So you wanna publish a book, eh? Well, I'm no expert, but if you want my advice, self publish. I say this for a few reasons, but mainly, it's control. As with most things in life, you are loosing a decent amount of control over the situation by signing a contract, in this case with a publisher. At any point in time, the publisher can say "nah, this sucks" and you have to either rewrite that part, or start all over again. Doesn't sound like a good time to me. You will have to meet your publishers expectations, and follow their guidelines, which can often take the fun out of writing.
You may have written a book that you think is totally super awesome, so you send it out to a number of publishers. What happens when they all tell your shit's weak (sometimes in more polite therms) and they don't want it? You feel dumb and stupid, that's what. Oh yeah, and your book doesn't get published.
I have no problem with teamwork, collaborations, business partners, or any sort of joint work, but when it comes to something like writing and releasing a book, I think it's a "if you want it done right, do it yourself" sort of situation.
But hey, what do I know about self publishing? It's not like I write on a regular basis or anything. (that last part was sarcasm, I write a lot)
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to publish this post (see what I did there), get some food in me and go see The Sadies! I've posted videos of them before, but I'm going to post another one, because they are good at stuff and I always post videos on my blogs.
No! I couldn't disagree more. Self-publishing is bad:
ReplyDeletea. You lose very valuable editing from people who know the industry. Sure you could contract someone to edit your story but they'll give it a read-through and collect their pay cheque. Their job/company isn't really riding on the line.
b. It is insanely hard to sell self-published work.
c. You don't know as much about publishing as publishers.
d. If your shit is weak, it should not be released to the world. These people know what they're talking about. If they don't, then you are sending your stuff to the wrong people. Get back to the drawing board.
Personally, I'm expecting about a hundred rejection letters before I get published and about four years of "practicing" before anything decent picks me up.
It's not about writing inside some kind of box. There are publishers for any kind of material. You can definitely find some that have guidelines that already fit what you're trying to submit.