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The real source of the self-publishing stigma
March 17, 2010 | 7:30 am
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By Paul Biba
Is the title of an article at Publetariat. According to the author the source of the stigma doesn’t come from agents, publishers, bookstores, reviewers or readers.
The stigma, the author says, comes from other writers – the competition. Self-publishing is a threat and a traditionally published author is validated by the system he is working in. Writers, says the author of the article, are desperate for validation and they will “ignore their own will in favor of being accepted by their peers. … So let’s sum it up, in a really competitive industry the stigma agains going outside the system is your competition.”
There’s a lot of strongly worded stuff in this long article and it’s well worth reading the whole thing.
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This quote really struck me: “If someone won’t march in line like the rest, you attack the quality of their writing, their character, and their mental state or capacity. They aren’t good enough, they haven’t been validated, they are lazy or taking a shortcut. They are delusional. They are naive. And if none of that works, you define them as “the exception” and say they shouldn’t encourage anyone else to do what you’re doing.”
It’s in the context of traditionally vs. self-published authors, but it applies equally well to traditional paper vs. electronic publishing, I think. “E-books can’t possibly be cheap, you’re delusional. Cheap e-books haven’t been properly vetted, you’re insane if you think removing big chunks of the production cost should be reflected in the final price. Anybody selling inexpensive e-books is an exception, and nobody else should consider following suit.”
I know that I, as a reader, am less inclined to pick up a self-published book. Because I know that the quality control is coming down to the author’s choices.
There are high quality self-published books. But there’s a massive amount of second-rate and total dross. The mere fact of it being self-published won’t stop me from looking at an interesting sounding self-published book which is recommended to me by a friend. But I have zero interest in trawling through – or even glancing out – the thousands of new releases coming out monthly in the hopes of finding the few that meet basic quality standards.
As there is, in my opinion, an awful lot of professionally-published “dross” out there, assuming that a major publisher automatically equates to a quality product makes as little sense.
Thanks for the shout out!
To the person saying they are “less inclined to pick up a self-published book,” I don’t expect “any” reader to look for self-published books to support specifically. But if someone is self-publishing and doing it “right” and putting out a good book, you are unlikely to know it’s self-published. It’s not like self-published books are segregated to Lulu. My work is on Amazon, and I sell quite a few copies each month probably mostly to people who have no idea it’s self-published.
The point is that if a book is good it doesn’t matter if it’s self-published, and readers who say they won’t touch a self-published book are in the minority. Most readers I’ve spoken to who aren’t also writers don’t care one way or the other. The only thing they care about is if the book is good.
And if readers aren’t trolling Lulu for their book buying, chances are good any book they come across that looks good, if it happens to be self-published, it won’t matter.
There is a lot of really crappy indie films and indie music out there, but no one judges ALL indie work based on the crap because they understand that indies are “indie” and therefore cannot be held responsible for the work anyone else puts out. Only their own.