The Self Publishing Guide Arrives In November
Between writing the first draft of Self Publishing Is For Losers: The Evil Toad Press Guide To Self Publishing and actually setting a publication date, I did of course begin to receive offers of representation. You know, traditional publishing started to woo me. Which, believe me, is not something I thought would ever happen. And I’m not telling you this to brag but, rather, to illustrate a point about why my original choice was–is–still the best. I’ve said before that, unfortunately, nothing succeeds like success. Traditional publishing came knocking for the same reason I initially chose to self publish: our brethren at the Big Five like a sure thing. When I’d first (and second, and third) gone to them, no one knew who I was. No one cared. When they came to me, that was no longer the case.
I’m no Stephen King. But I make a respectable living at what I do and hope to continue making a respectable living at what I do; not because I want a BMW (I recently sold mine, seeing as how I no longer have a law firm to drive to), but because I’d be writing anyway. On a desert island. So being able to buy groceries while still writing is just, like, a nice added bonus. Plus bills.
The sad truth is that most traditionally published authors aren’t making a living at what they’re doing. Neither are self published authors but the difference is that more self published authors are making a living than traditionally published authors. The market has proved that people buy books, not publishing companies; they buy on the strength of name brand recognition, not publishing company confidence.
Why, say, Random House would be more appealing to me after I’d proved that I didn’t need their imprint on my spine to sell a book than before, I have no idea. The mystique of the gatekeepers–agents, publishers, etc–relies on their actually being, you know, gatekeepers. The collective assumption that I must surely still want their help, even when I’d helped myself just fine without them, was predicated on an entirely different assumption: that writers are desperate. That no amount of success, out of the mainstream, can compensate for some arbitrary blessing of “legitimacy.” That, in other words, supporting myself and my family with my writing or, indeed, simply having the satisfaction of charting my own creative course cannot compete with the joy of knowing that some agent and some representative of the Big Five approve of me. Except…I’m not desperate, and I don’t need their approval.
I started out, not to gain approval but to write. To write, and to share my stories with the world. I believed, and still do believe, that my stories are good and that I have something to say. Something that can touch people.
I’m not, believe it or not, longing to sit at the popular kids’ table.
If your high school was anything like mine, then you probably noticed that the “popular” kids were pretty much self-proclaimed. They decided they were exclusive and awesome and everyone else, being sheep, pretty much more or less went along with that. In many cases, though, their supposed “success” wasn’t determined by any real world markers. They weren’t actually good at anything, including getting along with other people. Which is why, I think, so many popular kids flounder in the real world. No amount of self congratulation can compensate for actual success–and the older you get, the more success is determined by the ability to get up every morning and do something. To make friends with new people. To convince them to like you, and to want to work with you, on the basis of your own merits.
My husband has some (now former) friends who, years later, are still getting together and telling each other how cool they are. No one else really talks to them and most of them are chronically unemployed. The most successful one among them tends to hold each job he lands no longer than a few months. But they tell each other that they’re popular, and congratulate each other on being popular, and if their world is slowly shrinking around them then they’re refusing to notice.
Sometimes, traditional publishing reminds me of them: a group of cool kids whose time has passed and whose only method of interacting with the outside world seems to be to tell you how much you need them. Without, you know, ever doing anything. Other than be who they’ve always been and wonder why it’s not working anymore.
My husband’s friends missed the part where “cool” started to be determined by having a career and a family and, you know, life skills. Part of what makes them so sad is that they’re dinosaurs, and they don’t realize it. High school was great–for some people, I guess–but it ended.
Succeeding means staying relevant.
Much of the traditional publishing machine is, increasingly, not relevant. If you think about it, them coming to me isn’t so much a compliment to me as it is a point of concern about them. It’s become a joke, within and about traditional publishing, that no one can predict the next big thing. Which, imagine if this were true in any other field! Success in technology, for example, rests on being attuned to the customer’s needs. That traditional publishing can’t figure out what people want to read shouldn’t be a joke. It should be devastating. And continuing to do things exactly the same way, year after year, while trying to court authors to your team to make up for your deficiencies in not signing them in the first place is not a good thing.
It’s the equivalent of Samsung trying to sell you a typewriter.
Moreover, I have absolutely no urge whatsoever to give creative control up to some random publishing house when I’ve proved that I’m perfectly capable of making intelligent creative decisions on my own. More capable than they are; I knew my books would sell, and they didn’t. So what, exactly, is in it for me to trust their judgment over my own?
Oh, right, I forgot: popularity.
I wrote Self Publishing Is For Losers for other writers like me: serious-minded people who are serious about their success, and who want to succeed on their own terms. Who aren’t willing to compromise artistic integrity for some vague notion of “belonging.” Who want to compete with the big boys, but who don’t want to give into the comedy that only a bunch of old, white men who can’t even use the internet can possibly determine what sells.
If you touch yourself to Harold Bloom, then this book probably isn’t for you. It’s a takedown of the very institutions he defends; it’s meant to help you succeed without him, and men like him, men who’ve defined what “literature” is, and isn’t, for ages. It’s a self-help toolbox for those wishing to become their own gatekeepers and, as such, is going to encourage you to rely on your own best judgment. Traditional publishing and its hangers-on wants to disempower you by telling you what you need. By telling you what to think and what to want. Whereas the goal of Self Publishing Is For Losers is to empower you. By being both the pep talk and the master class in the nuts and bolts of the publishing industry you need to chart your own course–with the only limitation being you.
