For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, my user-name there is @hprw and I use this tiny picture of a peacock as my avatar. Remember the picture: it will be important later.
A few days ago I encountered a self-published writer on Twitter who had some rather strange views about how self-publishing is regarded. He suggested it was considered almost criminal by the mainstream press; and that perhaps this view resulted from the biased opinions of a few literary reviewers and book sellers.
When I responded that most self-published books were terrible; that book sellers couldn’t afford to give shelf-space to bad books, otherwise they’d soon go out of business; and that most reviewers are only interested in reading good books, he suggested that I hadn’t read any self-published books; that I wasn’t thinking for myself; and that I was just adopting mainstream publishing’s dominant attitude. And so I sent him a link to my other blog, where I’ve been reviewing self-published books for nearly two years.
To which he responded with this:
You’re anti self and ‘vanity’ publishing and your avatar is… LINK PROVIDED
Although his comment initially made me laugh, the more I’ve thought about it the more I realise that it was profoundly sad, because it involves so many fallacies and misjudgements.
By putting those quote marks around the word “vanity” he implied that vanity publishing isn’t exploitative and ugly, and that it’s hardly any different to self-publishing–both of which viewpoints are untrue.
By associating that link to my avatar he made an ad hominem attack on me, which is such a weak retort that it’s embarrassing.
He wrongly assumed that I’m anti self-publishing because I’m not prepared to give bad books good reviews. Perhaps if the top review on my blog had been one of these positive reviews, instead of this rather negative one, he might have felt differently: but it seems from his response that he didn’t look any further than the information which was immediately available.
It’s not my intention here to make a laughing stock out of this particular self-published writer, so please don’t attack or insult him (and just to make that clear, if any comments are posted here which are rude about him I will edit or delete them as soon as I see them): he’s trying his best, and I don’t think he meant me any harm. He’s just defending his territory the best way he knows how and he really didn’t upset me: I’ve had far worse things thrown at me over the years.
What did concern me, though, was the lack of clear critical thinking that he displayed. He assumed that the bad reviews I’ve given on my blog indicate only that I’m anti-self-publishing: he didn’t stop to consider that those bad reviews might have something to do with the quality of the books I’ve been sent for review. And he seemed determined to blame and find fault with me instead of debating with me when I said things that he didn’t agree with.
Why does this matter? Because he is not alone. Every day I see a torrent of misinformation; of prejudice and opinion masquerading as fact. It comes from people who set themselves up as editors and publishers and literary agents without realising they are simply not qualified for the job; it comes from vanity presses who seek to exploit the unwary and the ill-informed; and it comes from writers who accept all they read without questioning it, and prefer the easier options to the often-uncomfortable truth.
Please: if you’re a writer, don’t let your hard work become the victim of such misinformation. Research your subject, question your sources, and make sure you really know what you’re doing before you commit to a publishing contract. It’s just basic common sense.
Is it not the same lack of clear critical thinking that leads people to ill-advised publishing deals in the first place?
I wonder if the emotional response shown by those who react badly to critics just reflects the amount emotional energy invested in their project.
Personal experience suggests to me that potential authors think books sell themselves, too, which is another reason for them to be disappointed six months after their book is printed.
It’s all a bit unfortunate, really. I feel for them (even when they overstep the line!).
Yes, I am so astounded by all the misinformation bandied about, and the few self-publishing success stories are not universally applicable to everyone out there.
Writing is hard enough. Can’t imagine trying to learn publishing ropes in addition. The gentleman who argued with you is just defending his territory as you said. Even in mainstream publishing world, a negative review just means that the book/story is not a very good one, not that the reviewer is anti the industry.
A friend gave me his self-published book. I wanted to love it. The very first page had typos in very first paragraph!
He was so proud that he was “published.” I was sad.
And I fear it’s going to get worse as Amazon cranks up its Create Space venture and we all saw the kerfuffle when Harlequin announced a vanity publishing arm. What troubles me is the amount of corporate clout that markets vanity publishing – they can buy credibility because their advertising about “you too can become a published author” is slick and believable for the novice author.
I’m extremely interested in the arguments currently circulating about the perceived differences between vanity, self-publishing and traditional publishing. I try to read as widely on the subject as I can and to keep an open mind.
I live in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where much to my irritation and frustration, amateurism is considered acceptable amongst writers and many in the publishing industry. The aim is to be published, and to hell with the spelling and grammatical errors, the flaky plots and naff covers. The author’s family and friends liked it, so there.
I feel really strongly about this and rather than sit on my backside and complain, I want to do something to change things, to help professionalise the industry here from the bottom up. I’m only a lowly self-employed editor & proofreader, but one with a sense of vocation for everything to do with books and publishing. I’m particularly interested in your comment in the final paragraph:
“Every day I see a torrent of misinformation; of prejudice and opinion masquerading as fact. It comes from people who set themselves up as editors and publishers and literary agents without realising they are simply not qualified for the job”.
Too many people in NI publishing are self-appointed “experts”. However, I need to be careful here because effectively I’m also trying to set myself up as someone whose opinion is worth listening to. I’d be really interested to hear what qualities and qualifications you think are required to be able to speak with authority. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that having worked in-house isn’t one of them!
I agree with Diane that there’s a huge amount of emotional energy invested by potential authors but that’s no excuse for personal attacks on people who are trying to help!
Thank you for your blog, and all the information you share.
I do admire your tenacity, Jane. I also feel Averill’s frustrations. But I have finally come to realise that very few of those who continue to believe the nonsense that’s bandied about regarding the ”freedom’ of any other option but seeking a trade publishing deal, at least for fiction, will never be persuaded otherwise however much you and others patiently explain otherwise. (And get insulted for your pains.)
As I grow ever older and more cynical, I’m inclined to let them sink into the mire of their own ignorance, I’m afraid. I was brought up to believe that anything worth doing was tough and conversely anything that looked too good to be true, was. Whatever happened to that philosophy in this ‘you’re worth it’ society?
People become very personal about their writing, to the point that any comment made about it is an attack. When critiquing anyone for the first time, I am extremely careful not to be too disparaging lest I provoke a similar reaction. Sounds like this guy has gotten poked a few times by people trying to help him improve. A person like that either gives up or goes into a protective shell. A shell the vanity presses help exacerbate.
I think that we all share similar frustrations when we see writers being led up the vanity-publishing path and yes, I know that there’s little to be done: but that doesn’t stop any of us trying, every now and then.
Averill, I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that for certain jobs you HAVE to have real publishing experience: to be an agent, for example, or a commissioning editor. Copy-edit and indexing, which are your areas of expertise, I gather, aren’t quite so demanding of such experience. So long as you’re properly trained and you’re obsessive, meticulous and oh, yes, obsessive, you should be fine.
What frustrates me, as a “properly” published writer several times over, is the total lack of understanding the general public displays about what being published means. Sorry if this sounds patronising – I’m aware it does, a bit – but bear with me.
This partly manifests itself as a tendency towards gullibility when it comes to the “first-time author gets multi-million advance” type stories – see that item Jane posted yesterday! People can’t understand why you are not “rich” and “successful” if you are a writer. (Obviously I am posting this in the middle of a wild and decadent party in Girls Aloud’s LA mansion. Get *off*, Nadine.)
But, more seriously, I increasingly encounter people who just don’t know the difference between publishing, self-publishing and vanity publishing. I meet people who claim to be “published”, who show me their heart-sinker self-published volumes full of dreadful presentation and peppered with typos, and I realise nobody has ever disabused them. More damaging to us as writers is that there are schools who will take on writers for the day who are not published or who have a bad self-published book or even vanity published book to show. The head teacher or literacy co-ordinator doesn’t actually grasp that this is not a published writer, not a member of the Society of Authors or the Writers’ Guild and that they paid to have their book printed. And that booking these people deprives professional children’s writers of the paid engagements they desperately need, as well as not being good value or quality for the kids.
Some days it’s as if the tone-deaf caterwaulers from The X-Factor all went off and paid to have their own CDs pressed, and then came back to wave them in Simon Cowell’s face to tell him he was wrong, because they were now “signed” and successful…
It’s such an emotional thing isn’t it really??
Like you said if you are really going the self-published route then you owe it to yourself and to your readers to make your book the very best it could be. Although I do think the traditional route to publishing (agent, agent selling to established publishers etc) is still very hard to match or beat for sheer scale of expertise, money and professionalism and experience.
take care
x
Replying to Averill….
The problem is compounded by there being too many not-very-competent folks within the walls of mainstream publishing. I worked for many years at one of the large NY trade publishers, and we in the paperback copyediting department used to make fun of the folks in the hardcover copyediting department, because too often we were cleaning up their messes.
Publishing, alas, is a field where people mistake unctional literacy as the only requirement, not realizing that as in anything else, there are degrees of competence. I can’t imagine a field more subject to Dunning-Kruger Syndrome.
Fortunately, the most competent of readers, writers, and editors don’t hold back when criticizing the efforts of their compatriots. The comments on Amazon.com will often reveal if a book has truly egregious errors. (Alas, self-published and vanity-published books almost never have broad enough sales to generate that sort of comment.)
The quick difference between the different categories:
1. Properly published books (I hate the term raditionally published, as that was created by a filthy vanity publisher) are edited, have high production values, and have sales, marketing, and distribution. The large publishing houses generally have people on staff for these functions, with armies of freelancers at their disposal. Smaller publishing houses may depend more on freelancers or outside vendors. Self-publishers either have to do these things themselves or hire third parties.
2. Vanity publishing is when a publisher makes claims to be a real publisher, but doesn’t have all of those above functions. They may offer to sell such functions to the writer, but usually at inflated prices, and with verbiage that allows the vanity publisher to keep control (e.g., they only offer a choice of one–them–to provide these functions). Vanity publishers generally draw the line at sales/marketing/publicity–they don’t have those functions, or have inadequate versions (listing on Amazon is not distribution!), and the author doesn’t realize these limitations.
The main difference between vanity and self publishing is a recognition of responsibility. The vanity-published author pays someone else to perform all the publishing functions, without understanding that they (the author) have other options.
True self-publishers understand all the parts of the publishing chain (Why do large publishers hire hundreds of people? What do they do?) and make educated choices about what parts of the process they want to handle themselves, and what sort of vendors they need to subcontract to.
Vanity/self publishing? I’m having my novel, NORTH SLOPE published as a paperback by Createspace through Acclaimed Books Ltd. It has cost me $44 so far. When the proof copy arrives and I accept it, then my book can be advertised, promoted, marketed by whatever means I can dream up. Is this vanity publishing or self publishing? No, of course it isn’t; it’s POD; print on demand. My novel was first published by Macmillan in 1980. I was described as ‘A gifted narrator’ in the Financial Times. ‘A cracking good first novel’ said another. It never went into paperback. I don’t know why. Now I can dream on and look forward to promoting it. I have had six other novels published since then; all by Robert Hale Ltd. Oh, and on the point of reviews, do we trust them? I had one of my novels, THE DEVIL’S TRINTIY reviewed by a well known, on-line review site. The reviewer absolutely panned my book. Said some awful things about it. That year it sold out. Unfortunately, Hale wouldn’t print any more. So I’m glad I didn’t have to depend on that particular book reviewer to sell my book.
Keep fighting the good fight, Jane. But we who are out there trying to keep writers with stars in their eyes from suffering the most avoidable of the many heartbreaks in front of them have to understand that we’re asking them to give up on the attractive shortcut, and do some seriously hard work.
We’re also asking them to give up the emotionally magnetic excuses for their own manuscripts’ or books’ failure to make dreams come true.
Is it any wonder that most of them would rather listen to the siren call?
For what it’s worth, there’s a yahoo group called Self-Publishing, with about 3,000 members that focuses on exactly these issues, and is dominated by those who are really making a go of self-publishing the hard way (and making money at it) and a cadre of old pros from the industry (many alums of “Big NY houses”) who are handing out free info. When you get really exasperated, send’em on over to hear it from the people who are out there making those very same dreams work. They may not have any more success, but it’s one more chance.
Michael: It may be my fault but I am rather confused by your comment which seems to wander vaguely through various unrelated aspects of being a writer. POD is a merely a process that can be used by both trade and vanity publishers, but only for small print runs, otherwise it’s not viable. Whether one calls having book published ‘vanity’ or ‘self-published’ depends on whether your name (or the name you have chosen as a trading company) is on the title page as publisher. The latter means it is genuinely self-published. If the name of the publisher is anything other than your own then it’s vanity. If you’ve paid even a penny for someone else to publish your book, then again it’s vanity.
Robert Hale is indeed a reputable trade publisher but only sells its books to libraries and not through bookshops (although they are available to buy online.) So being ‘sold out’ does not mean the same thing.
As for getting a bad review, I’m sorry, but it happens to all of us and it goes with the territory. It has nothing to do with how a book does or should sell. Hale’s decision would not have had anything to do with that review. Hale will have decided on the print-run at the outset based on how many libraries are likely to buy it. I’m not aware, but I may be wrong, that Hale does reprints. Perhaps another Hale author could tell me.
@ Jane Smith:
Thanks for the advice, Jane. I tend to be an obsessive obsessive, so perhaps I am in the right job after all. And training is always a work in progress.
Reading this makes me, once again, think that I need to be patient and particular. If something I write is good enough to be published then it will be good enough for someone else to pay me for it! I keep telling myself it really is that simple. I can do everything else well but the writing itself has to be good enough….oh well back to arranging the cat hairs as carefully as I can!
@ DanielB:
It happens in many professions.
Every person who works in a library is a librarian, too (I know, I really am a librarian. Or used to be).
I’m not against self-publishing, nor do I look down on it. Like Jane, I’m just against inferior writing. I’m also against writers who think they are too good to be edited. No one is. No one.
Publishers make the choices they do based on one very sensible – inevitable, actually – rule: can they bring this book to enough readers to make the investment work? In other words, do they think there are enough readers out there and can they find them?
Every writer, through whatever means of publishing, soon discovers one thing: it’s not easy to get readers to buy our books. Publishers who have invested money in our books usually do a better job than anyone else could have. However, if a writer is also a very good business person and has a great deal of time (and often money) then that writer can do a good job of self-publishing, and keep more money from each copy sold. (But probably have no time for the one thing we should love: writing.)
Michael – I’m afraid that what you discovered was that being published is no guarantee of sales or of being published again! Vast numbers of published authors discover the same, I’m afraid. Being published doesn’t involve the sudden opening of a huge door through which we pass to some kind of heaven. Re the bad review – what Sally says. Reviews, bad or good, don’t do as much as we sometimes think. I wish you huge luck with your book – it will be very satisfying for you and you at least know that the book was good enough to attract postive reviews when it was first published. Sounds like a good strategy to me.
Great post, jane!
It’s good to read reactions to a post of mine. A quick reply to Sally about Hale doing a further print run. I do believe, from the Hale Authors’ blog that Hale did actually do this – once! I was once asked to pay $5000 dollars to have a novel printed, but that was years ago. That’s when I learned about Vanity publishing. So I’m quite happy shelling out $40 or so to see my first novel in paperback. The rest is up to me. Mind you, over the years, and increasingly so lately (web influence), I have seen so many arguments and counter arguments about the right and wrong way to appraoch a publisher, literary agent and so on. And I’ve seen figures bandied about with regard to what writers earn. Earlier this year I read an article that claimed the average, yearly income for a writer, according to the 2009 figures, was less that $500. Today I have read somewhere in these web pages that the average advance form a mainstream publisher is $10000. All I can say is – phew! And why do I keep seeing dollar signs? Anyway, I’m able to call myself a published author (Robert Hale) with seven novels to my credit (the first by Macmillan), and am quite happy to go down the Vanity/Self publishing route. Should be fun, Incidentally, the ‘publisher’ I am with, which will be accredited on the book jacket is Acclaimed Books Ltd. This is a cooperative, made up of about six writers (all published) who are venturing into the brave new world that a lot of people in the industry seem to eschew. I wish us all luck!
What a marvelous post and what marvelous, thoughtful comments. As one who reads manuscripts for a living, I see ignorance about writing and of the publishing industry as being the biggest reason for rejections.
The problem with vanity is that it feeds our instant gratification society. People are more excited about “being a published author” than they are about enjoying the process of learning to write well. The result is that we have a gajillion terrible books out on the marketplace.
Sure, everyone has the right to pay to play, but when the industry sees a pattern of very poorly written books, they will step in to maintain their integrity. “Not fair!” the vanity authors cry.
You know what? Life isn’t fair. It’s about talent rising to the top, and most vanity authors haven’t put in the time to hone their skills.
Additionally, undereducated writers have no idea how hard it is to sell books. Case in point: we have a book whose author has a very big platform and a very huge story. The stores wouldn’t touch it (I’m in the US). They yawned and ordered a pathetic few hundred – even when we showed them his promotion plan. Yawn.
Demand shot through the roof, and we blew through 5k copies in 48 hours. The stores sat up and took notice and screeched for books. Ohhh, now you want us. We blew through another 8k units since mid-June.
Now, if we had to work that hard to get our books shelved, what hope does the vanity writer have? My author had the support of his publisher, publicists, our sales teams, distributor. The vanity author has no one.
So I always ask those interested in vanity: Do you want it fast, or do you want it good?
Michael – I like the idea of a co-operative, whether for publishing or for promoting. I’ve had several conversations with people along those lines. Good luck! I think the fact that you’ve all been published will help you succeed.
Lynn – that’s why I hope to continue being published by a publisher who can distribute my books without my having to do more than write and speak and wave my arms a lot. And smile. And a bit more besides but not actually sell the things.
I know who it was you had that Twitter chat with, Jane. I’ve just seen him tweet this:
Thanks @XXX but I’m not sure @hprw would want to be associated with me!
When @XXX (I deleted the name to protect the innocent) asked why, he replied
@XXX I dared to defend the notion that not all self-publishing is bilge!
I watched your discussion with him, and just wanted to let you know that I was bemused by his attitude. He’s usually a nice enough man who I’ve had a few good conversations with and I don’t know why he was so defensive with you. I didn’t think you said that all self publishing is bilge, and he didn’t defend self publishing, he was downright rude to you. You were very restrained in your replies.
It’s a shame that you have to put up with people treating you like this. He got things completely wrong, and is now angry with you because of it. He’s made a fool of himself, but I doubt that he even reaslises it.