Fringe Fiction Unlimited discussion
Self-published books are like homemade cookies
I actually don't care about the profit of my "cookkes" but more about what persons think about its taste, and what I can do to make it the best or, one of the best tasting cookies.
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In almost every instance I have felt the lack of professional editing and input has caused a story and characters to not fulfill their best potential and wondered if even a decent story would have been significantly improved under a second set of eyes. Editors apply commitment and expertise to a book, which does a lot to make an author look good. I know an assistant editor in publishing who spends extensive amounts of time with tight deadlines to make a book better than she found it.
I'm not sure if anybody read Anna Dressed in Blood, but that's one if the books my assistant editor friend worked hard for.
So, no, I don't think traditional publishing is a cookie cutter production. I think it's a lot of professionals investing themselves and their careers in the success of creative authors. If they don't see a story as appealing to a wide enough market to warrant that time, money and energy than that's the business end as much as a comment on an author's own talent.
They're not villains and idiots for passing on poor authors with so much potential - a lot of self-publishing does come across as unremarkable and amateurish.
I think it's wonderful authors have an opportunity to put out stories independent of an industry's input and approval. Some do get overlooked and deserve recognition - which is why groups like this exist - but I wouldn't go so far as to say self-published is superior to traditional. Not when so many of its authors aren't matching the quality and care provided through publishing houses.
Well, I'm stuck working in a grocery store bakery right now, and I can tell you, bakery cookies sure as hell are barely related to a good, homemade, made-from-scratch batch. They are, however, closely related to the buy-it-in-the-refrigerated-section or just-add-liquid mixes.
But . . . if you go to a real, old-fashioned bakery, that comes up with their own recipes, makes them from scratch — no shortcuts — you'll get something real. It might not suit your particular tastebuds, but that's a matter of personal preference.
And . . . there are home bakers who really . . . should go to the grocery store bakery and spare everyone their attempts.
And some who are almost there but need some help.
The analogy does hold for publishing — good for you, coming up with it.
***Warning, it's the holidays and I've had a lot of wine tonighr. End of warning***Meh, same shit, different pile.
I've seen just as much bland cookie cutter stuff in self-pubbed as I've seen in trad publishing.
You want to know the real secret? Money. Money. And more money. If you can find investors willing to bankroll your book, regardless if it's self-pubbed, you'll be a guaranteed overnight success. And these "overnight successes" are usually in the making for years before the public hears about it. An old business adage, "It took me 20 years to get this overnight sucess".
It's all an illusion. A book becomes successful because someone decided it's going to be successful. Also, money.
Let's forget self-publishing for a minute, and translate all of this into being independent. That's what it's all really about. You can follow a signed contract and do what you're told (trad publishing sometimes, supposed cookie-cutter), or you can be independent, say to hell with that, and risk ridicule for attempting to reinvent the wheel (homemade cookies that could be rock hard and no one wants to eat them).
Being independent (making your own homemade cookies) provides a lot of personal satisfaction. But, making a lot of pre-made cookies and exporting them to several countries around the world provides a lot money. It's not an either/or situation. It's not politics, after all. You chose the route that's best for you and the choice is yours.
Bottom line? it's just business. it's not personal.
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Most people aren't making up their own recipes through trial and error - burning batches here, inedible monstrosities there - they just follow the instructions Toll House and Nestle provided.
I'm honestly just wary of analogies like these - romanticizing and exalting the noble endevour of self-publishing while decrying traditional publishing as a soulless machine that spurns true imagination in favor of something predictable and commercial.
I'm willing to best most people here have several favorite books and authors who published traditionally. Obviously a lot of people recognized the talent and potential in those fantastic, original stories.
It's just a blanket deflection to say traditional publishing lacks appreciation for imagination because it avoids a scarier question - what if not every story does meet a minimum standard of creativity and quality that makes it deserving of mass publication?
Again, I'm not suggesting self-published books are universally inferior but it's not automatically superior.
A lot of self-publishing groups hide in that bubble and stop asking themselves real questions while skewing their own expectations. Fringe Fiction is about the rare and overlooked getting recommended - stuff swept to the side and lost in a shuffle. The needles in the haystack.
If some books are needles, the rest are hay - that's true no matter what form of publishing you're writing in :)
Hi AB,I like your cookie analogy :) It rings very true.
Like you, I went down the self-publishing route with the recent launch of a short fiction collection Impromptu Scribe and have no regrets in doing so, despite the uphill challenges of 'getting my cookies discovered'.
It is encouraging to see how many consumers have woken up to the multiple benefits of buying artisan v's mass-produced food (not just cookies), realising what a huge difference their purchases make to local economies with a trickle down effect, as opposed to merely lining the pockets of big corporations.
That's what we want readers to do. Seek out better tasting 'cookies' made with the best ingredients and baked to perfection. Once they have savoured them they will wonder how they ever put up with the par-baked bland white flour pulp variety in the past.
But for readers to savour these 'cookies' they need to be made sufficiently available and have mini-samples to trial, and perhaps there is the rub - despite the relative ease of getting a product to market via self-publishing; the odds of 'new' self-published authors getting discovered are still heavily stacked against them.
There's my two cents worth :)
The rest are hay. No truer words have been spoken.I also feel the other half of the equation should be respected - readers. Absolutely none of us, self-pubbed or trad, would be here without readers, and they tend to get ignored the most in the face of this illusionary debate of trad vs self. I truly don't mean offense, this is honestly my perspective as a reader.
I like going on book binges. I've been doing that for years. When online publishing started, I expanded with the same mindset. Randomly get about 10 titles that seem somewhat interesting, and see which ones are gems. The precentage of non-gems is higher with self-pubbed than traditional. Sad but true. It doesn't stop me, of course. I'll keep book diving as long as I still have my eyesight. I just wish the lower quality with self-pubbed wasn't as common and damaging to my eyesight.
When there's no readers left, this whole debate will be a moot point anyway. At the end of the day, readers won't care how it's published, as long as it's a good story.
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Like Lily said - readers become bargaining chips and after-thoughts when unproven, unprofessional authors feel their right to tell any story they wish trumps a reader's right to a story worth buying.
I get stuck with a lot of hay and hockey-puck cookies anytime I read self-published books.
I would estimste 9/10 were ones I should have passed on with self-published where traditional publishing is closer to 1/2 leaving me very disappointed or questioning why a book was published.
Not much taste testing seems to be going on with these home-made batches overall. Self-publishing needs to rival the professional of traditional publishing in that respect because the readers has every right - and will - spit out any story that's flavorless, stale and hard to swallow.
Yeah, that's about my estimate too.As a reader, I don't appreciate being used as a bargaining chip for any author, no matter how they're published.
I usually have only one question. What's the story about? If that can't be answered in one sentence, I'm sorry, as areader, I've already lost interest.
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Readers shouldn't have to be guinea pigs yet a peril of self-publishing is we have the dubious - and debatable - honor of bring both the first and last people to evaluate an author's storytelling. In traditional publishing there is a small line of people who need to be impressed and satisfied with a book before a reader is asked to taste test anything.
Well, that's the thing. Self-publishing has a rejection rate of 0%. Good news for those who know what they're doing. Bad news for those who don't.I've noticed this misconception about "gatekeepers" many times and I know for a fact they don't exist. Pre-evaluation is hardly gatekeeping, in my opinion.
I'm not saying trad has the better business model. I'm saying that, along with what you've said, Courthey, professional standards in self-publishing are not universally established yet. No pre-evaluation. In essence, what we end up seeing, as consumers, is the slush pile. There might be some nice needles here and there, but a lot more hay.
I agree with Courtney. The differences that can be made by having a professional edit on your work can be remarkable. The trouble with many self-publishers is that they don't even bother to do that, which floods the market with poor quality books. It's always interesting to note the number of authors who have been involved in NaNoWriMo who, in the first couple of weeks in December, announce that they're about to upload their book to Amazon. Seriously? Have they even got beyond the first draft stage?Then of course, there are the many people being sucked in by vanity publishers. It's always so tempting to have that publisher say, 'Well, I really like your book and I think we could go far with it, but you're an unknown so it's a big risk for us. What you need is a co-publishing scheme. If you can help us out with the costs by providing $2000 or so upfront, then we will produce a fabulous book for you, have it edited professionally and help you market it.' What the author is usually left with is a hefty debt and a poor quality book with a dodgy cover that they have to sell for $40 a copy just to make a profit. There are so many pitfalls out there for an author it can be hard to navigate it all.
That reminds me of one woman in a writers' group on Linkedin, praising a online publisher. "It only cost me 2500$ for editing and cover design. They did everything for me and it was so easy."I didn't have the heart to tell her she got scammed and she was never going to make that money back.
Those were really expensive homemade cookies. Btw, the cover her book made me physically ill.
It's so sad, you know? When quality is sacrificed for 5 seconds of online fame. At the same time, I have read some amazing self-pubbed books that made me wonder, why isn't this trad published? I feel that's what self-pubbed authors should be getting their readers to ask themselves, instead of, why does this even exist?
I have reached the point of disgust with publishing where the only *traditional* publishing I have any trust in are the university type presses, and they're really not in it with any expectations of making big profits. *Traditional* publishing is profit-centric. It has to consider "how many hundreds of thousands of people will buy this and are there film possibilities; they are, first and foremost, marketing businesses. The bottom line isn't "is it good," but "will it sell."
And we all know the two aren't mutually inclusive. It's a WalMart world.
Are there self-pubs that really should have found another hobby? Sure. As readers, we have to do some checking before we spend our money and time on books, no matter how they're published. And yeah, samples are always a good idea. Even if the cookies are masterfully baked, they might have a flavor that doesn't appeal to you.
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Imagine what you would do to your book before submitting it to an agent? You'd have to print a fresh copy because of all the blood, sweat, tears, ink and revisions you poured into making that sparkle.
Why? Because approval is needed and rejection is a genuine possibility.
I would not be shocked if some of the books I've read never benefited from that meticulously degree toil and personal torment before the author decided it was time to publish him or herself. All they have to fear is a bad review. Nobody is there to say they need to try harder or make changes before readers will want it.
That's not trial and error; it's trial and fail.
I wish self-publishing did have a review board or some seal of quality to assure me and other readers a certain level of professionalism was attached to every passion project. It would definitely seperate authors who are striving for independence from those who are cowering from rejection.
Oh come on lol Be honest, we're in this for profit ;)
Lily wrote: "Oh come on lol Be honest, we're in this for profit ;)"Some of us are in this for the groupies. I mean, some of THEM are, not us.
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Courtney, I can't take full credit, I think I read it somewhere, but thanks :)I predict that someday in the not so distant future, there will be evaluation of some kind. I mean, bear in mind, all of this is very new. We just have the (unfortunate) luck of watching the whole thing build as it's happening right now. We're in the fetal stage, and time will tell.
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Quentin wrote: "Lily wrote: "Oh come on lol Be honest, we're in this for profit ;)"Some of us are in this for the groupies. I mean, some of THEM are, not us.
...."
I believe you're now officially our most honest member.
Courtney wrote: "All I'm saying is if nubile virgins and rose petals aren't strewn upon my feet upon publication then I don't know why anyone gets into this business."See Quentin's comment. Do we need anything else? ;)
I'm not sure there will ever be proper evaluation for self publishing. I mean, how would they police it? The very notion of self publishing is that you do it all yourself. You can't force people to submit their book and if they're afraid of rejection why would they? Also, plenty of them don't think they need the help.Of course, the evaluators would have to be of good quality too. What if they do crappy evaluations? Plenty of editors out there do it now. I can't see it working.
Lynne, retailers. Amazon doesn't care what they sell, but that's their shtick. They've made a lot of money by sell products cheaply. Good for them. Some other retailers do care, but they're dealing with serious competition, so I don't blame them. But, that kind thing, it's not going to last, because people have to get paid eventually.
I don’t disagree with what anyone has said here and I’ve enjoyed all the comments (especially when the food analogy was continued). I enjoy analogies, especially those related to food, so I couldn’t resist writing my initial post, even though I knew it was limited in its scope.The narrow point of view I expressed initially comes from a background of having seen some of my friends’ marvelous writing get ignored by traditional publishers, while listening to people complain that some bestselling titles are poorly written or sending a bad message.
Something that Renee said rings true for me: “Even if the cookies are masterfully baked, they might have a flavor that doesn't appeal to you.”
I’ve written (and self-published) a book of the “flavor” that I’d want to read, but also realize that since it doesn’t fall into one of the genre fiction catagories, it will get roundly dismissed by people who typically only read sci fi, fantasy, historical novels and such. It reminds me that no matter how many people have told me I’m a good writer or that they loved my book, some people will never bother with it because I don’t write in their favorite category. Of course, that’s a different issue than self-publishing vs traditional publishing, but the feelings around it, for me, are the same.
It’s a little like attending a bake sale where I’ve contributed some marvelous gluten-free cookies that even my picky daughter likes, and watching them get passed over because the majority of people just want chocolate chip. :)
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Er.... ah... so.... the point of this topic is to prove all consumers are just lab rats at a bake sale and we don't deserve a quality product for the money we spend? I don't think I like that at all.Well, gee, maybe your friends aren't fabulous. Maybe they're just wrong for traditonal publishing. Cut your loses, and move on. *shrugs*
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How many self-published books end up releasing a second edition because it was so poorly editing the first times they were getting slaughtered in reviews? That's not at all fair to any reader who took a chance on them and - frankly - a replacement copy isn't a grand consolation prize. Some self-published authors aren't even selling cookies - it's more like cookies dough with egg shells and salmonella, which isn't that much of a treat in story form.
Yes, which is why it's always handy to read reviews, especially the lowest rating ones. I have some friends who don't buy a book until they've read all the worst reviews to find out just how bad it is. That is a helpful evaluation system in itself ... unless the book is so new only 'friend' reviews are up.
The main difference between traditional, store-bought cookies and self-published, homemade cookies is that the former won't give you diarrhoea. :)
Although it's not a bad analogy, I'd compare it with the market for coffee.Coffee comes in many forms and you can make pretty good coffee at home, but if you want to make barista-style coffee that can compare to commercial coffee, you need to invest in both material and education to lift your coffee above Starbucks...
Althiough I enjoyed Jacek's and Martyn's analogies, personally, I don't feel a food analogy is quite appropriate and it seems by focusing on "flavors," it can argued until the cows come home.I'm going to take this a big step further.
A story idea is like an open wound that's bleeding all over the place. You can go to a free clinic who will do nothing but put band-aids on the wound when what it really needs is stiches. Or, you can go to a doctor who will stiched up the wound professionally. Or, you can learn to stitch up a wound yourself in a way where no one can tell the difference between your home job or a professional surgeon.
If the wound is left open and bleeding, you'll have a very hard time convincing consumers the gore is actually a good story in disguise.
Thats..quite the analogy Lily...now I'm a bit queasy...
Quentin wrote: "Thats..quite the analogy Lily...now I'm a bit queasy..."I do what I can :)
But then, that's exactly how the average reader is feeling these days. Please stop using us as lab rats...
Lily wrote: "Quentin wrote: "Thats..quite the analogy Lily...now I'm a bit queasy..."I do what I can :)
But then, that's exactly how the average reader is feeling these days. Please stop using us as lab rats..."
Er, just to clarify to others reading this thread, I don't think she aimed that lab rat comment at me directly. Or did she...... O,O
I agree with the general assessments given above. As an indie author, I've learned the value of multiple edits, of storyline editing, and of taking your time to make a better product. My first two novels were published hurriedly, and I took them down shortly after. Not because of bad reviews, but because I realized that I had rushed things...and, fortunately, they hadn't reached a wide audience yet. I put them back up, with new covers and better writing, a few months later, and I've taken care with each book since then.It's worth the time. It really is. If you don't have money (to hire professionals) then you have to use time (getting input from multiple people, rereading it yourself over and over and over again, etc).
Quentin, no of course not... ;)Jason, thank you for sharing your experience. I couldn't agree more. It's so worth the time.
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I would be totally fine with self publishing a book but I think that books that get published by the big publishing companies tend to do better :)
Jason, good on you for being smart enough to realise you needed to start again before your reputation was damaged.
even perfection is an art. no matter how much money and time you throw at your project, it's subjective. i know some professional artists who went to the best schools churn out some weird stuff. some people buy their wares at various shows. some of the artists got their wares into small galleries. but are they "famous"? not by a long shot. as long as you are successful in your ventures by any means, then you're doing something right.
#my2cents
Yes, so much of writing is subjective. What will appeal to one person will be detested by another. But there is a technique that is helpful to use, although often it changes over time as well. The way novels are written today differs considerably from the way they were written in the 1800s, for instance.
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It is good to know the technique, though, and to use it, as it does tend to broaden your audience, but you need to keep your finger on the pulse as well, because it does change!
I'm not sure I agree, or maybe I do and just need clarification. So pardon me while I babble...Fiction isn't sujective, just like chocolate ice cream isn't subjective. You either love chocolate ice cream or you don't, and I'm told such creatures exist.
An author's view of their fiction is completely subjective. Do I believe my current project is THE BEST THING EVA? Well, yes. That doesn't mean I'm going to impose my view and use it as a shameless excuse to get people to give me money, especially if the quality isn't up to spec and I know I can do better.
I don't see any change in that, throughout publishing history, or in the future. Quality is eternal, as far as I can see.
Lily wrote: "Althiough I enjoyed Jacek's and Martyn's analogies, personally, I don't feel a food analogy is quite appropriate and it seems by focusing on "flavors," it can argued until the cows come home.I'm ..."
I can take it more than one step further, if you want to skip food analogies...
It's like the difference between sex with a prostitute and sex with a slut... The prostitute might know what men want, so she can command a higher price than the slut, who'll probably perform for dinner and two drinks, but while the slut might lack the professional experience, her enthusiasm might make her performance more enjoyable than the prostitute's...
I like the prostitute analogy, too. :)I never realized until reading this thread that there must be a significant number of people self-publishing their work way before it's really ready. It's tough to know when something is ready, since a writer can always do more revisions, BUT...still. There's no excuse for just throwing something out there. (I'm suddenly reminded of one self-published Kindle cookbook I got for free, where the author used terrible food drawings on 3" yellow post-its as the new chapter illustrations. I LOL'ed).
I can spot typos faster than most (and have found typos in books that were professionally edited) but know that I am incapable of spotting all the typos in my own work. There's nothing like a second, third, fourth, twenty-fifth set of eyes. I didn't publish my book until twenty-some people had read it and given me feedback, and I had gotten to a point where no reader came back at me with complaints about it. Then I had an editorial evaluation to make sure all the plot points hung together, and then paid a professional editor. Even so, I know it's not going to be everyone's cup of java.
Fair assessment.And yeah, there are a lot people doing half-assed jobs, giving everyone else a bad name and making the readers jaded. It's a vicious cycle.
Self-publishing has its pros and cons, which can be investigated by comparing books to cookies.
In the world of traditional, store-bought cookies, profit is the main motive. Publishers want to sell lots of cookies. To achieve this goal, they set out to find cookies which might appeal to the largest number of people. They have specific recipes, or formulas, that cookie bakers are advised to follow in order to create a product that the public will recognize as familiar and safe. These products are easy to find online or in various stores, and are frequently bought and consumed by people who do not need to put in much effort to seek them out.
In the world of self-published, homemade cookies, the bakers put a lot of love into their work, but sometimes have difficulty convincing the buying public that their products are safe. Potential buyers look askance at homemade cookies, saying, “Well, if they are so good, surely XYZ Corporation would have bought the recipe and mass-produced it by now.” Self-published bakers sometimes have to give their work away for free, or make extra effort to advertise their product, in order to convince the buying public that their cookies are worth trying. But many times, when the buying public actually tries homemade cookies, they find them just as good if not superior to the store bought kind.
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Your thoughts?