Some Thoughts on Self Publishing

Having self-published my first book I have to admit that for the last few weeks I've been suffering from a certain amount of disillusionment about self-publishing.

Part of the problem is that the whole self-publishing thing is, I think, still trying to find its feet. People self-publish because the traditional publishing process is difficult, and made more difficult by a publishing industry that's been the keeper of the keys for a very long time. Publishers decide what gets published, and often their judgement is bad. Excellent books never get into print. e-Books are often priced far too high, and authors have little or no control over this. Publishers are seen as elitist, keeping stables of established authors as if they're some kind of exclusive club that new authors are highly unlikely to be invited into. When authors have to practically beg agents and publishers to even read a manuscript, let alone take it on, it's no wonder that so many are moved to self-publish.

(I've also heard it said that feedback from agents when rejecting a manuscript can help the writer improve; however from personal experience I can state that this is 100% pure bullshit. Not one agent that I have ever submitted work to has even once offered ANY useful criticism of a manuscript.)

But then this leads to the another part of the problem, which is that thanks to the ease of self-publishing today, anyone and everyone can write a book and publish it - whether or not that book has even been proofread. I've looked at a fair number of self-published books and I think it's fair to say that the majority, to be frank, suffer from being total crap. The situation isn't made any easier by the fact that it's easy for a new author to ask friends and family members to put up five-star reviews of their book, and thanks to the likes of John Locke we now know just how easy it is to hype a book's reviews in return for cold cash. For most self-published authors, getting honest reviews from professional reviewers just isn't a reasonable option. As for readers, they can't trust online reviews and ratings at all. Right now the whole ratings/reviews structure is meaningless.

On the other hand, and despite its faults, traditional publishing does offer some huge benefits to authors. If an author can actually get a publisher to take a book on, the publisher will usually provide editing, proofreading and marketing services that would be far beyond the reach of most independent writers.

As I mentioned, I've self-published one book; I also have another completed one and I have a third that's perhaps two-thirds of the way to a first draft. Over  the last few days I've been trying to decide for these other two books: self-publish, or try to go traditional? And I have to say that the current state of self-publishing, and the difficulties I had with the first book, doesn't make me that enthusiastic about going the same way with these other two manuscripts. That said, my previous experiences with traditional publishing - in the form of agents who plainly think that they sit at the right hand of the publishing gods - wasn't too great, either. So I've been in something of a quandary.

And then...

A couple of days ago I read a very interesting article in Forbes by David Vinjamuri (Twitter: @dvinjamuri) which was linked to by Richard Galloway (Twitter: @RJGalloway1). Anyone interested in self-publishing should read this article. Among other things Vinjamuri points out that self-publishing lacks anything like a proper online resource for reliable reviews and ratings; what it needs is something like Metacritic.com, but for e-Books instead of movies. He also predicts that within the next year or so we should expect something like this to appear. I agree; something has to be done.

I've been doing some thinking about this and it occurs to me that one or other of the big players needs to be part of this. It's in their own interests, after all. Smashwords could do it and given their interest in self-publishing perhaps they'd be the best choice, but Amazon and Barnes & Noble could be in there too. The biggest problem as I see it is simply finding enough people able to review books professionally. Perhaps these big players could offer cash to readers willing to write proper reviews, or something like that. I'd bet that given an incentive it wouldn't take long to build up a corps of reviewers large enough to manage the flood of new e-Books that are submitted to Smashwords every day. I can see any such system taking a year or three to stabilise while all the kinks get ironed out, but the benefits would be enormous - and not just for readers looking for a good book. Writers would also win, because they'd now be able to get real reviews of their work by people who are truly impartial.