I’ll start by saying that I am not the average person who has no idea what lurks in slush. I spent many years in the trade, going through those very awful slush piles that blogger writes about. And it’s true; there is some real crap out there. And everyone does not have a book in them.

That said, this does not mean that every acquisitions editor working for a major publishing house would know slush if it came in a cup. There is plenty of junk out there that is sitting on the bookstore shelves right this second. Some of it is written by bestselling authors or celebrities, ie, the publishing companies know it will sell. To imply there is some rigorous high standard that always goes along with book publishing is untrue. It’s about money, pure and simple. For most houses, there is no loftier goal than publishing what will make money—regardless of whether it is crap or not.

I fully agree with this, from the article: “I do have to say one thing in defense of self-publishing: it is a very useful tool for people who have a niche audience or their own book sales channels. Ideally, both. Most traditional publishers may not do ‘niche’ projects (not a large enough target market to justify general trade publication).” But may I also add that traditional publishers today are also looking for authors who have a built-in platform—before they sign the contract. Because the reality is that most trads do little to promote their mid-list authors. It is primarily up to the authors themselves.

I also don’t believe that every self-published author believes The Man (as Kidlit refers to the trads) is holding them back so they must “settle” for self-publishing. There are plenty of savvy authors out there—check out indie author and publisher Zoe Winters, for instance—who realize the odds are not in their favor. It isn’t because their work isn’t “ready”; it’s simply because there are a finite number of books being published by traditional publishers. As publishing houses have gobbled one another up in recent years, there are even few opportunities to be published. It isn’t about feeding the ego by getting a “stamp of approval” from The Man for these authors; it is about sharing their message. And if you truly have something to say, wouldn’t you rather have a few people hear it rather than none?

I think it’s misleading to tell writers that when your manuscript is just as perfect as perfect can be, you have a very good chance of being picked up by a traditional publisher. I think that’s overly optimistic. My husband’s heavy metal band is very good—all members of the group are accomplished musicians—but the reality is that they have virtually no chance of being picked up by a major record label. They know that. But it doesn’t stop them from wanting to be heard anyway.

“I’m only interested in people who grow, learn, polish, adapt, and set their sights on the difficult goal of traditional publication. It’s hard for a reason. Not everybody gets to do it.” What about the indie music scene? Should my husband’s band not put out their own CDs because they are pining for some major label to sign them? What about indie movies? Are they any less of an achievement because they are not produced by some major film company?

“But most people who self-publish don’t have a niche book or a good marketing strategy: they want to target the mass market. They have a project that would appeal, in their opinion, to everyone and anyone. And self-publishing a book intended for a trade audience is where these would-be authors get in trouble. Because reaching a mass audience — casual readers — with a self-published fiction project is nearly impossible.” I say there are plenty of self-published authors who go into it with their eyes wide open and their expectations realistic.

It’s unfortunate that with the advent of the so-called “self-publishing companies,” such as Author Solutions and Lulu, way too many people dive right into “self-publishing.” (Incidentally, this is usually “vanity” or “subsidy” publishing, which has somehow become lumped in with true self-publishing wherein authors set up their own imprint and have their own ISBN under which to publish books.) I have a real issue with these cookie-cutter, assembly-line service providers who enable authors to publish their slush on the cheap. Would I consider publishing these books an “achievement”? Not usually. Do I consider truly self-published authors who work hard writing a good, salable manuscript; have it critiqued and edited by professionals; and have the book well-designed as having achieved something? Absolutely.

Yes, there are those who “who don’t believe what editors and agents keep telling them: their work isn’t ready”—or that their work is just bad. I say, let those people go publish with Lulu. Their book will be available on Lulu.com, where approximately zero people actually go to buy books. What I’d like to see is the true self-published authors not denigrated for what they’ve done—because it is a real accomplishment.

Traditional publishing is not exactly known for embracing change (anyone want to talk about the fact that returns are still allowed?!), but I think maybe The Man is going to have to adjust his way of thinking whether he wants to or not.

That, of course, is nonsense. For many authors, self-publishing—independent publishing—makes the most sense creatively and financially. These are the authors who have done their homework. These are the authors who are original and creative—and who know what it takes to run a successful publishing business. The quality of their books—both the way the work is written and edited, and the way it looks physically—matches that of those put out by large traditional houses.

Potential readers pick up their books not knowing—and not caring—who the publisher is. (Do you know who Stephen King’s publisher is? Do you care?) I’ve been criticized for saying that a well-done self-published book should not be identifiable as such; apparently it’s somehow “immoral” or “misleading” to put out a quality, top-notch piece of work. Eh. Whatever.

Indie publishing is here to stay, and I hope as more authors do it “right,” any remnant stigmas ultimately fall to the wayside.

Meanwhile, though, how do you make sure your book does not scream SELF-PUBLISHED and is judged by its cover and its content? Assuming you have a unique, compelling manuscript in the first place, here are some tips:

Have your own publishing company imprint and your own ISBN prefix. Head over to Bowker and buy a set of ten numbers—or a hundred if you have more than a few titles planned. If you are truly self-publishing (ie, not going the subsidy route), your publishing company must be listed as the publisher of record. If you’ve got Outskirts or Author Solutions or others of their ilk listed, they are the publisher—and you haven’t actually self-published. (Reference the subsidy link, above.)

Get your manuscript edited by a professional. Regardless of how good a writer you are, you probably cannot effectively edit your own work. I know I can’t—and I’ve been an editor of other people’s work for more decades than I care to remember. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to read something I’ve written only to be shocked by some glaring error I overlooked. Self-published books have a reputation of being badly written and poorly edited; make sure yours is neither.

Hire a professional to design your book cover. There are a lot of very inexpensive self-publishing options available today, most of which offer templated cover designs. They are all pretty awful and amateurish.

I recommend most authors hire a typesetter to design and layout their book’s interiors as well. If you are pretty tech savvy and can work a program such as InDesign, however, you can probably get away with formatting the interior yourself.

Don’t expect indie publishing to be easy. But do expect it to be rewarding—especially if you do it right.

But the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I got. His condescending and disparaging view of “self-publishers” started to tick me off. First and foremost, the “self-publishers” to which he is referring are really authors who are going the vanity press route. And those pay-to-publish authors have been mostly scorned from the very beginning. Clearly, Keillor does not understand the traditional self-publishing model, wherein authors start up their own imprint and spend quite a bit of time and money to make sure the book they produce is top notch. These authors often hire companies that provide author services (note that this is quite different from pay-to-publish) to ensure their manuscripts are well edited and their books well designed. (Shameless plug opp: Yes, services such as Self-Publishing Resources.)

Second, he is clearly assuming that all self-published authors go that route because they were not “good enough” for the trads. Nope. There are many good reasons to self-publish, including maintaining creative control, making more money (yup, making more money), and producing the book more quickly, to name a few. And heck—you’re going to have to market and promote your own book anyway (the trads won’t do it for you!)…you might as well be in charge of the whole process and pocket all of the profits from your efforts.

Is a manuscript better just because you “mailed it to a New York publisher in a big manila envelope with actual postage stamps on it”? Because you typed it on a typewriter? Because you enjoy an “aura of martyrdom”?  All that sounds kind of romantic, but the past is the past.

I do agree that there is a lot of crap out there right now, but most of it falls within the subsidy press category. Once people begin to understand the difference between vanity publishing and independent publishing, I think (I hope!) that will begin to change and we will see more thoughtfully produced books. As more and more book review sites begin to cater to self-published authors (whether they are pay to publish or truly self-published), even if they are not the New York Times, I believe honest reviews will start to separate the wheat from the chaff. One thing I do know: Self-publishing is not going anywhere. Neither is the Internet. Or the cell phone. Or the microwave.

And does anyone else find it pretty ironic and kind of hilarious that Keillor’s article is surrounded by ads about self-publishing??!!

So you self-publish your book but then what? Just because you’ve built it, they won’t come. High street bookstores are unlikely to pick it up, and Amazon will take it for a few bucks but won’t highlight it unless it miraculously becomes a best seller. Most good journalists won’t review it (trust me, journalists don’t take self-published books seriously) and unless you’re a marketing or PR guru, it’ll be very difficult to promote it well.

Actually, if you publish traditionally, you are still going to be expected to promote your book. And in fact, you will likely not get signed on with a traditional publisher if you don’t already have a strong author platform with lots of potential buyers. When I was managing editor for a trade publisher, almost every single author we signed on was shocked to learn they were expected to promote their books. But the truth is, the bulk of our marketing was to plop the book into a catalog and send out a few news releases in hopes of getting a review or two. Anything beyond that—well, there just wasn’t a budget for it. Granted, that was a smaller press but even if you do manage to snag one of the major players, they are not likely going to spend their marketing bucks on a new author (like advances, marketing budgets continue to shrink). They’ll spend their money promoting whoever their current James Patterson is—and you will likely be lumped in with the rest of the midlist authors who enjoy little or no marketing budget.  

In addition, if you self-publish properly—start up your own imprint, purchase your own block of ISBNs, and have the book well edited and well designed—as opposed to going the subsidy route (often incorrectly called “self-publishing”), reviewers should have no idea you are self-published. Your book is simply a title from a new independent publisher. And there is no stigma there.

The next hurdle is trust. Sadly, self-published books have a bit of a grim rep. Whether it’s because people associate them with their Aunt Bettie’s History of Littlehampton book with its funny photoshopped front cover, or because they’ve read a self-pubbed book chock-a-block full of mistakes (which, sadly, most self-pubbed books have due to the lack of a decent editor and proof-reader), there’s not a great deal of respect for self-published books despite there being some decent ones out there.

See my point above about putting out a top-quality book. It should look just as sharp as any other book put out by one of the big houses. And again, done right—there is no way readers can tell if a book is self-published or not.

This is why self-published books on average sell dozens (if you’re lucky hundreds) whereas traditional publishers tend to sell in the thousands.

This is true of subsidy published books; these are often called self-published but in reality they are pay-to-publish vanity pieces. They sell few copies because they are often poorly done—and they are usually not priced competitively because authors are forced to purchase the books from the subsidy at an inflated price. In order to make any kind of profit, the books are priced too high—and they don’t sell.

Authors who self-publish in the true sense of the meaning are able to price their books competitively, and if they have a solid promotions plan, they tend to sell books in the thousands—sometimes tens of thousands.

Now if you’re one of those writers who doesn’t care about book sales and it’s all about the love of writing, then self-publishing is worth a shot.

To this I say—if book sales and profits don’t mean anything, by all means, go with the subsidy presses such as Outskirts, iUniverse, and Author House. If you want to make money—self-publish the true way.

But consider this: you’ve spent a year or so writing your book, maybe more, maybe less. So why not try to get paid for your hard work, rather then pay, as you would with self-publishing. Just give it a try, you know? For a start, most reputable traditional publishers will pay an advance (usually in the thousands if through a larger publisher). Then you’ll get royalties for every book you sell (once you make back your advance).

It’s pretty common knowledge that advances from traditional publishers have gotten smaller in recent years.  You’ll still fare much better by self-publishing and keeping all of the profits rather than just 10 percent or so since you have to promote the book anyway. Yes, there will be editing and production costs, but with print-on-demand, you won’t have to lay out a bunch of cash for printing. (And remember, you’ll want to hire a professional editor before sending your manuscript to any agent or publisher, even if you are publishing the traditional route—so that expense, along with promoting, is also a given.)

Don’t forget too that once you sign that contract with a traditional publisher, you lose a certain amount of control. They may change the title. They may edit drastically. They may come up with a cover you hate. They may delay your publication date. But you’re probably stuck with their decision.

Even Kevin Weiss, CEO of a huge self-publishing company in the US (Author Solutions), admits 80 per cent of their authors fail to break even whereas traditionally published authors always do as they never had to fork out in the first place.

Author Solutions is a subsidy publisher—you can’t have someone else “self” publish for you—but I agree that those are some pretty grim sales statistics. Sadly, they are all too true.

And then there’s being able to tell people you’re a published author. Most savvy people will not accept you are one if you’ve paid to have your book published because, as I’ve said before, anyone anyone anyone can self-publish.

Yes, anyone can self-publish, but what you are talking about here is subsidy publishing, or vanity publishing. True self-publishing is a complicated process, and if it’s done well, it generally garners nothing but respect for those who have been through it.

As for the idea that your amazingly successful self-pubbed book will garner the attention of traditional publishers, this does happen but not often. Your chances of getting an agent and then publisher are higher.

I would have to disagree with this point as well—unless you’ve already got a well established platform and a large following, your chances of getting an agent and then a publisher are very small. Very small. You are much better off self-publishing (doing it well) and establishing a track record of sales with which to approach a traditional publisher. That, of course, is if you want to at that point. You’ll likely make more money if you keep it as a self-published title.

So what I’m saying is, give traditional publishing a chance first. Don’t let people tell you traditional publishing is a pipe dream; that getting an agent is impossible; that self-publishing is the first and best option. It isn’t. The fact is, if you write a damn good book, someone will take notice and maybe you’ll get published and maybe you’ll make money.

I agree with this—only when it comes to fiction. As far as nonfiction titles, however, self-publishing is often the best and fastest route to publication. By the time authors wait around for umpteen rejection letters from traditional publishers, self-publishers could have been reaping the rewards of their published books for months…even years. This doesn’t mean self-publishing is right for everyone; but it is most certainly a viable option for those who want to maintain control and keep all of the profits.

So what is true print-on-demand printing? It means that books are first sold, then, using digital printing, one or more copies are created to fill the order. Although paperbacks are more common, many companies can now do case-bound books with dust jackets as well. Books are shipped direct from a POD vendor to the customer, who receives what looks very similar to a book printed by a traditional book manufacturer. Many books are shipped from POD vendors—Lightning Source or BookSurge (now merged with CreateSpace), for instance—to wholesalers or retailers such as Amazon or Ingram.

There are some drawbacks to this method of getting into print. Many publishers are still discouraged by the print quality and poor vendor customer service, reporting blacks that look gray and whites that are off-white. Illustration and photo reproduction might be uneven and patchy. Margins can vary from copy to copy. Paper and cover stock choices may be limited and of lower quality.

Yet there are several advantages to print-on-demand: You need no warehouse because there is no inventory to store. And there is flexibility: Suppose you decide you hate your title or cover? Change it! One publisher reports that her company prints each new title digitally and prints just one hundred copies. This is enough to work out any kinks as well as to market that particular title. If you’ve got a backlist title that sells slowly but which you’d like to keep in print, you can do so fairly economically, running just a few copies at a time.

There is also an element of speed. If you’re dealing with a timely topic, POD by a book printing company will get you books faster. Some vendors can turn out a book in two or three days; others promise two or three weeks.

If you go through an outfit such as Lightning Source, your book will be picked up automatically by Barnes & Noble, Borders, and so forth. This is a distinct advantage for self-publishers for whom distribution is often an issue. I predict this circumstance will continue to evolve, making POD books more readily available in brick-and-mortar bookstores.

So what will it cost you to ride the crest of this new wave? Prices vary. Lightning Source prices differently even for the same title, depending on whether the book is being sold to wholesalers for distribution or to the author for resale. This can be an issue if the primary source of sales is going to be back-of-the-room sales by the author, for instance.

An advantage to Lightning Source, however, is that they allow the author to set the discount with retailers. Discounts normally run from about 55 to 40 percent, but Lightning Source allows authors to set the discount as low as 25 percent. Although this technically allows publishers to keep a significantly portion of the profits, some retailers will not want to sell books at such a short discount.

CreateSpace sets a mandatory 40 percent discount to its retailer—primarily Amazon—but will require a deeper discount for publishers who sign up for its expanded distribution service to bookstores.

Generally the charges for printing are based on the length of your book (so much per page) plus a cost for the cover. Get quotes so you can compare costs, terms, and turnaround times. And ask where the normal price breaks fall. Here are a few guidelines: For a 250-page paperback book with a four-color cover, one POD printer charges $8.60 each for a quantity of 50, $5.13 each for 100, $4.49 each for 500, and $3.50 per book for 1,000. Hardcovers are considerably more, going for $15.87 apiece for 250, for instance, and $12.47 per book for 500.

I’ve heard of prices as low as $3.49 per book and as high as $20.00 and more. (POD may not be your answer if you’ve written a 600-page romantic saga!) Be sure to determine both the interior price and the cover price. The hard reality is it’s simply more expensive per book to print in these small quantities, but if you are unsure of expected sales, it sure beats having a pallet of books sitting in your garage, unsold. Do your homework and decide whether book digital printing or offset printing makes more sense.

The reality is that using a “self-publishing company” (which, in actuality, is a subsidy/vanity publisher calling themselves a self-publishing company) is a “kiss of death,” according to many industry professionals, including publishing expert Pete Masterson. Pete is principal of Aeonix Publishing Group and author of Book Design and Production: A Guide for Authors and Publishers. He has graciously allowed me to reprint here a response gave to an author in a self-publishing discussion group. It clearly addresses not only the typical breakdown of discounts offered to retailers, wholesalers, and distributors, but it also shows how thing might not add up when authors go the subsidy publishing route.

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Pete wrote:

…When you publish using Lulu or another of the “self publishing companies,” your book may not be widely available through the distribution process and if it is available, it may not have the “normal” discounts expected.

In publishing, everything is based on the list price of the book. The typical breakdown is as follows:

Retailer receives a 40% discount off the list price. They may set any price they wish to sell the book at, but they pay 60% of the list price to whomever they purchased it from—usually a wholesaler or distributor.

Wholesaler (this would be Ingram or Baker & Taylor, usually) receives a 55% discount off the list price. They pay the publisher (or distributor) 45% of the list price. The wholesaler then sells to retailers at 40% off—so they keep 15% to pay their costs, etc. There are certain incentives and other deals where a retailer may receive up to 48% off list price—but that’s between the wholesaler and the retailer. (Wholesalers do almost no marketing to retailers to promote purchase of specific titles.)

Distributor (could be one of many smaller firms) sells directly to retailers at a 40% off list price discount and sells to wholesalers at a 55% off list price discount. Distributors fees tend to be complex and may vary depending on the specifics of the services they provide to the publishers. Distributors may have a sales force or use other means to generate sales with retailers. Larger distributors usually will not accept single book publishers and, in reality, can’t do much for one anyway. Some fulfillment services have expanded into distribution (in recent years) offering “distribution” to Ingram and (sometimes) Baker & Taylor. These fulfillment service/distributors often are less expensive than a full distributor if your goal is simply to get listed by Ingram. Since prices vary, it’s hard to say exactly what it costs —but typically, the publisher will “give up” 10 to 15% of the list price to the distributor.

Fulfillment services tend to charge for the services rendered. The fulfillment service takes care of work that is normally the responsibility of the publisher (shipping books to wholesalers, retailers, and the public). Some offer order-taking telephone services. Charges vary and it is well worth shopping around.

Now, what does this leave for the publisher? If you can sell through a primary wholesaler, then you “get” 45% of the list price for each book sold. If you use a distributor, you receive 30 to 35% of list price for each book sold.

At this point, you will begin to see the problem. Lulu (and other subsidy publishers) “take” a cut on the sale of every book. Your cost per copy may well be above what you will receive upon paying for the printing and profit to the subsidy publisher. The solution (which is no solution) is to raise the price of the book. That makes books over-priced, and then they do not sell.

Or Lulu has set you up with a “short” discount through Lightning Source, Inc. (that is who prints the books in “global distribution”). If Lulu established a discount below the “standard”55%, then the bookseller would not receive the 40% discount—and then they will not order the book. (Amazon will list the book, because they list everything.) Also, if you have not arranged to have the books “returnable” then the bookstores will, again, not order your book.

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It’s a crazy business like none other, this thing called publishing. But authors who have stars in their eyes about seeing themselves in print and decide to go the low-cost subsidy route need to have realistic expectations about potential profits (if any). They may not pay upfront as they would if they were truly self-publishing, but they will likely pay in the long run.

Sometimes the numbers just don’t add up.

There is the obvious: No company can self-publish books for you. So let’s take a look at subsidy publishing, which is really what the blogger in question was referring to.

A subsidy publisher puts out books only when the author underwrites the entire venture. Vanity fare feeds the ego. Just remember that no traditional publisher advertises for manuscripts. When you see a headline such as “Manuscripts Wanted,” it’s always a tip-off that its source is a subsidy outfit.

The advertising copywriters hired by subsidy publishers are the best in the business. Brochures are cleverly worded to portray Utopia. Self-publishing successes are made to sound like subsidy accomplishments with statements such as, “It will probably surprise you to know that many prominent authors found it necessary to finance their entries into the literary world.” You’ll be led to believe that many dynamic leaders opt for this alternative.

Another blurb says, “An Associated Press feature about the author and her book ran in hundreds of newspapers from coast to coast. Yes, imaginative and aggressive promotion paid off for the author of this book.” But nowhere does it say they generated this AP spread. It could very well have resulted from the author’s own efforts. Further, they allude to outsmarting the conventional trade houses when telling how an obscure businessman, whose work was rejected nine times, published his book through them and achieved sales of almost 100,000 copies. These are not typical results. Instead, most subsidy-published authors never recoup their investments.

If you send your manuscript to a subsidy publisher, expect to receive a glowing letter in return. This letter will probably also imply that wealth and fame are just around the corner. There are those who say that subsidy publishers often praise writing that couldn’t earn a passing grade in a junior high school English class. There is no question that quality control is missing in many of these publishing houses. They make their money up front when writers pay to have their books printed, reducing incentive for producing well-written material, and for that matter, for selling it.

A major drawback to subsidy publishing is the lack of promotion. Book reviewers shun these titles. Most reviewers admit to tossing them into the trash when they come in.

While the conventional trade publisher employs sales representatives or has developed a national chain of distribution, and the self-publisher seeks out specialized markets and uses creative publicity to generate attention and sales, the subsidy publisher does virtually none of these things. Oh, maybe he adds the book to his catalog and runs what is known in the industry as a “tombstone” ad (where dozens of titles are lumped together and read like a laundry list). Anticipating books to move from this kind of advertising would be like expecting a mechanic to overhaul a diesel rig with jeweler’s tools.

Bookstores are not anxious to stock these titles. One subsidy published author received copies of invoices for a grand total of 64 books sold over a two-year period. In most cases, after paying thousands of dollars to print them, you don’t own your books. You will be doled out a “royalty’” on each copy sold.

“Scam”? In most cases, yes. “Self-publishing”? Nope. If you intend to make a profit from your book, I highly recommend you go the publishing your own book route where you, the author, self-publish books that are well edited and well designed. Leave the subsidy publishing to those who want to give a book to friends and family for Christmas or who simply want to preserve a relative’s writing for posterity.

Another reason I’d like to address this again is because of a phone call I had last week from a potential client. She published her book through one of the POD “self-publishers,” using their ISBN—so of course they are listed as the publisher of record. The book came out a year ago, and in spite of some good press she received (it’s a highly disturbing, newsworthy topic), she’s only sold about 20 copies of the book. She wanted to talk to me about marketing and promotions. After a lengthy discussion about the problems associated with subsidy publishing (for that is what she essentially did), she agreed to send me a copy of the book so I could take a look at it.

Well, the good news was that she had a well-written, compelling story. The bad news was that it was a poorly edited, unproofread book (I found more than a dozen typos in the first chapter alone) bound shoddily within an amateurish cover design. And the price was $21.95—for a 200-page trade paperback.

The even worse news was when I told her there wasn’t much we could do in terms of promoting a book like that—wrought with errors and priced too high. She was devastated—because although she hadn’t invested much from a financial standpoint in the project (these companies typically offer a very low up-front investment), she had given fully of herself from an emotional standpoint. The story was an incredibly personal one—and it was a story she really wanted to tell. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of a readership for a book in that bad of shape.

Then there is the price issue. What many authors don’t realize is that because it costs so little up front to publish your own book, the subsidies need to make the money up from somewhere—and they do it from the back end, by charging authors exorbitant fees to buy their own books back from them. This may not sound so bad, until authors realize how little profit they will make if they try to sell the books through, say, Amazon. Hence, they price their books from a profit-making standpoint, which is often a lot higher than the book-buying public will pay.

And it’s a story I see over and over; she is not the first client to contact me after investing themselves in a POD “self-publisher” only to learn they’ve wasted a lot of time and sometimes even quite a bit of money. I think the biggest problem with these outfits is that with such low up-front investment, the authors dive in head first, often without professional editing, typesetting, and cover design. Although these hybrids sometimes offer these services, I have found them to be less than satisfactory. The result of this low-cost approach is frequently a poor-quality book that sells few copies. (By the way, you can still get book digital printing without going to one of these POD outfits. Lightning Source is a print-on-demand book printing company that offers this service to authors/publishers directly—and they have good distribution channels.)

Furthermore, many of these companies are vanity publishers calling themselves “self-publishing” or “self-publishing POD” companies. In reality, though, they are often trading on the good name of self-publishing to make their companies appear to be a legitimate option for authors. Authors who truly want to self-publish books need to do their research. If you are publishing your own book, make sure you know what you are getting into.

The blog wasn’t cooperating with my comment addition, however, so I’m going to put it right here:

“…the industry is now experiencing a “true self-publishing” movement that argues a “real” self-published author is one who eschews the use of services like AuthorSolutions.

“I find the distinction to be nonsensical and elitist. It’s like saying you should never hire an expert or contractor to do your taxes, fix your car, or repair your plumbing.”

There IS a distinction between self-publishing and subsidy publishing, which is what Author Solutions provides. And it’s neither nonsensical nor elitist. True self-published authors work hard to ensure their book is a quality product that is virtually indistinguishable from others on the bookshelf that have been produced by traditional publishers. Subsidy published books tend to be of lower quality–both from an editorial and design standpoint–and sell fewer than 100 copies.

Truly self-published authors–and by that I mean they start up their own publishing imprint and purchase their own ISBNs–frequently DO hire experts to help them through the process. But lumping subsidy publishers such as Author Solutions together with those who provide services to authors who are truly self-publishing misleads authors who do not understand what they are getting into with subsidy publishing.

I don’t believe Author Solutions and the like are evil; but I sure wish they would stop calling themselves “self-publishing companies.” They are pay-to-publish services–ie, vanity presses.

http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2010/03/think-hard-before-self-publishing.html

from a literary agent, who basically thinks self-publishing is a bad idea for the vast majority of authors. Because I disagree with so much of what she says–from the standpoint of authors who are truly self-published (and this is an important distinction!)–and wrote a lengthy comment to the post, I thought I would post it here as well.

Here’s my comment to her blog post:

I have to disagree with much of this article from the standpoint of truly self-published authors. And by that, I mean authors who start up their own publishing company imprint, obtain their own ISBN prefix, and oversee that all aspects of editing and design are done professionally. Books published in this way cannot readily be identified as “self-published.” They are “independently” published. For authors who go the Lulu or iUniverse route—yes, much of this article is true; these books really don’t have a chance in the book marketplace, and they sell very few copies.

Self-published authors who do it correctly CAN get into traditional distribution channels. Through membership in such groups as IBPA, independent publishers are able to work with Baker and Taylor, for instance. Of course, it is up to the publisher/author to create demand for their books from the consumer level because distributors/wholesalers do little to market books. Marketing and promotions by the author are key—whether books are self- or traditionally published. (It usually comes as a shock to traditionally published authors that publishers do little to market most of their titles.)

As far as promotions publishers have access to—“purchasing space on front and center tables in Barnes & Noble—how many of their authors are getting this? The James Pattersons of the publishing world will get this treatment; the average midlist author likely will not anyway.

I would also venture to say that the odds of any published book becoming a NYT bestseller are staggeringly slim. Most authors—whether self- or traditionally published—should have more realistic goals. And there are certainly plenty of other “bestseller lists” to which they can aspire.

As far as selling a self-pubbed book becoming a full-time job—well, wouldn’t this be true for any book that needs to be marketed? Again, most publishers do little to promote the majority of the books on their list, focusing on the few moneymakers; it is primarily left up to the authors.

I do agree with the recommendation for authors to self-publish if they have some decent channels through which to sell books—and if they’ve got a good platform already established. (Of course, platform is becoming more and more important to traditional publishers as well.)

As someone who has worked with self-publishing authors for more than a decade (and who was involved in trade publishing for a decade before that), I am truly bothered by the fact that POD “self-publishing” is now being lumped together with true self-publishers. They are not one and the same—no matter how many times these “subsidy” presses say it is so. Paying to publish and publishing by starting one’s own publishing company are two different things. I work with authors who are doing the latter; these authors make thoughtful decisions about all aspects of production of their books, and these books stand up to any other on the bookstore shelf—because yes, their books are available in brick and mortar bookstores.

As self-publishing continues to grow in popularity (and I believe it will), we must educate people so they understand the POD digital publishers are really just vanity publishers masquerading as self-publishers. Unfortunately, they are also trading on the respectable reputation legitimate self-publishers have created.