Self Publishing Favors the Rich

I'm a happily-married 45-year-old man, and I've recently been rejected by a LOT of young women.

The young women in question are book bloggers, who have rejected my requests to review Enter the Bluebird. Or, rather, who have, for the most part, not even acknowledged my requests to review Enter the Bluebird.  As is their right--they don't owe me anything.  But I do think my experience has some bearing on the whole "traditional publishing vs. self publishing" thing that has flared up again in the wake of the Amazon-Hachette dispute. 

The Hugh Howeys of the world have risen up to defend Amazon, pointing a populist finger at "one-percenter" Hachette authors who are standing against that big ol' friendly bear Amazon, who holds self publishers in its cuddly embrace. 

I've already written about how Amazon enjoys special status as a for-profit company that is not expected to turn a profit, and how that cuddly embrace may turn a bit more prickly whenever Amazon's shareholders decide that the future is now and they need to make money.  

But what bugs the crap out of me about this is the big names in self-publishing acting like James Patterson is lucky and they're not.  

Everyone who succeeds is, to some degree, lucky.  And the self-published authors are right that most people are incredibly unlikely to ever make any money in traditional publishing.  

Of course, the same is true of self publishing.

Now, it's quite true that you can now get over the hurdle of actually getting published very easily. But you're still going to  have the problem of getting anyone to read your book. 

Here's where the above story of my rejection by young women comes in.  I am an established young adult author with several traditionally-published YA novels, and I approached only  bloggers who had already positively reviewed one of my novels.  And the overwhelming majority of them ignored me.

I have to imagine that someone who is self-publishing their first novel will not have any easier time of it.  

I ran a Kickstarter campaign for Enter the Bluebird, and I've used my blog, Twitter and (late, probably not lamented) Facebook page to try to drum up interest in it.  

And I have sold 111 copies.  Or 186 if  you count the Kickstarter backers. (Thank you!  You are awesome!)

Most of these were sold when the book was on sale for  99 cents or $1.45.  If I hadn't crowdfunded  the editing and cover design for Enter the Bluebird, I'd be several hundred dollars in the hole for this project.

Now I suppose one of these people who believe that everything is a meritocracy might say that if I only just worked harder on publicity, I could attract some more attention to my book.  I should have leveraged my platform! Or platformed by brand! Or branded my leverage! Or something!

The bottom line is that anybody who sells a lot of books is lucky and nobody knows how the hell they did it.  If they did, everybody would do it.  This seems ridiculously obvious, and yet the big names in self-publishing are especially annoying because they continue to post this, "if you were only as smart and hardworking as me, you'd be a bestselling author too!"

This is self-serving horseshit.  

And the faux-populist attacks on the "one percenter" authors further obscure this inconvenient fact: you really need to have money to be a successful self-publisher.

Here's what I mean: you can self-edit, but you're not going to be as good at it as a professional. I don't care who you are; someone else will see the flaws in your work better than you will.  So you need to shell out for your editing. 

And then you need to shell out for your cover design, unless you also happen to be a graphic designer. 

And, if you actually want to sell your book, you should probably pay somebody to do publicity.  Cool!

Or maybe you don't have the money for all those things, but you've got the time and energy to learn to do it all yourself and then do it all yourself. Which means you have money, and you more than likely don't have kids.

This is how self publishing limits our perspectives every bit as much as traditional publishing.  In traditional publishing it's the tastes of agents and editors; in self publishing it's the ability to gamble what is, for most people, a significant amount of money on a project that more than likely will not pay you back. 

I know this was a very different time, but Stephen King, built a career based on Carrie. Would he, living in a trailer at the time,  have been able to invest a lot of money up front on that project, not knowing if he'd ever see a dime from it? 

Maybe he would have released a shoddy, self-edited, self-designed edition that wouldn't have sold.  Or maybe he would have scraped together a bunch of money to pay professionals and it still wouldn't have sold.  Because that happens to most books. Or maybe he would have sold four million copies anyway.

I'm not saying that self publishing is bad or wrong or inferior.  I'm saying that Hugh Howey and David Gaughan and their ilk need to get off their high horses about how democratic and wonderful self publishing is because it actually favors people with money more than traditional publishing does.