You have no idea how often I get asked this.
The question usually comes up when I’m talking about my writing, how I’ve written two novels already, how I tried for kind of a long time to get my first one published without any luck, queried a bunch of agents about my second one, and am now more actively looking at small presses as a better outlet (entry to come about this one, promise!).
Unfortunately, explaining all this makes it seem like I’m facing a long, hopeless struggle rife with setbacks and failure from which I’ll never emerge victorious. At this point, the person I’m talking to will respond (or, more likely, interrupt) with a well-meaning question/suggestion that seems like the perfect solution to my problem:
“Have you thought about self-publishing?”
The short answer is Yes, But Not Right Now. The long answer is more complicated…
There’s an Unfortunate Stigma Against Self-Publishing That Means A Lot of People Won’t Take You Seriously
As self-published author Jonathan Face pointed out in our interview a few months back, a lot of self-published books are, frankly, pretty shitty.
This is of course not true of all self-published authors (for example, I’ll vouch for Jonathan Face’s writing all day long, or Andy Weir’s novel The Martian was famously self-published before it became a bestseller), but it is true of many. The reasons for this are numerous: plentiful typos, poor editing, mediocre formatting, poor cover quality, prose that’s too wordy and should have been trimmed, etc. These inadequacies signal that the self-published book you’re reading is, well, of lesser quality than one you’d buy from the front table at Barnes and Noble.
Let me say again that these stereotypes are not true of all self-published books, and in the internet age they’re quickly fading as self-publishing becomes more of an actual force within the industry. This is a REALLY good thing for a lot of authors who want to get their work out there, especially authors who write genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, romance, etc.), where self-publishing is more common.
Unfortunately, though, it’s not so good for an author like me who writes smart literary fiction (usually with jokes). I don’t see many books like mine that are self-published, and a lot of the avenues for marketing, literary awards, and using your book as a credential aren’t really open to self-published literary fiction writers, again, because of the stereotypes.
This clearly sucks (and is eerily related to the way people form stereotypes based on what kind of job you have), but it’s something that I as a writer sadly have to face the reality of when I’m deciding how to put my work out into the world.
Self-Publishing Entire Novels Doesn’t Entirely Sync Up with My Creative Goals
As I’ve said a hundred times on this blog, each of us has to set our own goals as creative people because we all have different ideas about where we want our work to go. In my case, my main goal is to make writing a major part of my working life, reach bigger audiences, and earn enough from writing that I don’t have to work Day Jobs or rely on other sources of income anymore—at least to the extent that such work interferes with writing.
That’s a pretty lofty goal, and one that would almost certainly require me to get an agent and make deals with major publishing houses in the future. As such, I want the creative work I do to gradually move me closer to this goal, even if it happens circuitously—otherwise, I wouldn’t really be working toward my goal at all.
This brings me back to what I explained above about people not taking self-published literary novels seriously. This group (once again, unfortunately) all too often includes agents, editors, the people who do the choosing for academic teaching jobs, and anyone else who might want to hire or make a deal with me, especially in the world of literary fiction (albeit the kind that has jokes) that I want to be writing in.
This makes me feel like if I were to self-publish a novel, it wouldn’t help me move in the direction I want to be moving in, but would instead be something tangential.
Of course, in the complex world of people living real lives and doing different things, not every single project you work on has to move you toward your main goal. In the case of self-publishing a novel, though, the amount of work involved with doing it properly is pretty massive: self-published authors have to do all their own layout, design (or pay someone to design) a cover, and triple-check all their own copyediting (or once again, pay someone to triple-check it), not to mention all the marketing and self-promotion you have to do entirely on your own. (The marketing part is basically expected of writers in the social media age anyway, though I’m throwing this out here anyway on top of everything else.)
In short: if I were to self-publish a book, especially in hard-copy form, it would be a big undertaking that took up a lot of time.
And time’s not something I have in abundant supply right now.
The Credibility Boost That Comes from Working with a Publisher is Important to Me
In contrast to self-publishing, where authors work mostly on their own and readers have to trust that authors know what they’re talking about, having someone else publish your book carries an implicit seal of approval:
It means at least one other person thought your book was good enough to share with the world.
Think of it this way: if you met a random dude at a party and he started telling you about how he’d built an app that compared online hotel reservations and started his own business and was really successful and was going places, you’d probably be pretty skeptical. Maybe the dude’s just bragging or talking big—because he’s talking about himself.
Now imagine instead that one of your coworkers that you kind of knew started telling you the same things about the same guy and his hotel reservation business and how it was successful—you’d probably pay more attention.
Now imagine that one of your friends that you know and trusted told you these same things. All of a sudden the fast-talking hotel reservation guy doesn’t sound so lame.
You see this principle at work at public events where someone introduces a guest speaker by telling you the person’s achievements. Because another person’s doing the talking, we trust this person more than if the guest speaker were to walk out and start rambling on about themselves.
The same’s true in publishing, where if an editor at a press reads your book and believes in it enough to publish over all the other book manuscripts out there, it carries a recommendation from someone in authority, and people can sense that. Said recommendation becomes even stronger if the publisher seems important or well-established, or better yet, if an actual agent served as a go-between! Not only do these other professionals ensure that the book you’re reading will actually be good, their very involvement signals to anyone listening that your book is worth taking seriously.
If you’ve delved into the literary writing world, you’ve likely seen that authors who’ve published with small presses are always careful to list the name of the press, as a kind of code that their book wasn’t self-published. I’m no exception: after I made a chapbook deal with Blue Cubicle Press I started noting this with phrasing like “my chapbook Eikaiwa Bums was published in 2018 by Blue Cubicle Press” to establish credibility.
This extra credibility might not seem like much, but it’s important to me as something that can more solidly move me toward my goals. If I were to publish a novel with an indie press, even if I ultimately did the same amount of work marketing and promoting and hyping it that I would have with a self-published book, I’d feel better knowing that I had that extra cred behind me as I moved into the literary world.
All that being said, these are my specific goals, and they might not be the same as yours. If you’re a writer and self-publishing is what you’d like to do to get your specific book into the world, by all means, do it! But make sure you do it in an informed way, knowing what self-publishing can and can’t do for you—don’t harbor delusions, or get sucked in by companies who want to take your money.
And for God’s sake, make sure your book is well-written, looks nice, and doesn’t have any typos—don’t inadvertently reinforce the stereotypes that hurt all self-published authors.
Here’s the Kicker, Though: I Already Self-Publish Kind of a Lot
Everything on this blog is technically self-published because I put it out myself without anyone’s help. (The only exceptions are my interviews and guest posts, which were collaborations.) Every week I put out a new blog post as a way of getting my work out into the world, and doing this on a free blog rather than on Amazon Kindle feels more authentic, more me. From the moment I started writing My Boss Was Crooked I knew I’d also self-publish it on my blog for free—once again, both as an easy way of sharing it with the world, and because it felt more in line with my goals.
The same’s true with my Erochikan zines, which are also self-published and not checked by an editor, but feel more authentic and genuinely indie because they don’t try to masquerade as major press books. Putting out these zines using my printer and photocopier feels right and is relatively easy, so it’s a way to produce creative work that people like while avoiding the (once again, I hate this word) stigma of self-publishing.
By putting out work on my own terms I’m still able to harness the power of self-publishing, digital publishing, and the internet to share my work and establish myself, but for now I’d like to stick to mediums like blogging and zines that don’t carry the same stigma as self-published novels. These avenues feel more genuine to me, are ultimately less time-intensive, and are more in line with the kind of writer I’d like to be.
That’s my plan for now at least—I can always change my mind and form a new one.