Why I Self-Publish

I shouldn’t really have to write a justification of self-publishing. If readers and writers were as open-minded and magnanimous as they should be, they would realize that there are as many artistic paths as there are artists. Unfortunately, however, there are always hecklers and naysayers who decry the outliers, the unusual, and those who deviate from established systems.

I don’t only self-publish. I have sold dozens of stories to magazines and anthologies owned and edited by others. However, I have also written dozens of books, including novels, short story collections (usually a mix of original and previously published tales), memoirs, essay collections, and other works, and these I have chosen to release under my own imprint. I am grateful to modern technology that has made possible the relatively easy publication and distribution of original works throughout the world. Some self-published works are low standard, it is true, but then, if we reference Sturgeon’s Law, 90 percent of everything is shit, even books put out by traditional publishing. Almost all publishers have always been much more concerned with their bottom lines and the prevailing winds of politics and public opinion rather than with pure quality. So it has been, and so it will likely continue to be.

I had a sudden realization that I was a writer when I was in my late teens, during my one year of college at the University of Santa Clara. I was as confused concerning my life’s path as a directionless young person could be until I took a class in science fiction literature and read Harlan Ellison’s dynamic short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” By the time I finished it, I knew that I had to be a writer. When I moved back to Seattle, I attended the Clarion West science fiction writing workshop in 1973, shortly after my twentieth birthday. In the mid-seventies, I set out on the road so I could gain experiences to write about and find my voice as a writer. Once I left the United States, I remained an expatriate for thirty-five years. After a long hiatus, I resumed writing and publishing in Greece, where my wife and I raised our children. It was there that I formulated the hybrid publishing model that works for me.

Every artist walks their own path, and no two paths are alike. I do the best that I can. I think most of us do.

Many well-known writers have chosen to self-publish at least some of their work. For instance, Harlan Ellison self-published several volumes, including collections of his early pulp work, through his own imprint Edgeworks Abbey and HarlanEllisonBooks.com; Andy Weir self-published The Martian; Hugh Howey self-published Wool; Christopher Paolini, or more specifically his parents, self-published Eregon. In other genres, Mark Twain self-published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Jane Austin self-published Emma and Sense and Sensibility; Lisa Genova self-published Still Alice. These are just a few of many possible examples.

In the end, of course, it’s not the accolades or the awards that define you. As Henry Miller observed in his essay “Reflections on Writing”: “Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.” Consider the markings I have made, in whatever channel of publication, to be signposts along the path I have chosen to take through this baffling, magnificent, and infinitely fascinating universe.