Barbarians at the Gate

I am destroying literature. I’m sorry about that. Really. I don’t know what got into me. Here I was, a regular guy, doing regular guy things like cooking meat with fire, watching baseball games, and writing funny things on the internet, and all of a sudden, it turns out that I have been engaged in the systematic and deliberative process of wrecking the foundations of Western literary culture. My bad.

Well, that’s the argument that somebody named Michael Kozlowski is making at some digital publishing website or other. I put out a book earlier this year that was self-published (something that I have YET to apologize for, you might note) and that makes me part of the problem. Or, if you want to put it another way, part of the unholy conspiracy to stop literature and replace it with crap.

To the best that I can discern, these are his principal arguments:

You can’t browse Kobo, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon without running into a maelstrom of poorly written and poorly edited books. All of these bookstores put indie authors’ books side by side with established authors, who are signed to a publishing company.

Oh, how DARE they! The nerve of some people! Imagine, putting a poorly-written book on a digital shelf next to another book that is actually good! They should be ashamed, these digital retailers!

Of course, it’s not as though actual, real-world publishers don’t put out dodgy, poorly-written books themselves, and durn it if some of those books don’t sit cheek-to-jowl with well-written books on actual bookshelves. And, of course, it is not as though I am in charge of how Amazon (my book is just on Amazon for the time being) slots my book. All I did was put it into their database. If Amazon wants to put my book next to GONE GIRL (please, please, please) there’s nothing I can do about it. So that’s not on me.

At a recent publishing conference in London, Andrew Franklin, founder and managing director of Profile Books, blasted authors who self-publish. “The overwhelming majority of self-published books are terrible—unutterable rubbish, they don’t enhance anything in the world.”

To which I have four responses:

Thbpt.
Even if my book is rubbish–reasonable minds can disagree–tons of rubbish gets published every year by traditional publishers. Self-published books may have a higher percentage of books that are rubbish than traditional publishers. I will grant you that. But there are plenty of self-published books out there that are decent, or better. You just have to seek them out, like you would any other book. The odds are going to be worse for self-published stuff, but that is the point at which you use your judgment.
And even if it’s true, so what? So what if my book is bad? (I will point out that the majority of reviews have been five-star so far.) So what if some other person published a self-published book that is bad? Big deal. No one is making Michael Kozlowski or Andrew Franklin read any of them. Why does it matter to them, anyway?
No, seriously, THBPT. Koslowski complains that Amazon and “[a]ll of their other self-publishing programs do not have anyone proofreading or editing the book.” It’s true that it’s not a requirement, fair enough, but I had my book edited, more than once. I had it proofread. I worked as hard as I possibly could given the time constraints involved to make my book as good as possible, and even if you’re going to include me in the rubbish heap, you can at least acknowledge that. And if you can’t, thbpt.

Then there’s this:

Good e-Reader has around 3,000 Twitter Followers and over 5,000 Facebook friends. Not a day goes by that I don’t see people asking for ebook sales. “BUY MY BOOK!” No marketing, no reason to buy it, JUST BUY IT!

Well, here I have to say “guilty as charged.” I spend about ten minutes a day setting up tweets asking people to take a look at my book (although it’s not as crude as “BUY MY BOOK!”). But nobody in this world is forcing anybody to read any of these tweets. If you don’t like it, just unfollow. If you think that Twitter is too spammy (and it is) then don’t use Twitter. (I am not convinced, at all, that these tweets are helpful or do very much to build my brand, but other people who are more successful than me do it and it seems to work for them and what do I know?)

So am I ruining Twitter> Maybe. But that’s a far cry from ruining publishing. How am I doing that?

One thing indie authors have done is devalue the work of legitimate published authors. You know the type that write for a living, who have an editor and are considered accomplished, or at least well-read. The average indie title is $0.99 to $2.99, and the average publisher price is $7.99 – $12.99. Book buyers have been so conditioned to paying as little as possible that often they will not even consider a more expensive book.

Well, to disprove that, all you need to do is look at the rankings at the Kindle store. I am perusing it now, and note that there are three books in the top 100 for literary fictionas I write this that are what I’d call bargain-priced – Michael Chabon’s THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION (HarperCollins) at $1.99, THE BIRTH HOUSE (HarperCollins), a novel by a Canadian author at $1.99, and A MIRACLE OF CATFISH, by the late Larry Brown, at the same price. A MIRACLE OF CATFISH looks as though it’s published by the late author’s editor, which I guess could be self-publishing. I don’t know. The only other book priced less than my book in the top 100 for literary fiction is a Mark Twain book, which I guess is nice. Authors with books priced at $2.99 in the list include Meg Wolitzer (a 2007 release), Jodi Picoult (a 2008 release), Ali Hosseini (a new book), Pat Conroy (his debut novel, published in 2010) and Elizabeth Berg (a 2003 release).

So, okay, look. What Jodi Picoult (just to pick out one name) is doing here is selling something from off her backlist for cheap to drive up sales. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Is it stopping people from buying other, better books? No, I don’t think so. Is it ruining everything for everyone? No–there are plenty of more expensive books out there that people are buying.

So what is Jodi Picoult doing to destroy American literary civilization?

I can’t think of anything, either. Okay, maybe she’s cutting into her own profit margin, but that’s her choice. Maybe she’s undervaluing her fellow authors a touch, but their prices still seem to be fairly high and it looks as though there are enough sales to go around.

If she’s not doing anything wrong with her $2.99 book, what am I doing wrong with my $2.99 book that isn’t selling anywhere near as well? I can’t imagine. To the extent that the $2.99 (or 70% of it) is going to me instead of Jodi Picoult, I can see how that hurts her, but it’s much more likely that she is eating into my sales and not the other way around. Besides, why can’t we both be successful? Why can’t everyone be successful if they’ve written a good enough book?

I am a barbarian. I will admit to that. I am outside the gate, but not from lack of trying to get in. But all I’m doing is trying to sell books. I am not stopping anybody else from buying anybody else’s book. I am just trying to do my thing here without the Michael Kozlowskis of the world trying to say I’m responsible for things I’m not even remotely responsible for.