Reading, writing, and (oh, my) self-publishing

[roseleaf]

January has been overwhelming me as a reader.  I'm reviewing books again, plus I agreed to critique a book for a friend (more on that in a minute) plus a long biography for a book club, plus trying to fit in books I actually want to read that Charlie and I are both reading.  So, I'm going back on my plans and I'm going to be a little more laid back

Comments

[chaz_lehmann]

I hope it's also okay to agree.

[roseleaf]

Of course. ;-)

[chaz_lehmann]

Phew!

[bouncepogo]

I agree with you totally. I try to be picky when downloading the Kindle freebies (I love free) and it's so hard to tell which are self-pub and which are "real" books, unless there are tons of reviews. However, I notice a lot of self-pubs have good reviews but only like, 10-15 of them, because they've gotten all their friends to review and say, "Oh wow amaaaaaazing book!" Uggh.

[roseleaf]

And there are good books that are self-published, but they're so hard to find. In this case, my friend had an agent, but the agency collapsed (as is happening more and more frequently the way the industry is going)and she decided not to spend any more time waiting for the traditional way to come through for her. That time, though, could have done her book some good.

[bouncepogo]

I had to come back and find this post because one of Amazon's freebies today is a self-published Kindle book...about how to publish and sell Kindle books on Amazon. No lie. It made me LOL and think of you immediately.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008VIFWW4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B008VIFWW4&linkCode=as2&tag=ereagirl-20

[roseleaf]

Love it!

[leoetiquette]

I have mixed feelings about writer friends (as an abstract grouping). Because on one hand, friends rely on each other in part for building up. On the other, writing has a lot of professionalism and crafting that needs to be done to get a quality result. Which is a long term kind of investment with plenty of short-term tearing down.

Maybe I'm a crappy friend cuz I send out early drafts, but that tension between what we want from friends, and what we want from peers . . . I think it's best if everybody knows such things can get awkward. Sigh.

[roseleaf]

But you realize when you're sending out early drafts that they're early drafts. You have realistic expectations, and I know you know the professionalism, and won't take negatives personally. I don't know this friend through any sort of writing or academic way, so it's harder to know what her reaction will be.

[amieroserotruck]

While I do respect self-publishing, I do worry that so many people are doing it after "giving up." Especially when I hear about that from people at Hollins, I just think "your writing deserves better than that." Same goes for a former critique group member who had a transgender child and wrote a middle-grade novel about a transgender boy. I knew that if she just kept at it someone would pick it up, even if it was a place that does books about psychological issues, but she ended up self-publishing (hardcover and e-copies). It ended up being such a long and difficult endeavor that she said she wished she'd just kept at traditional channels. Granted, that was before Kindle really took off, so that might have been different, but I can't help thinking that she did the people that she wanted to help a disservice by going the self-publishing route. Like it somehow diminishes the importance of having a book like that out there

[roseleaf]

I like that idea that it's most important now for people who can to go traditional.

As far as snobby goes, Charlie and a friend have gone back and forth online about that because another friend self-publishes her stuff and sells it for free or dirt cheap so that more people have access to it. Charlie argues that more people would have access to it if she took it to a traditional publisher.

The friend that has gotten into it with Charlie on the topic is a photographer who used to have her own studio, and who gives us crap for getting pictures done at Sears, and was horrified that our wedding photographer gave us the CD of images. I think the conversations are very, very similar. More people have access to a flooded market of varying quality, while the consistently higher quality becomes a luxury.

[kathleenfoucart]

I have very mixed feelings. I agree about missing the gatekeepers where certain things are concerned (such as, oh, no spelling errors and mostly-correct grammar), but then there's the dreaded M word: market

[roseleaf]

This all makes perfect sense. As far as market goes, though, a self-publisher has to be all about reviews and ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. So I'm not convinced there's all that much difference in the long run. In the short run, of course, the book is published, so there's that.

I very much want to support the quality work that friends self-publish. Her first book was quality. I wasn't quite as torn about self-publishing until I started reading this manuscript. This current manuscript, though, is driving me crazy. It's so much less ready to be published than the draft of Accursed that I read years ago, and it kills me that this book will probably be out there being read by people this year.

[roseleaf]

The more I think about it, the more I realize that part of my issue is coming from seeing the process this time. Honestly, I find it a bit insulting to be test-reading a book when the author already has a cover artist lined up and a tentative release date of June, according to her timeline. It should be about whether you need those middle-men or not, but it ends up being whether you want those middle-men or not. Sometimes those are the same thing, and it's great. Other times those aren't the same thing, and the pool of literature is muddied.