Self-Publishing

There seems to be a good many self-publishing services cropping up over the web, but I have to take them with a grain of salt. Regardless of how you do it, self-publishing is rarely a good way to get your book seen if you want it to hit mainstream audiences.

There are, however, a few good things that you can do with self-publishing.  My grandfather has a book that he treasures which lists our family genealogy back 500 years, with a history of the family researched and written up by a cousin who is a genealogy hobbyist. He’s also the one who went to the trouble of having hardcover editions of this book printed.  The book can mean little to nothing to anyone outside our family, will never be sold at a bookstore, and will never have much more than a few dozen issues printed.

That is one of the areas where self-publishing is useful and works well.   In these days of the E-Book, it is entirely possible for an author to self-publish without much cost whatsoever (as I plan to do, publishing my first novel as an e-book under creative commons).  However, this is more of a good way to get exposure in the publishing community than to actually…make a living off of your writing.

Unfortunately, to do that, you’ve still got to do it the hard way.  There may be a lucky few who self-publish and make it to the big leagues . . . but they are just that, lucky.  Especially without the assistance of a professional, experienced editor,even if you self-publish through a service that places your book at Amazon, it is unlikely that it will sell more than a few copies, much less gain the notice of critics.

I tend to take the same tack as Stephen King when it comes to editing: “To write is human, to edit is divine.”  Many times, it is the editor who can take what might be a mediocre, or just moderately good, piece of work and turn it into a great piece of writing.  Authors, myself included, have a tendency to treat our work as a sacred child, and sometimes it is necessary to cut out even your best loved passages to make a story work.

For what they provide, these self-publishing services do what they do well and offer a convenience that was hard to come by before, however a writer should not go to them expecting to be the next New York Times bestseller or to make a million dollars off of it.

After all, if you’ve come to writing in the first place expecting to be a millionaire….you’re probably writing for the wrong reasons anyway.

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Writing Authors, E-books, New York Times Best Seller list, Online Writing, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Stephen King, The New York Times Company, Writing