Nothing is easy anymore.

It used to be simple: You wrote a (good?) book; you found an agent; your agent found you a publisher.

Well, not exactly easy. If you messed up any of those three, chances are you'd never see your book on the shelves. (Although it was possible to perform those tasks out of order, or occasionally skip a step.)

But now?

I have a few people (people in the know; people I trust) telling me to skip those last two steps and self-publish.

I know, I know. I've already self-published, and it hasn't exactly made me a fortune, or a household name.

Darkside and Waking the Dead have been available at Amazon for almost a year now. So far my royalties have amounted to about $380. Of course, Darkside only sells for 99 cents, which means I only see 35 cents a book. And you can find them both for free. One site alone has downloaded over 800 copies of Darkside and 600 of Waking the Dead. I know downloads don't necessarily mean people read my books. People will download anything if it's free. Still, I can't help but wonder what kind of sales I would've had if Darkside hadn't been offered for free for the last 3 years.

And then there's the fact that self-pubbed authors get no respect. No one wants to review your book, or the people that do don't have enough clout to make a difference. My books have been reviewed on several different sites, and I've never noticed a bump in sales following. Self-pubbed books aren't up for awards, no matter how well written or how well they sell.

What about marketing? People can't buy your book if they don't know about it. As of posting this, Amazon currently lists 27,601 fantasy eBooks alone, a lot of them by traditional publishers whose authors already have a following and name recognition. They're a proven commodity. How does a self-pubbed author compete with that?

So why would I want to self-publish?

I don't know.

What I do know is the traditional market is broken.

Get a lawyer, they say. Don't bother with an agent. Why pay an agent 15% of what you make, when you can pay a lawyer a one time fee to negotiate your contract? Makes sense, I guess. Are there lawyers who specialise in literary contracts? That know about electronic rights and movie rights and serial rights and all those rights I've never heard of? Where do I find one?

But wait, without an agent how am I supposed to get my book in front of a publisher? Believe it or not they don't like you showing up on their doorstep, or walking up to them at conventions (especially when they're in the bathroom stalls) manuscript in hand. For a long while now the agents have been their gatekeepers. (Ooh, that suddenly sounded all Matrix-like!). And I doubt agents are very willing to give up that role.

Traditional publishers are panicking, trying to grab up all the rights they can, and if a writer isn't careful they can get screwed over, which is why you need an agent, or a lawyer, to protect yourself.

And the traditional publisher may not do much more in the way of marketing than you can accomplish yourself, especially if they're paying you a small advance.

When I dreamt of being a writer, I dreamt of seeing my books in the bookstores, of doing the writer signings and conventions. There's that sense of legitimacy from being traditionally published. I'm hoping that's still a viable dream, but I don't know.

Traditional publishing is definitely the more difficult route. Self-publishing used to be the thing you did when you couldn't get a traditional publisher interested in your work. Now, apparently, not so much.

So I'm confused.