Self-publishing made easy online

shoe says:

Re:ad campaign

How many crappy books have been put out by “real” publishers? The sad fact about publishing is that it isn’t primarily about how good a story is, how well it’s written, or how it speaks to a reader. It’s about, “Can I sell it to as many readers as possible?”

Small and independent presses, unfortunately, are in the same boat with the big boys, and it’s amazing how many rejection letters I’ve gotten with a hand written note at the bottom, “We’d love to, but we can’t afford to print this title” or “We’d love to, but we’re backed up for the next five years” or “We’d love to, but we’re printing our last book ever tomorrow.”

Publishers want proven formulas. They do. It’s sad, but it’s true. They can use some poor peon editors to pretty up prose, if it sucks badly, so that it is at least somewhat readable. Then they can release it, hype it, and sell it. Was the “Da Vinci Code” stellar prose? No. But it did have a catchy story that could be hyped up.

Would “Of Mice and Men” be published today? It’s short. I mean, short is good in most publishing scenarios, but it’s really short. Writers have used the works of Steinbeck et al. to test publishers… They’ve sent typed manuscripts of classic works to big houses, only to be rejected… not because anyone recognized it… but because these stories were “unsaleable.”

It’s a business, publishing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it extremely difficult to break into, and more difficult to make a living at.

Granted, I’m partial. My book was published by a small press, dropped, and then I POD’d it on Lulu. Honestly, I’ve made more money from it on Lulu than I did at the small press, and I felt like I had more say over the matter. There was nothing as difficult for me as signing that contract with the first publisher, having them basically take most of my rights (which is standard for new authors) and then basically let it sit there. I was, for lack of a better phrase, sofa king happy when they discontinued my title and gave me back the rights.

There are good self-published books out there. PODdy Mouth is one site that seems to really handpick the best. Real live publishing contracts sometime come from real live publishers after a self-published book hits it off.

True, there are a lot of sucky self published books. But I’m betting the mediocre self-published book to mediocre traditionally published book ratio is about even.