Why is “Self-Publishing” Still a Dirty (Hyphenated) Word?
Earlier this year, one of my sisters dragged me along to a game show audition. After filling out a four-page questionnaire that asked such insightful questions as “What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you?”, “Have you ever been caught out in a lie?” and “Do you have an unusual bucket list item?” (presumably so that they could be discussed and laughed at on national television) as well as what we did for a living, we were then grilled by a producer.
“You’re a writer?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I answered.
“What do you write?”
“Books – novels and how-to guides on writing novels.” I could have given him my entire writing résumé – articles, websites, marketing collateral, corporate tenders, ghost-writing, short stories, song lyrics, poems – but I was trying to keep it brief.
“And you’ve published three books?”
“So far.”
“Who with?”
“I’m self-published,” I said.
“Oh,” he replied with a disapproving tone in his voice. “So you just sell to friends and family?”
“No, I sell all over the world.” In fact, I’d been looking at a royalty statement just a couple of days prior that listed a sale in Italy, which surprised me a little because the majority of my sales come from English-speaking countries. But the obviousness of his disapproval made me feel like I needed to defend being a self-published writer. “And my upcoming novel was shortlisted for the 2016 Text Prize. Do you know Text Publishing?”
“Sure,” he said but I’d already lost him and he moved onto the auditioner standing next to me. In just a few moments, an insignificant television producer had managed to reduce my greatest achievements to some sort of inconsequential side note in my career. Worse than that, I stood there and basically took it.
So why is “self-publishing” still a dirty (hyphenated) word?
Amongst writers of all levels and many in the publishing industry, I’d argue it isn’t. After all, it’s how a lot of famous authors got their start. Matthew Reilly (The Contest). Hugh Howey (Wool, Shift and Dust). Lisa Genova (Still Alice). EL James (Fifty Shades of Grey). Andy Weir (The Martian). They’ve all gone on to be published by traditional publishers eager to get on the money train. But to people outside of the industry, who don’t know (or really care) how these and many other writers got their start, it’s still something that people who aren’t good enough for traditional publishing do.
I forget sometimes that ordinary readers almost never know the background, the private jokes, the inside stories that those of us in the industry take for granted. (I was talking to another of my sisters just a couple of weeks ago and she didn’t know that Fifty Shades of Grey was Twilight fan fiction, which I thought everybody knew by now. “Really?” she said. “Of course,” I replied. “And it’s obvious. Take out the vampires and add in all the kinky sex and they’re virtually identical.” I went on to list several examples. “Oh my God, you’re right!” she exclaimed.)
When I finished writing each of my last two books, I didn’t ever consider traditional publishing. I didn’t submit to a single publisher. I didn’t see the need to. Instead, I edited and proofed the manuscripts myself (being a trained editor really helps with this), registered my own ISBNs, engaged a book cover designer, finalised the paperback and ebook templates, sent the first to the printer and the others to online ebook platforms and when they were all ready, I did my own marketing. (Yeah, I mostly suck at marketing but a lot of the time, so do traditional publishers.) And my books are indistinguishable from all those lining the book shelves in stores because I’m nothing if not a perfectionist.
I know not all self-published writers have the same sensibilities as I do. Some publish first draft ebooks full of errors, trite characters and derivative plots, usually for free or for $0.99, which I think is the required minimum price on some platforms. And you don’t need to buy and read them to know they aren’t quite up to scratch. Because the blurbs are badly written with just as many errors as the books themselves. They’re usually reasonably easy to avoid. But to lump us all in together just because we self-publish is like saying Justin Bieber, 5 Seconds of Summer and The Weeknd aren’t musicians because they were discovered on YouTube and Ed Sheeran shouldn’t be taken seriously because for the first six years of his career he recorded and released his songs independently.
I’ve also read plenty of traditionally published books that have boring characters, no plot, terrible writing and so many typos, misspellings, poor punctuation and bad grammar that a high school English teacher would fail the author.
To avoid the unsavoury reputation of self-publishing and its vanity publishing connotations, some writers prefer to call it indie publishing (you know, like indie films, which are cool; Robert Redford founded both the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival to support indie films and filmmakers and he’s cool, too). But would it have made any difference to that television producer if I’d said, “I’m independently published” instead of “I’m self-published”? I think he’d already made up his mind about self-published authors long before I ever came along and no fancy euphemisms were going to change it.
The way we self-published writers change it (his and everybody else’s minds) is to make sure that when we do self-publish, we don’t do it indiscriminately. We follow the same processes that traditional publishers do, which means not publishing first drafts but fourth or fifth drafts that have been through multiple rewrites and assessments and that have then been edited and proofed to be as perfect as it is possible for them to be and have professionally designed covers.
The way we change minds is simply to prove them wrong.
It’s not going to happen quickly, especially because traditional publishers want us to think they are essential and have convinced most readers (AKA the people who buy books) of this. But gradually we will get there. Look how far self-publishing has already come in the past ten years. Imagine how much further we will have gone in the next ten. And how much further again we’ll be in the next twenty.
In the meantime, if you’re a self-published author and someone gives you attitude about it, give it right back. My favoured approach (now that I’ve gotten over the shock of that moment and had some time to think about it) will be to ask how many books they’ve published. None? “Oh,” I will say in a disapproving tone, then walk away with my head held high.
*First published as “A Dirty Word” in The Victorian Writer Oct-Nov 2017 issue
