Jumping the Cliff of Self-Publishing (or, Disney Analogies Gone Wrong)

The journey isn't easy, folks.
Don't jump without all your
balloons in place.

I had two teens come to me in the past week asking for advice about book marketing. Not writing, not editing, not cover art design, not the publishing process--marketing. Because they had already taken care of the other stuff by themselves. They'd written a book, edited it themselves, created their own covers, and uploaded their files to Amazon/CreatSpace. They were ready to sell!

What did I say?

What could I say?

They'd already jumped off the cliff.  I wished them well, prayed they'd packed their parachute (or had all their balloons), and tried to explain that marketing is hard, hard work.

What I wanted to tell them was to climb back up the cliff, and then walk up and down the hill a few times. About a thousand times. I was squirming inside. It took me four years to get  Finding Angel ready for publication. I had critiquers and then editors going through my manuscript with a mean red pen and an electron microscope. My publisher and I worked diligently on creating an original cover design, tweaking and perfecting, searching through thousands of fonts for the perfect one. It was a huge process.

I asked some writer friends what they thought of this phenomenon of self-publishing, especially among teens. The reaction was mixed. Many felt it would be a great learning experience. I disagree with that. It's kind of like learning to play the piano with a full audience in the room expecting a professional musician.

A few mentioned the teen obsession with Christopher Paolini. The one who wrote and self-published Eragon. Yes, he was the first teen self-publishing sensation, and a specific appeal to homeschoolers, but he self-published years ago. Before ebooks, before CreateSpace. His parents backed him financially, helped him market--and they knew the business. ALSO, his book was picked up by a big press and professionally edited BEFORE it became a best-seller.

What I'm seeing these days is more the Amanda Hocking dream than the Paolini dream. Write a book because, oh, it'd be fun, or you just want it now. Then upload it to CreateSpace and/or Kindle because it's free. No editing required except what you feel is necessary. A cover is a stock photo and any-old-font ("oh, that one's cute..."). Then go tell the world!

Enter: Instant success. Millions of copies sold overnight! Woohoo!

No...sorry. More like tears and broken dreams. Begging and pleading for people to read your book. Friends and family raving about it because they are so proud of you....but the rabid readers out there may not be so kind--IF they even find your work.

Am I being negative? Yes. But don't get me wrong. There ARE prodigies. And I love to see teens write. I love to see new writers, period. Would I love to see a teen become an overnight success? You bet! But the fact is, the Amanda Hockings of the world are so well-known because those stories are rare. Big news like that is not made from the everyday. If everyone were getting rich off self-publishing like that, then THAT would be the headline, not a handful of individual names.

Also, Hocking's story isn't *that* different from Paolini's. Same goes for the others of her ilk--the ebook self-pub sensations--as most of them didn't really hit their peak of fame until after an agent took over their careers.

The fact is, most books become a success--whether self-published or traditionally published--through hard work and persistence. Luck does play a role, too. As does true talent. But they are like genes--some factors are dominant and some recessive. Luck seems to be dominant--it can compensate for lack of talent and hard work. The thing is, luck's not a common gene. Most of us have to figure out how to get there without it.

And what the world sees is the end result. It looks easy, because writers don't practice in public. They spend hours and hours and hours--usually for years and years--getting ready for that debut novel to step out into the world. So readers see all the glitter and polish, not the sweat, tears, doubts, and work. Instead, what they get is like the "falling with style" scene in Toy Story. (Sorry, tried and failed to find one to embed.)

I hope more than anything these two teens are the exception to the rule. I hope this is a wonderful experience for them that leads to years and years of writing and success. I hope, yes. But I'm still going to cringe every time I see someone jump off that cliff just clutching a handful of balloons.

The Small Press Squeeze-out?

This is just a quick post (rant?) today, about something that popped into my head. I have not researched this or looked into anyone else's take on the matter. I'm just blurting it out, and I'll likely go back later and see if there is anything out there to back up my thoughts.

What occurred to me? Small presses seem to be getting squeezed out by the big presses on one side and the mass of self-pubbers on the other side. This may seem a weird conclusion to come to, but bear with me.

We're in a time when publishing is available to pretty much anyone. For almost nothing, and sometimes absolutely nothing, any individual can "publish" a novel, in print and/or ebook, through a multitude of self-publishing venues, like CreateSpace. The vast majority of what is self-pubbed is complete crap. You don't need to research or even read any to know that. Any time there is open opportunity like that, you'll end up with mostly crap. Just watch the initial auditions for American Idol to see for yourself.

But a few self-publishers have wowed the world. Amanda Hocking and Colleen Houck are both paranormal YA romance authors who got their start with self-pubbed ebooks and then were snatched up by agents and bigger publishers because they sold so many books on their own. And this week I learned of an author named Hugh Howey, who self-pubbed a book that seems to be taking the literary world by storm. We all remember The Shack, too, but that was before the mass availability of free/nearly-free self-pubbing.

Those authors have made the world take notice. Enough notice that the other 99.99% of (mostly crappy) self-pubbed books get forgotten in the fog of admiration. We writers stand in awe of the idea of being the next big publishing rebel--and readers, most of whom don't know squat about the publishing industry, look at us and say, "Well, just do what they did."

On the other hand, there are the Big Six publishers, whom most aspiring authors strive to be accepted by. We want that big advance, the marketing budget, the prime spot on the shelves at the major bookstores.

Stuck in the middle of those two: small presses.

I'm going to end this post rather abruptly--and since I'm telling you about it, you need to forgive me. But even if you find it irritating, just think about what I'm saying here:

People see the Big Six as "legitimate" publishing. People are wowed by the guts and glory of the self-pubbed best-sellers. But they seem to see small press authors as the ones who didn't "qualify" for a Big Six house, but don't have the balls to hack it on our own.

Am I the only one to whom this has occurred? Am I seeing it all wrong?