Thoughts on Self-Publishing

Obviously, I'm a proponent of self-publishing.  I read writing articles all the time and ponder self-publishing.  What is the worth?  What's the point?  


I feel that I should try to explain my views.


Whenever I read an article about why self-publishing is bad, I feel bad.  Then I think, oh, this writer is talking about novels, collections, thick books, not a whole ten pages of three line pieces that can't really be published by a big company.  So then I don't feel as badly.  


I don't write novels.  I write genre-bending pieces.  Short stories that are simultaneously poetry.  Poetry that might be considered essays.  Often, if I have a piece that I would love to have published, I send it to various magazines.  Sometimes I send chapbooks out.  I should mention that I don't enjoy waiting.  I hate it.  I'm impatient.  I also despise surprises.  


But sending stuff out is a good thing.  Sometimes I get published by a stranger, which is always cool.  Other times, I get an email back saying that my work was good and I was *this* close.  I had one magazine say that they loved my piece but it wasn't entirely what they were searching for.  Very good feedback.  Enough for me to feel good if I decide to publish the pieces on my own.  


Back to the subject of novels.  I write a novel once a year.  I only do it for National Novel Writing Month.  I enjoy a challenge.  I enjoy being able to say I wrote a novel.  Do I think that the novel I wrote should be short-listed for the New York Times' Bestseller List?  Probably not.  I don't think the writing is bad but I also don't think that it's a novel that every single person in the world would be dying to buy.  Why?  Because my novels are strange.  My first novel, Los Muertos, was an anti-novel told in picture poems, extended monologues, lists, a variety of strange things.  Thematically, it all fit together.  But there were no characters.  The novel I wrote for the last NaNoWriMo, The Grave Eater, was more of a series of connected short stories.  I liked them. I liked the characters.  But there will be people who freak out over the idea that there are gods who couldn't care less about humanity.  That life is determined by a strange female figure called the Grave Eater who eats dirt to survive.  That she can't have children.  It's a strange work.  It fits a niche market.


I think works like that should be self-published.  Stuff that has no chance anywhere else.  Stuff no one has seen before.  But not stuff that is not well-written.  


That's the reason that self-publishing gets so much flack.  You have the secretary at the office down the street who decides she wants to write the next American novel.  So she writes... something.  And shows it to people who love her.  Who will lie to protect her.  And when the great American novel publishers reject her ass, she cries and is consoled with the idea that they don't understand what a gift she has brought before them.  Then she self-publishes this crap.  Ugh.


I am all for people writing.  Get the words out.  Let yourself have a creative release.  I support it.  But don't think that everything you write should be allowed out of the basement.  Trust me... I have about fifty chapbooks on my computer that have Xs beside them, marking them as completely unpublishable.  I have others that are eeee, okay,  but that I don't feel comfortable releasing.  I have chapbooks that I wrote specifically for therapy, ones that consist of spur of the moment thoughts.  Those are not meant to be published.  They made me feel better when writing them but I won't be sharing them with anyone.  


In short, people need to use some discretion.  Here's an example.  When I was younger, I knew this kid who wrote a book.  Now I had written several books myself but I didn't feel compelled to send them out.  But the kid was popular and on sports and this and that.  So he told one of his teachers he had written this book and she got all excited.  To be completely honest, the book sucked balls.  It made no sense.  The story was convoluted and ridiculous.  The sentences were filled with random vocabulary words.  He tried to make his novella clever and failed miserably.  But a vanity publisher took it and produced it.  He had a book signing and everything.  Then when people read the book, their eyes bulged out of their heads.  I swear.  Because it was terrible and they knew it.  But everyone close to him told him it was great so he took a chance.  Discretion, people.  You can't publish the first damn book you write because odds are against you that it will actually be good.


I know that my first books/stories weren't good.  But I've been writing professionally since the first grade (I'm not lying... that's all I did.  Read and write.  I wanted to write books on marine biology like Jacques Cousteau.  He was my hero). Yeah, I wanted to think that everything I wrote rocked.  But it didn't.  I write things now that suck.  Of course, after studying writing in college and being a step away from finishing my MFA, I know when something is a lost cause.  Sometimes I finish lost causes just to finish and then throw it out.  Mark it with a big X and never look at it again unless I need something to laugh at.  


It's all about training.  When you get enough, then start thinking about publication.  Try to get comments from strangers.  Make sure you go to someone you trust.  My fiance, as much as he loves me, would rather tell me the truth about something than let me look like a fool.  He is the first person to read a work and say, hon, this makes no sense.  Or, hon, it reads nicely but I don't understand the story.  So then I have to look at it again and figure some things out.  


That's what self-publishing is.  Making sure everything is publication ready and only then making such a decision. If you want to self-publish a novel, try to send it to some publishers first and gather their thoughts.  If they say you should be rethinking the story, consider it.  If they say they don't have enough readership for the work, then that works in your favor.  Put it out there.  But not before it is a dazzling work.  And not solely because you are dying to see your title on a book.  Because if someone reads that work and sees how badly its written, your name is not going to be looking so great.




And there you have it.  Alana's Thoughts For the Day.