Too idle, too cheapskate...
Just been reading an interesting article on how to design a cover for your self-published book. At one point it said "Many writers choose to get a professional cover designer to help them out. The cost of this service starts at around £100 / $150 and goes up to £1,000 / $1,500 depending on the experience of the designer or demand for their work". It went on to explain how those who didn't have the readies could DIY, which sounded like a hell of a lot of work for anyone who wasn't used to it.
It was at this point that I realised why I would never go down the self-publishing route. The DIY option isn't really on for someone who has neither IT expertise nor any flair at all for design. But I literally couldn't bear to start actually shelling out money to get someone else to do it. I don't make much from publishing, but it has never actually cost me anything more than postage and I have a rooted objection to the idea that it ever might. The thing about self-publishing is that you have to start by spending cash, not only for cover design but for actually creating your artefact at all. The alternative is to build up expertise in fields that may not interest you - I am, I realise, prepared to spend a lot of time and trouble researching and writing a book, absolutely none producing the artefact (I suspect, by the way, that an awful lot of poets resemble me in this; we are not, by and large, the practical type). I want to send it off to a publisher and let him do all that. This I can currently do, and not a penny spent...
What if I didn't have a publisher; what if print publication became really difficult to attain? Would I do it then? No, I don't think I would. I know how to put something online without paying any money; I would do that instead. Sure, it wouldn't make me any money - but neither would it cost me any. About 350 years ago, the German epigrammatist Friedrich von Logau wrote
"Es bringt Poeterey zwar nicht viel Geld ins Haus,
Das drinnen aber ist, das wirft sie auch nicht raus" - which means, more or less, "It's true that writing poetry doesn't bring much money into the house, but at least it doesn't cause you to squander what little there is". I translated it, once, as
"The Muse will never make you rich, it's true,
But she costs less than most mistresses do".
Those who write what could, potentially, make megabucks may have an incentive to speculate in order to accumulate. Literally no poets fall into that category (and the few who make a reasonable income will probably never want for a publisher). I can only see self-publishing working for poets who have some publishing and design skills, or enough money not to mind paying others to use theirs. So you'd potentially have two groups in print: design and IT whizzes and the equivalent of yesterday's gentlemen and lady amateurs - an interesting mix. But if my Muse ever starts charging, she's out the door.
It was at this point that I realised why I would never go down the self-publishing route. The DIY option isn't really on for someone who has neither IT expertise nor any flair at all for design. But I literally couldn't bear to start actually shelling out money to get someone else to do it. I don't make much from publishing, but it has never actually cost me anything more than postage and I have a rooted objection to the idea that it ever might. The thing about self-publishing is that you have to start by spending cash, not only for cover design but for actually creating your artefact at all. The alternative is to build up expertise in fields that may not interest you - I am, I realise, prepared to spend a lot of time and trouble researching and writing a book, absolutely none producing the artefact (I suspect, by the way, that an awful lot of poets resemble me in this; we are not, by and large, the practical type). I want to send it off to a publisher and let him do all that. This I can currently do, and not a penny spent...
What if I didn't have a publisher; what if print publication became really difficult to attain? Would I do it then? No, I don't think I would. I know how to put something online without paying any money; I would do that instead. Sure, it wouldn't make me any money - but neither would it cost me any. About 350 years ago, the German epigrammatist Friedrich von Logau wrote
"Es bringt Poeterey zwar nicht viel Geld ins Haus,
Das drinnen aber ist, das wirft sie auch nicht raus" - which means, more or less, "It's true that writing poetry doesn't bring much money into the house, but at least it doesn't cause you to squander what little there is". I translated it, once, as
"The Muse will never make you rich, it's true,
But she costs less than most mistresses do".
Those who write what could, potentially, make megabucks may have an incentive to speculate in order to accumulate. Literally no poets fall into that category (and the few who make a reasonable income will probably never want for a publisher). I can only see self-publishing working for poets who have some publishing and design skills, or enough money not to mind paying others to use theirs. So you'd potentially have two groups in print: design and IT whizzes and the equivalent of yesterday's gentlemen and lady amateurs - an interesting mix. But if my Muse ever starts charging, she's out the door.
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