Photographers can do it alone.
Suppose that I’m a photographer. Actually, I am, and a pretty good one at that, but I don’t take it as seriously as I should. Suppose I did, though. Suppose I went out and shot 100 frames every day. Of those, say ten are keepers. I crop, correct, and tweak those ten, and I post them online, with links to any one of the dozens of places that offer professional photo-finishing services. Click on my picture, and you go to their website. They take the orders, handle printing, matting, and framing, accept payment, and ship the final product. They take their cut and send the rest to me. Suppose I do this for a living.
Question: What am I?
Answer: A photographer.
Pretty simple, right? Not very controversial or problematic for anybody at all. If I’m good enough, my photos sell well, and I’m happy. The print looks great on your wall, and you’re happy. The photo service made their buck, so they’re happy. If I’m no good, they don’t sell, and after a while I give up and go do something else. Capitalism at its finest, yes?
After all, a photographer is an artist, and as an artist, will clearly want that level of control. No problem.
Musicians can do it alone.
Suppose I’m a musician (believe me, that takes a lot of supposing). I set up a recording studio in my spare bedroom, I write and compose original pieces, I record them, and I post links on my website to any of the dozens of services that do for music what the sites in the previous example do for photos.
Question: What am I?
Answer: A musician.
Question: What kind of musician?
Answer: Oh, that’s right — an indie musican. That’s even better.
A musician or filmmaker who operates outside the corporate influences of those industries can sell that as an advantage, rather than carry it as a liability. “Why, his music must be BETTER than most, because he is in total control of it!” Whether it is, in fact, better or not may be debatable, but to a certain portion of the music- and film-buying public, it’s also irrelevant. He’s indie. That’s good enough.
And anyway, remember what we said about artists?
Authors can’t do it alone.
Suppose I’m an author. Oh, wait — I am one. Suppose I put together a book. Suppose I take the time and effort to learn the things to do and not do. I study my craft and hone my skills, and write the best book I can. I go through it again and again and again, revising and editing and polishing until it’s as near perfect as I can make it. I have others read it, and I ask specific, pointed questions about things like character motivation and timelines and plot progression. I learn and enforce a set of practices to control widows, rivers, page breaks, line breaks, open or closed compounds, and so forth. I design an attractive cover, write enticing back-cover copy, and develop a strong, clean page layout with consistent treatment of headers, footers, and folios.
I place my book online, with links to any of the scores of sites that handle order-taking, payment, production, packaging, and shipping, and I move on to the next.
Question: What am I?
Answer: Deluded.
Or perhaps bordering on insane. At the very best, I’ve been misled by a vulture, a leech, an intestinal parasite in the dark bowels of the publishing industry, led to believe that I can do it alone. Everybody knows that self-published books are no good. Everybody knows that you can’t expect your book to be any good until at least a dozen other people have changed it. It hasn’t even been through any kind of selection process, like the endless pulp mill of the query/conform/requery system.
What do you think you are, an artist?
And now for something completely different…
Related posts:
- More Thoughts on the Status of Self-Publishing
- Chalk, Newspapers, and Oblivion – Further Thoughts on Self-Publishing.
- Arguments Against Self-Publishing, Round N
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I have brought this up before, believe me. There is absolutely a double-standard when it comes to this sort of thing.
But think about it. Who stands to benefit from the perception that we “need” a traditional publishing model? Who is against self-publishing?
Agents are against it. They stand to lose money.
Publishers are against it. They stand to lose money.
Marketing firms are against it. Who is going to pay for a release blitz without the big publishers around?
Established authors are against it. They don’t want the increased competition. I don’t blame people like Stephen King for being against self-publishing, although I think his opinion of it is self-serving and more than a little dishonest.
The public is smart enough to decide what music they like. Even independent movies get a lot of attention–how many times now have we had an instance where someone self-financed a movie for a paltry sum of money, then it became a hit? We think “going it alone” is just fine for essentially every other form of art, but when it comes to publishing, oh no! We can’t have the public deciding what *books* they like!
The publishing industry needs to decentralize just like the music industry is doing. We *don’t* need the middlemen–certainly not as many as we used to. The tools are there to do it all yourself. Is a lot of it going to be crap? Of course! But the public will decide what they do and don’t want to pay for. And that’s how it should be.
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