To self-publish or not to self-publish - Part I

Foreword:

Today I finished my new round of changes to Book 1 (The girl from Otherworld).

Now what?

Well, apart from writing Book 2 (how’s that synopsis going, you ask?), there’s publishing. And with it comes the important question: to self-publish or not to self-publish?

A few years ago, this might not even have been a concern. You just tried for an agent first. But now self-publishing is becoming more respectable, it is a real dilemma: should I even try for the traditional route, or just embrace self-publishing?

There’s a French saying that goes, ‘Between the two my heart swings,’ and it really is how I feel about publishing. One morning I’m rearing to self-publish, the next I’m back to wanting a publishing deal.

In the next couple of posts I’m going to try to explain why, for me at least, it’s not a clear-cut answer, and what the advantages and disadvantages are for both. Needless to say that this is NOT a guide for anybody else to make a decision on whether to publish or not, but my own internal comings and goings.

I am therefore pleased to present …

Part I - To self-publish

1/ My book doesn’t follow the rules.

My book is YA high fantasy, a combination that’s not exactly hot at the moment, while YA is also said to be saturated. My story has characters with quite different ages (14, 16 and 25ish), and a main character who is scared of her own shadow (not the usual ‘moving the action forward’ kind of character) and might well get on some people’s nerves.

It also has three different points of view. When I tell people in the trade about this, I always get that sucking in noise people make when they want to say: ‘Oooh, that’s bad!’ The ‘eeeesh’ kind of noise. Then I get told I need to make sure each character has a really distinct voice for it to work, and I hope I have achieved that, but they may well disagree. I also don’t think it’s as big a problem as they say (in my completely unqualified opinion). Game of Thrones has more points of view characters than I can name, Alone in Berlin changes points of view mid-thought (not that this is a good example to follow) and authors have been using omniscient points of view for ever. So what’s the big deal?

The problem is that it’s unusual in the kind of book I have written, and therefore there is a risk attached to it. A lot of risk.

I have heard great and terrible stories about publishing, but on the whole what I understand about it is this: most agents and editors care deeply about the books they sell, but they are also in this business to make money. In order to find books that sell, they look at what books have sold. Now everyone knows this is a poor predictor of what is going to sell, but everybody is famously rubbish at predicting what the next big thing is going to be. Both Tunnels and The Night Circus were predicted to be as big as Harry Potter, and well... Have you even heard of them? Publishing a book costs money, and publishers gamble when they take on a debut author. And that is why they don’t want to take any extra risks. Now I’m sure people can argue at length about the disastrous consequences this might have on the quality and diversity of literature, but it’s not their money being put on the line.

I, on the other hand, would be willing to risk it, because (most days) I believe I have written something solid. And that is where self-publishing comes in.

2/ It is now easier than ever

If you wanted to make your book available on Amazon, all you’d need to do would be to convert it to the right format and upload it. That’s it.

Now it might well be that it’s unedited and badly formatted, but the distribution on Amazon is that easy.

I have read a number of tutorials, and the reality is of course a lot more complicated. There are different platforms and formats to consider, there is proofreading of conversions to be done, there are tax concerns to deal with. And there are many, many companies out there who want your money and will try to screw you over.

However, the fact is that all the services available to publishers – line editing, copyediting, proofreading, formatting, illustration, cover design, typesetting, printing, even marketing and distribution to real bookshops – are all now available to independent authors. Some services are offered by large companies, others are by individuals who can be contacted on platforms such as Reedsy.

As I see it, as an independent author you become your own publisher, which means you do all that a publisher would do. You either pay for it (as an investment) or you learn to do it at a professional standard. There is a plethora of articles and self-help books, as well as forums and writers’ groups, so if you are committed and do your research, the information is out there and (mostly) free.

3/ You can reach the same audience as a traditionally published author

Well, yes and no, but of course here I’m going to argue yes.

The ebook audience has long been the domain of self-published authors. Platforms such as Smashwords reach a number of ebook stores, except Amazon (but as we’ve seen, that’s dead easy) and the internet (blog reviews, Wattpad, Goodreads, etc.) allows indie authors to reach out to complete strangers. Sure, putting a book on Amazon and reaching an audience are two different things, but it's been done. A few self-published author successes (the authors of Switched and Wool for instance) have shown that complete nobodies could become bestselling author.

(If you are wanting to throttle your computer as you scream ‘Yes, but!’, bear with me – I know it’s not all black and white).

But for a really long time, that was it. Bookshops, libraries, schools – no one wanted to hear from a self-pub author. They had enough books to choose from and in my experience were the most likely to suffer from prejudice against self-published authors. Why wouldn’t you get traditionally published if your book was good enough? #stiffupperlip

From speaking to a few hopeful writers, it is still an issue. To find a distributor, you need to be a publisher. To get to bookshops, you need a distributor. Some people established their own publishing companies (employees: 1), but this can be viewed as cheating (i.e. pretend you’ve been "properly" published when you’re just another reject of the traditional route).

That being said, I think things are changing. The attitude of the public and the industry towards self-published books is not as negative as it used to. With companies like Matador* offering distribution to bookshops, indie authors now have a shot at street retailing as well, which is great news.

*I know I bang on about them – I swear I don’t receive any percentage of their profits. I haven’t even tried them myself – they just sounded pretty impressive and I haven’t found any negative articles about them.

4/ Authors have to do all their promo themselves anyway

Twitter presence, blog tours, writing blogs… Whether they are traditionally or independently published, nowadays authors are expected to be actively promoting their books. And it’s not just author talks and interviews. I have been told that authors should also be approaching bookshops directly to offer to sign stock or do events. So if authors are going to be doing all their promo anyway, they might as well keep the profit.

5/ You've got the power!

I've got the power!

As a self-published author, you get to decide EVERYTHING! You can choose the cover you want and what it’s all going to look like. You have total control over everything (except, of course, whether people buy it or not).

It’s terribly exciting, and it also means that there are no nasty surprises. Nobody can make you change things you feel deep down are wrong for your book and your career. You don’t find yourself in the horrible situation where the heart of your baby (your book, that is) is being torn to pieces by the people in the marketing department who clearly don’t understand your work of genius. Or that ugly cover design over which you have no say.

The problem with traditionally publishing is that you are only the writer. Oh, yes, you’re supposed to help with promoting the book, but the publishing bit is not your job. This has its advantages  (see next post), but it also means that if your publishers completely screw up your vision for your book (or even your vision of you as an author), you have no leverage. You have signed a bit of paper that has handed that over to somebody else and you are legally bound. This, more than anything, is what scares the crap out of me.

Of course you might also make all the wrong decisions as an indie, but hey, at least they were your choices, and not something imposed on you by a third party. Not great if you don’t like making decisions, though… *whistles*