The New Self-Publishing
Books ought to be so cheap that we can throw them away if we do not like them, or give them away if we do. Moreover, it is absurd to print every book as if it were fated to last a hundred years. The life of the average book is perhaps three months. Why not face this fact? Why not print the first edition on some perishable material which would crumble to a little heap of perfectly clean dust in about six months time? If a second edition were needed, this could be printed on good paper and well bound. Thus by far the greater number of books would die a natural death in three months or so. No space would be wasted and no dirt would be collected.
- Virginia Woolf (via Snarkmarket and The New Yorker’s Book Bench)
People will continue to read fiction for as long as people read text. The real questions about the state of publishing pertain to the ways fiction will be produced and distributed. Right now the business is cutting out middlemen, like so many industries before it. Many of the traditional ways of marketing books are, in a networked world, improper allocations of time and attention. These shifts occurring may be dramatic. It may seem like the recession alone is to blame, but what’s taking place isn’t just cost cutting. In the long run I think we’ll see publishers better equip to take on riskier authors, as well as find sympathetic audiences and build communities for them.
Right now, publishing a book takes too long, the results are enormously uncertain, and the economic risks are too great. This means less money upfront for authors, making alternatives to the book deal more and more attractive.
A recent article in Crain’s points out just how much less an author should expect to sign for, compared to last year: “$35,000 is the new $75,000,’ “ says Michael Morrison, president of the general books division at HarperCollins Publishers. But you can make $80,000 on Scribd, if 10,000 are willing to download your book for $10. This is a liberating alternative for someone who already has an audience.
Harland Miller, Too Cool to Die, 2002
One of the best known self-published authors, Wil Wheaton, tells Washington Times’ Kelly Jane Torrance, “The incredible ease of distribution online and the fact that more authors — and actually, all creative people — can reach their audience and their customers more easily and more directly than at any other time in history, I think makes self-publishing an option that can be considered in the first round of choices rather than the last resort it’s been perceived as up until, let’s say, 1998 to 2001.”
Torrance also speaks with Lulu’s Gail Jordan, “Who needs a travel agent when you have Expedia? We’re much more used to taking things into our own hands and controlling them. Lulu is not going to tell me they don’t like Chapter 10 … It’s up to the marketplace to decide if it has value.”
For now, a success story, like Lisa Genova, interviewed by Lev Grossman last winter in his story on the future of publishing, still ends with a big publisher making an offer and catapulting the book to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List.
I don’t believe any recent self-published books have topped best-seller lists, but it has happened in the past. A NYT story, dated July 9, 1990, is an interesting look at the model’s break from its stigma as “vanity publishing,” paying to see your name in print.
A bunch of mid-90s self help best sellers (What Color is Your Parachute, Chicken Soup for the Soul) were self-published. There was demand for self-help that the speed of publishing wasn’t able to address at the time. Trends are difficult to capitalize on in this industry and there are no publishing “coolhunters” looking out for what we’re going to be reading, thinking, talking about in 2011 — the earliest, conceivably, your book purchased today may be published and distributed.
For someone who’d never deign to read a self-help, much less write one, self-publishing might feel like giving up. I was talking about some of this the other night with Diana Kimball, who recently wrote a paper on the subject. (Update 5/25/09: Kimball’s paper, “Paper Houses: Vanity, Doubt, and the Perils of Self-Publishing”.) She made the often lost point about a major publisher’s role as validation for the author, as well as the reader. The author needs to know someone with expertise and good judgement found his or her material worthwhile. Otherwise, why risk the embarrassment of bringing unsatisfactory material to a wider audience?
For someone brave or crazy enough to believe the rejection letters were unjust, the creative control in self-publshing could be more of a draw. Moreover, if you do it and you’re a success, you could handpick your editors and build your own marketing team. You no longer need to worry about an agent or editor not getting you or wanting you to change something essential to your vision.
The worst argument against self-publishing is that it further floods the sea of books, making it harder and harder to find good reading. This is why I love that Virginia Woolf quote. We’ve always had more text than time to read, the limitation prior to the Internet was based on libraries within driving distance. Things will get lost, certainly, but a ours is the first generation whose process of learning involves retrieving obscure interesting information and feeding it to a wider audience.
Still, the major stumbling block for a self-published author is audience building. Maybe Wheaton could sell as many books this way if he never appeared on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” But there’s no way self-publishing could be profitable for him without his broad Internet fanbase. Authors, by nature, tend to be a shy sort, who would rather not go about the business of shaking hands and kissing babies. But that’s also an issue easily corrected with folksonomy and greater participation in the book world social media like GoodReads. It’s pretty hard to find books similar to that last book you really loved, for reasons I described earlier. If I could enter Max Frisch’s “I’m Not Stiller” in a search engine and receive several recommendations of similar books, you bet I wouldn’t care if they’re self-published or not.
Previously:
Save or Delete: Post-Scarcity vs e-Clutter
Reading Only Devices: Why iPhone, Kindle, and Tablet PCs Might Mean Smarter Blog Comments
Literary Novels and Fan Culture
Matching Books and Readers: Publishers Need Better Websites
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