Do-it-yourselfers have flourished in the arts forever.
Musicians who write and produce their own music - playing many of the instruments and recording vocals plus harmony - are considered brilliant artists. Prince, Beck, and Lady Gaga come to mind.
Independent filmmakers who write, direct, and star in their own movies are considered auteurs.
On a much smaller scale, anyone can post their opinions - or disinformation - on the internet as if they were a New York Times Op-Ed columnist. They don’t need editors or producers. Or credentials.
Many podcasts are solo efforts, and they’re booming. Marc Maron famously recorded his WTF podcast in his garage.
Yet tell people that your book is self-published, and they might wince, as if your work was a bastard child.
Hey, being a bastard child isn’t even a stigma anymore.
So why does the bias toward self-publishing persist? It makes no sense.
Revolutionary technologies have changed the game. YouTube influencers are now a thriving group. Podcasting has grown exponentially. Mobile phone apps presented new opportunities for code geeks. All three - YouTube videos, podcasts, and smart phone apps - have been a boon for do-it-yourselfers.
Years ago, I gambled on self-publishing. Ebooks and ebook readers had already existed but I believed that Amazon’s Kindle would open the floodgates. In my estimation, the digital book revolution was coming, just like streaming audio and video. DIY authors like me, I assumed, were on the crest of a tsunami.
Not so much. That hasn’t really materialized. And I still don’t understand why.
When a recording artist drops a new single or a self-produced album on Apple Music and Tidal and Spotify, etc., nobody sticks their nose in the air and dismisses their work because it wasn’t produced by a major music label. When Netflix debuts a new show, nobody cares which production company made it. The same is true for newsletters and blogs. You’re reading this content via a DIY self-publishing service.
Yet if your novel is self-published, people sense a whiff of amateurism. If you’re not published by Random Penguin Schuster MacMillan House, your writing must not be good. That’s the general perception.
Some people claim that the word “self-publishing” is the issue. It suggests the authors only do it for themselves and therefore can’t be serious about their work. Maybe that’s true for some, but I’ve taken all 15 of my self-published novels seriously, and I don’t just do it for myself. I want people to read my work.
Some suggest that self-publishing is a last resort for authors who can’t get beyond publishing companies’ slush piles. I never even tried to get my last ten novels through the abattoir of traditional publishing. Why bother? So I can be rejected due to randomized P&L projections? So I can give 10% to an agent who doesn’t do much? So I can surrender control over cover design and how long my titles remain in print?
I once worked in film production as a story analyst. I understand what it’s like to have your work judged by entry-level low-wage readers who would rather not take risks for fear of losing one’s job. That was me. I judged screenplays. And I would hesitate to submit my material to the person I was back then.
I had an agent years ago, and she was so frustrated by the revolving door of publishing company editors that she quit being an agent.
The innovation of the new technologies - YouTube, podcasting, blogging, etc. - is that, for better or worse, there are no gatekeepers to bar your entry. Likewise, self-publishing skips all the middlemen.
Also, with self-publishing I maintain the copyrights to every novel I ever produced. They’re still for sale to this day, even 20 years after publication. And my ebooks will never go out of print.
I wish I knew why people still turn up their noses at self-publishing, especially with all of the aforementioned tech innovations out there. But I intend to keep self-publishing my bastard books in the hope that someday readers will respect the content and not care how it was conceived.
Opmerkingen