Another reason why self-pubbing is near pointless
Jim Hines has yet another excellent discussion of self-publishing on his blog.
Down in the comments, sarraceniaceae made an interesting observation, which I paraphrase as "the large comics companies in the USA [1] don't publish a very broad selection of comics."
Which got me to thinking. Yes, I agree with that. By and large Marvel and DC publish superhero books. That's great, but it leaves open a huge market of other sorts of comics. The growth of manga in the USA has allowed smaller companies to appear and to grow very large. Companies such as Dark Horse were able to succeed because they were providing something other than superhero comics. For whatever reason, even when Marvel and DC experimented with other sorts of comic books, they tended to fail, or to cancel them in a few issues. [2]
Perhaps it's that Marvel and DC needed a certain minimum sales level to justify publishing the books, even though a lower sales level could provide profit.
In this way, they're not different from large prose fiction publishers. But unlike Marvel and DC, the large prose fiction publishers publish a tremendous range, encompassing many different readerships. They develop imprints, but the biggest publishers have imprints for every kind of book.
Small presses developed to fill the needs that the Big Six weren't. That's not unlike an indy comic book. For everything from erotica to Christian fiction, small presses sprang up to meet a need that wasn't being filled.
Comic book readers, once they discover the form, go on to look for things they would like. They hunt them down. And because the pool of creators isn't flooded with every moron who can hold a pencil and scratch out his name, the readers can actually find what they want (or something unexpected but interesting).
By contrast, prose readers don't need to go searching. Most of them find plenty to read in the offerings from the big publishers, and what the big boys aren't providing, the small presses are. Prose readers don't need to look all that hard. "So many books, so little time," right? We can all find more that we want to read than we can actually read. [3]
So what are self-published authors bringing to the table?
Not a damn thing.
Most self-publishers are writing something derivative, another genre adventure or navel-gazing literary novel not unlike the thousands already provided by the Big Six. What possible reason would a reader--the ordinary reader, not the freak exception, thank you--have for seeking out a self-published novel when the local bookstore has dozens or hundreds of books to entertain him?
Self-publishers always talk about bringing down the Big Six hegemony. They talk about how great self-publishing is for the writer, the control the writer has, the profits the writer will make.
What about the reader? Why should any reader give a flying fuck about any particular book?
What does a self-published book give the ordinary reader that they can't get from a regular publisher?
[1]presumably Marvel and DC
[2] I'm sure I give away my age by mentioning Amethyst and Sisterhood of Steel.
[3] Notwithstanding the moments when we don't like anything. But that's a failure of mood, not a failure of the marketplace.