thing till I’m on the shady side of 90. The Down in the Cellar story will appear March 1st, so that should draw a lurker or ten, and maybe one of them would have liked The Ghost of Tom Johns enough to give my book a go. Plus, this blog is beginning to get noticed a bit more. Most of the hits bounce almost immediately away, but some of them stick around and read a page or two.

Any thoughts? Comments? Would you read it, or at least give it a try? Note: The excerpt I posted the other day was very gory; I should note here that that was one of the few examples of graphic violence in the book. I just particularly liked that scene, so I shared it with you.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Cory Doctorow, David Wellington, ebook, Indie Writer, self-publish, self-publishing