Arguments Against Self-Publishing, Round N

There’s been another surge in the argument about self-publishing, and whether or not it is something that is worth pursuing. It seems to me that most of the arguments against self-publishing begin at the wrong place and proceed in the wrong direction.

It has become extremely commonplace to hear people say that you just have to learn to take rejection, or that you have to be willing to be judged, or that the agents know better what will sell and what won’t, and on and on and on. All of this ignores one simple, basic fact: I don’t write for agents.

I don’t care whether one agent or another likes the book. I don’t care whether one publisher does or doesn’t think it “deserves” to be published. One thing you have to learn as a writer is to write for your own market, and my market is neither agents nor publishers. My market is readers.

There are people all over the world who have read my books and taken the time to contact me and tell me that they enjoyed them. I’ve heard from readers in India, Australia, England, and South Africa, as well as the United States, where I live and write, so I must be doing something right. I have no doubt that there are people who have begun one or another of my books and put it down half a dozen pages into it. Fine. So be it. There isn’t enough time in life to read all of the books you do like, so if you don’t like mine, please don’t waste your time on it. I’m a big boy. I can take it. But the fact that you didn’t like it says nothing much at all about my book. It simply says that what I wrote isn’t what you want to read.

I’ve been accused of painting the entire publishing industry with a rather broad brush that has been dipped in the pot of greed-colored paint, that I think the fact that they need to make a profit makes them evil. Not at all. All I have ever said is that the fact that they need to make a profit from a business plan that is centered on the blockbuster decouples them from the value of the book as an item to be read and enjoyed by those who will. They want to sell a copy of the book to every person on Earth, with no regard one way or the other for whether or not those copies actually get read, while I want to sell a copy of each of my books to those who will read and enjoy them, without any regard one way or the other for whether or not the rest of the people on Earth ever get a copy. Their business model will not allow them to publish a book with that goal, and so they do not attempt to do so.

Nor is it true that I turned to self-publishing after being rejected by the traditional publishing industry because my book wasn’t good enough. How do I know this? Very simple: No one in “the publishing industry” has ever read any part of any one of my books. At least not that I know of. It is true that I was turned down or ignored by all of the thirty-one agents to whom I sent queries for the first book I attempted to publish, but since not a single one of those queries included a single sample page (following the submission guidelines of the agents involved), it would be a stretch of the imagination to say that the rejections had anything to do with the book in question, a stretch even my well-exercised imagination can’t make.

The second step down the wrong path for the argument that begins “You just need to be patient, you just need to learn to take criticism, you just need to learn to take rejection…” is the tired old list of “This famous author was rejected 72 times for this famous book, and that famous author was rejected fifty-seven times for this other famous book, and so-and-so over there wasn’t even famous at all in his lifetime, so you just need to…” blah blah blah, ad nauseum. These lists circulate on the internet like popcorn at a slumber party, and all they do is serve to illustrate very well a point that I think too many people miss: These lists are prima facie evidence of the failure of the publishing system.

We’re told in one breath that we need to learn to be patient, that we need to learn to write the best novel we can, and that when we are good enough, we will be published. Don’t try to take shortcuts. Don’t jump the rails. Wait your turn. You’ll get there. Then we’re told in the next breath that all of these famous books were rejected over and over, that all of these famous authors were rejected over and over, that some people never get widely read at all in their own lifetimes, and appreciation only comes to them after death.

Well, I say this: Every single time a book is accepted, published and loved that was ever rejected before, that is proof of my point. The publishing industry is so out of touch with the needs of writers and authors alike that it points to its own plentiful failures as proof of its success.

Publishers need to make a profit. Of course they do. Every single thing we undertake in this life needs to be profitable, in one way or another, and for business ventures, the measure of profitability is pretty simple: do you have more money afterward than you did before? But the successful publishers of the future are going to be, as Steve Jordan said in his comment on my guest post at Teleread (actually a guest post at An American Editor, reposted to Teleread, where Mr Jordan made his comment) “an entity that profits off of authors,” rather than “an entity that profits off of book sales.” (Sorry I took so many words to say what he said so succinctly and clearly. This is why I write a great novel, and can’t write a query for it to save my life.")

To those who say that “legitimate” publication is some sort of holy grail that you must sacrifice all else to pursue, all I can say is this: In less than three years of serious effort, I have published five novels and a book of novellas, all of which have been read by real readers, out there in the real world, most of which have been reviewed online somewhere or another (all favorably), and none of which had to pass any kind of test held up by the gatekeepers of the old dynasty.

So the next time you hear someone say that self-publishing is some sort of tacky, illegitimate, shameful shortcutting of the proper process, simply ask them what the goal of the process is, because I say that if the goal of the process is to be read, then put the book in the hands of a reader.

And to those who would stand between me and my readers, all I can say is ”Get out of my way!”