Publishing : Self publish or go the conventional route?

This question comes in a lot.  People think they can just throw up a novel for a buck and it takes off from there.  What they forget is that Hocking and Konrath (the successful ones) released a new book about every couple months.  If you can't do that don't even bother.

As far as the cheap Kindle route, as Konrath has put it on his own website, unless you have the will and the drive to continuously author/co-author books every few months all you will make is some extra cash for groceries. Hocking used the Twilight trend and wrote teenage vampire fantasy crap.

Last time I checked, the two most popular book genres were thriller and romance on Amazon. So if that is not your writing style, it probably won't sell. It should be everyones goal to get a real publisher, at least for the first book. You need a following really before you can make sells on your own. 

Sometimes publishers are just dick wads though, and in that case self-publish, but market yourself in every way possible. And show yourself some respect with your prices, only run sells. 

Formatting an E-book properly is also a painful process, hire someone if you do.

(great answer I wish I came up with - see above)

I'm leaning more toward the Tietz option myself.

No, self-publish. Make some noise, and hope they notice. Grant it, I probably won't have beautiful models in my promotional pictures.

@matthew--yay hunger games.

Also, yeah try editing an anthology with 30 writers and carrying all those hopes and dreams. If I don't publish legit, I will have failed them so I am working my ass off to make it happen but I have so many naysayers. You just have to be persistent.

@Hall - Can I rip off the idea of a Amish gone horribly wrong? lol

You guys have to realize one thing: some of the writers are not there for the money, just to get their work out there to readers. Although piles of money from writing would be swell. :)

I am from Czech Republic, meaning there is farily small market (there is 10 mil of czech people - now how many read/how many read books - you get to number under one mil), so there is not a lot of space for new authors at publishing houses.

I went down the road of self publishing just to get the books out to people, fans, whatever. The number of books released wasn't stellar, but then, it was better than having it in my table locked away.

The way I see it, if you can't get a place with publishing houses for some reason and want to get your work out, by all means, go for it. Next time, with the stuff I am writing for my class here, I am thinking about releasing it on Kindle for few bucks.

But then, if you want to make money from it, there are probably better ways...

99.9% getting paid and getting read are the samething.

What Alien said. Unless you're happy with a few hundred sales (if you're lucky).

But it all depends on what your goals are. If you want to teach, you need to sell your book to a recognizable press. If you want to just get it out, then self-publish. If you want to be widely read, then you need to get an agent and then have him sell to one of the big six. 

I've experimented with self-publishing, one of my stories "Victimized" that I wanted out there as the full 7000 word story. It was published in Murky Depths as a 5000 word version. I've sold maybe 150 copies at .99 each. 

OR there's Plan B: work on short stories, learn how to write, get better, publish widely, start to build up a following, keep learning and growing, and then start work on a novel (and submitting to an agent, then indie presses, then self-pub). 

Best of luck. It's tough out there, but it's possible to break through, I've seen a lot of Culties and people here at Lit do just that.

Self publishing isn't just write a book and throw it up on Amazon. If you want any sort of success, you'll need to spend your own money.

I have a three part series that I'm self publishing because, quite frankly, the slush pile is for donkeys. I'd rather self publish, sell for $2.99, and collect my 70% and find creative ways to market than jump through the testicle gargling tribulations of agents and publishers.

If my books are good and I market them well, they'll sell well enough for an agent or publisher to approach me for the rights...if they aren't good or I can't market them well, then they won't...that's it.

You as a writer should be writing to write, not to sell books. Every writer/author should take a minute to think about the process of querying. We let this happen to ourselves. The agents and publishers have the upper hand because you want them, which is lazy.

I've queried once, to thirteen agents, who never even asked for a sample chapter, because they have everyone under the sun querying. Well, if more people take the initiative to self publish, agents will be the first disenfranchised group, and I'm okay with that.

I'm firmly of the belief that if you can write a query letter, you have no business writing a novel. If you can summarize your argument in less than a page for a work of fiction, your work of fiction is worthless. So, if you are going to go the conventional route, hire a marketing writer or publicist to write your query letter and synopsis. You're too close to your work to write a query letter about it.

On another note:

If you self publish--hire a cover artist and editor (or two). Make your work worthy of being called published material. It needs to be edited by a professional, with a masters degree or five years of in field experience editing. You need to save your pennies and pay for this, or you will not see any results.

So far, between ISBNs, cover art, and editing, I've managed to keep my costs of publishing to around $1,000/book.

Are you maknig that back?

thanks for the ELance.com link, hadn't heard of that. good luck with the book, post up here and we'll help you promote it, when it's live. 

You sent your book to agents without having someone else edit it first?

For the editing, not that this is directly related to Matt's comment, but I forgot to mention, it'd be incredibly useful to have an editor who has edited your genre before. I should have mentioned that in my original post.

Elance is really awesome. I suggest every writer at least explore it, even if you don't post.

I sent a sample chapter to twentyish editors and learned a lot, especially that if your style doesn't line up with your editor, you're fucked. They won't have their heart in it.

Which leads me to believe that this problem happens more often than we'd like to belive: if you go with an agent and a publisher who's willing to work with you, that doesn't mean the editor you're assigned will love your work. I'd rather pay to work with someone who want's your book to be all it can, than someone who's editing because they get paid to edit.

There were probably seven editors that I conversed with that simply didn't want to do my project, seven that wanted to, and seven who were unqualified.

There's nothing more satisfying than being able to choose from a pile of editors...I can understand why Agents love their job. That power is mesmorizing.

This is a great discussion and very timely. You all bring up some very good and enlightening points. Sorry in advance for the long post, but I am very interested in this topic. I have no idea what I am talking about, so feel free to skip it.

Although I personally haven't published anything as of yet (and have only submitted one story ever because I think it's important to learn to write before accosting the world with horseshit) I do pay close attention to trends in the publishing industry so that if (and hopefully 'when') I ever perfect my craft to take that next big step I will be aware of all of my options. It is clear they are being transformed in a revolutionary way and that no one really knows just how big self-publishing is going to be. But I think it is going to be a hell of a lot bigger than anyone thinks.

I like to use the do-it-yourself analogy that burgeoned in the home improvement industry over the last few decades. Even up until recently, the resources and industry 'secrets' were kept from consumers as a way to guard profits. Showing someone how to do something is often times the surest way for someone to put themselves out of a job. Residential electrical work is a good example. Keep people afraid of electricity to keep them from discovering just how easy it is to do their own wiring; in fact it is one of the easier projects, if informed, that a homeowner could ever tackle. Now that is not to say that everyone should do this. But for the ones who are willing to take the time to replicate the professionals, then, by all means, they should do so. But one has to be prepared to learn--which translates to more work than having someone else do it--which is precisely what the publishing industry does for authors--work.

It seems that the number one thing is to get the work ready before any publishing action is taken. This means, first and foremost, learning how to write. All too often self-publishing is pursued because the author has failed to produce a manuscript of quality in the first place for one reason or another and far too frequently it's due to outright laziness. Most have simply not put in the hours to learn how to write in the first place and blame it on an industry who doesn't understand them because they are so far ahead of everyone else--when actually the opposite is usually the case: They are so far behind.

And even if one has learned the craft, the work doesn't end with a completed manuscript that only the author has laid eyes on. A story, like a secret, hardly exists if only one person knows about it. I would go out on a limb and say that most great stories became great thanks to additional sets of eyes and brains... and imaginations. What if askers. Sure, it is the author who is the director but without a producer and gaffer and, and, and then the project is likely to suffer.

At the bare minimum, like Ryan Noir and Bradley Sands mentioned, one should find an editor and one with whom one has a great deal of chemistry with. Nothing sounds more counter-productive than hiring an editor who isn't passionate about the work; or even worse, dislikes it.

This seems like yet another area where patience and diligence are crucial. Taking the time to find the right fit could make all of the difference in producing a quality manuscript. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't editing really just another layer in the creative process? 

But it doesn't end there. From what I have gathered from successful industry insiders, it usually takes at least a team of five to assemble a book--and then some. So it would seem to make sense to mimic this process as closely as possible in regard to the self-publishing endeavor. Be prepared to wear more hats. In other words self-publishing shouldn't mean skipping steps. If anything it should mean reinforcing each and every one, making sure all the bases are covered which translates to yet more do-it-yourself elbow grease.

But this is no longer limited to self-publishing, if it ever was. A friend of mine in Portland, Rhonda Hughes of Hawthorne Books, flat out asks authors what they are willing to do to help promote their book. Nowadays, more than ever, publishers want to know what an author brings to the table promotionally. They want a partnership, as Rhonda says "someone who is going to get down in the trenches next to her". They want to see 'followers'. Twitter lists, social networks; all of this is now in play self-publishing or not. Understanding this fact can help you get published. Knowing what is expected of you. Contrary to popular belief, these people do not want to deal with a difficult artist. That is a romanticized version of the truth. They want to work with authors who understand the industry and who are going to make their jobs easier, doable. Someone who is fun to work with.

That being said, I personally think that self-publishing has only just begun to show its potential. And I am not quite so sure if an author needs to be hyper-productive, as Brandon suggest, to have success self-publishing. Having a great product just might make up for that. A great manuscript and the ambition and desire to work ones tail off endlessly promoting it. And some luck. Always some luck. Word of mouth can work wonders, but only if there is something to talk about. The fledgling industry is probably just one pet rock away from a one-hit wonder. And there will be more after that initial one. It is already happening. Sure, most of it will be shit, but so is most of the work that sits in piles on editors desks or in their emails. 

Self-publishing is a lot like being your own general contractor. It is a hell of a lot more work, but you will have more control and potentially reap more rewards in the end. But I think most writers would rather spend their time writing than toiling in the trenches. But either way, it sounds like one should be prepared for a good deal of work that doesn't take place in the great white.

Oh, and I think Brandon was talking about these guys:

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/01/self-published-authors-still-rarely-make-the-jump-to-publishing-houses018.html?utm_campaign=googleplus&utm_source=googleplus&utm_medium=markglaser

There is really no "or" here, it's a false dichotomy.  "The conventional route" is not an option as such, anymore than it's an option to choose between marrying somebody you're dating or marrying Gweneth Paltrow.  You don't get to decide.

The idea that publishing your own work somehow rules out a contract at some later date is fallacious.  If was ever true, it certainly isn't any more.  Any time I speak at a writer's conference I hear agents talk about people they signed on the basis of success at publishing their own work.  

If you're a writer, publish.  It's the only way you can get read, just a singer can only be heard by singing.  Nothing keeps you from pursuing agents and editors and all those other Manhattan jerks.  (Little personal bias there)  Even the quickest route to publication by contract will take you literally years before anybody sees your work for sale. You CAN choose to get it out there this year, or next month, or whatever.

It's anachronistic to think of auto-publishing as a last resort.  It should almost certainly be your first move.

Not to sound preemptory, but read these posts.

This lays out the possibilities if you publish youself...and they are all good to some degree.  http://linrobinson.com/bulletins/four-possibile-outcomes-of-publishing-your-own-work/

These are posts that will acquaint you with the basics of investigating publishication of your own work.  A major point I'd stress.  Just start accounts at SmashWords and Kindle and CreateSpace and Lulu and start fooling around.  You can produce and order books, handle them, edit with them, show them to friends, withoug ever actually making them visible to the public.  Hands on learning is one of the really incredible features of the new publishing paradigm.  http://linrobinson.com/bulletins/self-publishing-posts/

And if you want to seek contracts from "legacy publishers", you will probably need an agent.  Here's a basic primer to searching them out:http://linrobinson.com/bulletins/how-to-find-an-agent-when-she-doesnt-want-to-be-found/

Good luck

I'm just talking about getting out there to be read, Chester.

The whole "when's it ready" is another issue... and nobody can really call it but the writer.  And whether it's inferior is up to each reader.

The question, I guess, would be what happens while waiting for Godot instead of publishing?  You can't really keep improving a novel for three years. Or twenty years.

i can tell you that three years is BRUTAL. i'm right in the middle of this exact situation. i mean, it took me two years to write, another to edit, and a year of shopping. so i guess it's four years, actually. the rejection does add up. when 100+ agents pass, it does stick with you, that doubt and anger and frustration. when every small press you send it to passes, you start to question yourself. but you can't give up. i know this book is good, really good, so i'll keep pushing. in these four years i've published a lot of short stories, won a few contests, sold two short story collections, and just about finished up my MFA. so, yeah, you have to keep moving.

the hardest thing is the idea of writing another novel when this one hasn't sold yet. it's crazy. even the IDEA of spending another year writing a novel when the last one is still somewhere between genius and failure makes my head spin. 

but, i guess it depends on what you want to do, right? your goals. after a certain amount of time i can't look at a book or story any more. so i can't imagine spending 10 years on something. 

i still think that if you're an unknown author that self-publishing will maybe net you a few hundred books in sales. i think you need to build up a platform before doing that. @ryannoir was talking about sinking $1000 inton a book and that's a good investment, it's not that much money, really. but if you have a press behind you, an army of people (editors, publicists, other authors) and they're willing to spend two to three times that, you probably have a better chance at succeeding. 

but i've also know people that have self-published and done pretty good with it. 

@Richard: I hear you loud and clear. I realize it can be brutal. Shit, writing, for me is torture most of the time. And doubt hurts more than just about anything as far as I am concerned. Potentially lethal.

I think some of my points are being misinterpreted though, or I am just not expressing myself clearly. I'm not saying that the long route to writing and publishing a work is the preferred route. I am just saying that sometimes it is the only route. You know Monica Drake, well Clown Girl took seven years. Again, not saying this is the 'fun' way to do it. But frequently it is the only way--and it works. Not only does it work, but I think many times it can serve to galvanize the author and thereby forge an even stronger writer. Sure it hurts. No pain, no gain. At least I have to keep telling myself that.

And Richard, I think I speak for a lot of us in the community when I say that you're an inspiration and a role model and you have our support. You are taking the exact steps that so many aspiring writers don't. Yet they expect to publish a book and have it shoot up the charts. Slap some sentences together and put a book out. Wrong.

On the other hand, @Matt.i.presume's statement that 'anyone who can string a sentence together is ready to tell a story' is perhaps more pertinent to the main point I am trying to make. I encourage everyone and anyone to tell stories. I think it is a crucial element in our evolution as humans and I have tried to instill that sentiment in my children and anyone else's who I can get my hands on. And I would also never discourage anyone from pursuing a passion or trying to expose their art. That doesn't mean it is going to be any good.

 Not everyone who can string a sentence together has invested the time to learn how to do so in a way that will yield a great story. Sure, maybe they have a great story to tell, even an amazing one, but until they learn how to do so effectively they shouldn't expect people to value the quality of their writing. Publishing does not a good writer make. On the other hand I know a bundle of writers who write exceptionally well who might never become published. That is another discussion though.

The point is this: Not everyone who strings sentences together is ready to publish. Sure, they can. Just like I can go out and buy a guitar and start strumming on it. Does that mean I am ready to make a record? Maybe, maybe not. Sure, people do it all the time. There is a lot more bad art than good. A lot. I just wonder how many of those bad artists could become good ones if they'd only put in the hard work.

But if there is one thing we seem to agree on, it is to just keep on going, to keep on writing.

Richard, I feel you. My book was the same way, I started it in '07, spent a year writing it, spent another 2 years editing it with as much outside help as I could get, and then another >year trying to sell it before turning to self publish. I've wanted to share my experiences on this thread but they are so deeply embarassing that I haven't found it in me to admit them.

I can't imagine that anyone would choose to go the self pub route. It's been a mistake. I thought I could just put it out there and ignore it and get working on my second novel. I know what I want to write about, I have all these detailed outlines but every time I go to try to write it I think "and here you go, bringing another life into the world when you left your firstborn outside, exposed to the elements, to die."

I can't even look at my first goddamn novel anymore since I did it, just trying to guerilla market it and I'm not guevara, I'm not Ho Chi Min, self publishing can work, I'm sure, but either way it is an unholy nightmare from which you cannot awake. Either you are an abject failure, or you are doing all the work of a much wealthier and better staffed publishing house by yourself, but if you are really lucky you can be both.

@dwayne - yeah, i think that's part of it, lots of cheap book, so if people do like it, it goes viral fast

@nkwilczy - hey man, we've all been there. i think self-pub is more work for sure. if you're creative, have time, and money, can get out there and do some wild things, you can get some attention. Shya Scanlon self-published his novel Forecast across 42 blogs (it was called Forecast 42). it got him a lot of exposure, and Flatmancrooked picked it up and produced it in a print book. they went under, and then Shya sold it to another press, Mudluscious I think, and it'll be out again soon. i actually reviewed it at The Cult, and since he was going to reprint it, ended up using part of my review as a blurb on the book. cool, eh?

lots of ways to go at it. 

For what it's worth...I'm not a fan of the $0.99 - $2.99 price for a full length book. It shows desperation and a lack of confidence. When I was self-publishing I priced my books at $4.95 - $6.95 and sold 70,000 copies.  For short stories....sure go $0.99 but if you say to the world your work is only worth $0.99 they'll have little respect for the work.

My experience echoes Michael's.  I sell roughly at the same price point as well, though I will occasionally release a short story for $1.99. 

@James S - How many words did/do you have out at one time?