Self-Publishing, E-books, and Legitimacy: Part 4

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By a TeleRead Contributor

Editor’s note: Here is Part Four of Luke Bergeron’s series from his blog mispeled. The final part will be published tomorrow– Paul Biba

Today we’ll hear from someone inside the traditional publishing world. This was emailed to me from a member of an established New York publishing house. Aside from working in publishing, he’s also been conventionally published himself. I know it’s unfortunate, but I’ve been asked to conceal his name. He doesn’t want to anger the publishing company that employs him. That’s fine, I understand. I’m just glad to have a viewpoint from inside the machine.

Anyhow, here is his insight, after being presented with my questions:

I totally agree with what you say about a self-pubbed work reaching critical mass via word of mouth, blogging, etc, and, most important, actual sales figures. If a self-pubbed author approaches a publisher and says I’ve hoofed my ass from Kalamazoo to Timbuktu to sell 100,000 copies of a book that explains everything about life, the publisher will sit up and take note.

As for part 2, in general, I think the gate-keeping system in place works pretty well right now. In every media there’s some sort of comparable set up of readers/scouts > agents > editors > publishers/producers/decision makers. Self pubbing or publishing on demand doesn’t really change anything. You’re either happy being self-pubbed or you still want acceptance/approval from established houses for reasons of greed or fame, and possibly on the rare occasion true belief that you have something that will improve the world somehow and want the greater distribution capacity a major house provides.

If this is all in terms of trying to get into a writing program, I’d like to think all that matters is the writing itself. Saying that one is self-pubbed might give credit in terms of the author’s willingness to work their butt off.

Thanks for the input, Anonymous.

Join us next time for the final part of our discussion, where we’ll wrap up our discussion and try to make some sense of everything. Thanks for reading.

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