Reading, writing, and (oh, my) self-publishing

[roseleaf]

January has been overwhelming me as a reader.  I'm reviewing books again, plus I agreed to critique a book for a friend (more on that in a minute) plus a long biography for a book club, plus trying to fit in books I actually want to read that Charlie and I are both reading.  So, I'm going back on my plans and I'm going to be a little more laid back

Comments

[kathleenfoucart]

I have very mixed feelings. I agree about missing the gatekeepers where certain things are concerned (such as, oh, no spelling errors and mostly-correct grammar), but then there's the dreaded M word: market.

The "gatekeepers," for good and for bad, are all about the market. They have to be. It's how they get paid. I totally get that. But when the market gets saturated in a particular genre or sub-genre, suddenly you have to have either The Next Big Thing hit at the exact right time (i.e. first or second), get picked up in a rush of other similar titles & face getting lost, or you can't get the ms in the right hands to get it through the gate. Or, god forbid, you might be writing in a market NO one in charge currently wants. Then what?

If you've got more than one ms ready to go out into the world and are mostly financially secure through other means, you can hold onto the ms until the market swings back around, no biggie. Or if you're one of the amazing people who can flip between genres easily, it's fine-- keep plugging away until something hits. But a lot of people just can't do that.

So... I see both sides, and I try to promote friends who self-pub when I know their work is quality. Honestly, one of the only reasons I think I haven't looked at it more seriously yet is that I want an editor/writer relationship because I think a good editor could help me improve my craft by quite a bit.

I think that's what it should (and doesn't) come down to-- if you can write quality work, be satisfied with it and don't want those middle-men, self-publishing is great. But if you want that added outside push to really dig deep into a work, traditional is still where you can find that.

(Er, did any of that make sense??)

[roseleaf]

This all makes perfect sense. As far as market goes, though, a self-publisher has to be all about reviews and ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. So I'm not convinced there's all that much difference in the long run. In the short run, of course, the book is published, so there's that.

I very much want to support the quality work that friends self-publish. Her first book was quality. I wasn't quite as torn about self-publishing until I started reading this manuscript. This current manuscript, though, is driving me crazy. It's so much less ready to be published than the draft of Accursed that I read years ago, and it kills me that this book will probably be out there being read by people this year.

[roseleaf]

The more I think about it, the more I realize that part of my issue is coming from seeing the process this time. Honestly, I find it a bit insulting to be test-reading a book when the author already has a cover artist lined up and a tentative release date of June, according to her timeline. It should be about whether you need those middle-men or not, but it ends up being whether you want those middle-men or not. Sometimes those are the same thing, and it's great. Other times those aren't the same thing, and the pool of literature is muddied.