10 reasons you shouldn't self-publish

Indie author and publisher Chris Kelly is doing a blog tour this month to promote the first e-novel from Scathach Publishing, available now online at Smashwords and titled Matilda Raleigh: Invictus. As an indie author myself, I put Chris to the test when asked about what to write for my blog.

When Ty invited me to his blog, he found his evil streak and asked that I make my post about why you shouldn’t self-publish. I released my self-published novel last week to almost no notice (hence this blog tour) and firmly believe Independent Publishing is the best option for me. But I love a challenge, so decided I would try for ten reasons you shouldn’t self-publish. Here goes...

10) Self-publishing for money.

Now this is a bad idea. An often quoted statistic is that self-published books sell, on average, 140 copies (traditionally published books average about 14 copies). This is an old statistic, from before ebooks really started to take off. However, I can guarantee, more writers will make a fortune going the traditional route.

When it comes to the biggest stars, the J. K. Rowlings, Stephen Kings, John Grishams and so on, you'll do better the traditional route. Yes, I know how much Joe Konrath makes in a month. I also know how many novels he has released, and I know he was previously traditionally published.

9) Have no start-up cash.

Okay, I had no start-up cash. And self-publishing was really hard. Take cover art; in cover art I have been very fortunate because my friend is an artist. That's actually her job. I was bugging her for months to get an on-line presence. Then I asked her how much she'd take for cover art. She offered to do it gratis, on the condition I help her set up on-line. I was very lucky, just in the right time at the right place. But I’m like that quite often.

Without start-up cash, I couldn't afford to hair an editor. It really take time and effort to edit it, and I'm am sure its not perfect. I will have missed thngs. And if you get confuzed by words like thier or there, an editor would prove invaluable, because spell-check will miss it. .And there are nine mistakes in this paragraph, for those who think they are good at editing. Be honest, how many did you spot in your first read?

8) Have a thick skin

Despite all the recent successes of indie authors, indie publishing is vastly looked down upon. People will attack your books for no reason other than that you self-published. You will be called a lazy narcissist (does that even make sense)? People will hate you. Fruit will be thrown.

You gotta have a thick skin, baby. Luckily, I have an advantage in that area, being Scottish. Insulting each other is how we say hello, and pretty much everything after that. You'll understand this (maybe) if you've visited Scotland. (I thought it was a global thing, but apparently it's weird, and it's ours. Like the thistle.)

If you don’t have a thick skin, you should consider traditional publishing.

7) There are no gatekeepers

Sometimes people look at this as being “great,” like some vast freedom to publish whatever you want. It's not. Indies get less freedom than trads. People expect traditionally published books to be good, so when a book is shit it's either a) the reader's fault (they didn't get it, it's not their thing, etc) b) an aberration (all trad published authors get 1 shit book considered an exception) or c) errors beyond the author’s control (ie printing errors).

If a self-pubbed book sucks ass, it is always the writer's fault (even when it isn't).

Because of this, a good indie book has to be of a much higher quality than a good trad book. In fact, a good indie book, if trad published, would probably be a very good trad book. This higher rate of standards is why it is so impossible to find an awesome self-pubbed book. They're just considered very good.

6) The price will always be wrong

Ebook prices are in a flux. No matter what you price it at, some people will bitch that it is too much, others will bitch it is not enough. You will either be overcharging (even at $1, some people want everything for nothing) or you will be undervaluing (if your book is $1, how do you expect people to buy my book at $2.99).

Realistically, neither of those should be your concern, but this goes back to point 8. You will need a thick skin. Because people are going to bitch about everything you do, no matter what it is.

If you don't have a thick skin, don't self-publish.

5) There is no validation

Someone might review your book, and say they enjoyed it. They might not. They might say they hated it. They might not review it. You can't make them.

Someone might email you, to tell you how much your book means to them. Or they might not.

In traditional publishing, your book has to be a certain standard to get published (okay, that standard is salability, not quality, but still ... ) and if you get published, you're above the bar.

But in self-publishing, no one has to tell you how good (or crap) your book is. If you are the type of person who needs that validation, traditional publishing may well be for you.

4) There is no “I” in team

This is one of the biggest reasons to not consider self-publishing. When you traditionally publish, you get a full team of (I'm not exactly sure what to call them whilst remaining objective, as I have been trying to do) team members who help get your book published. There's editors, artists, financiers, marketers, and so on. But you kiss that all goodbye when you self-publish.

When you self-publish, you publish alone. Which means you do the work of all the people who put out a book the traditional way. You will have about eight different hats to wear. It isn't easy. In fact, it is very hard and very time consuming, and you are going to do much more work after the book is written than you did whilst writing it.

3) You don't know how ...

I left this one ambiguously blank at the end, there. There are lots of things you might not know how to do. You might not understand marketing, as an example. You might be very bad at accounts. This leads on from 4, but 4 was more “there are lots of jobs to do, do you want/have time to do them all?”

This is “can you do them all?” If you have no entrepreneurial spirit, and no business acumen, you shouldn't self-publish.

2) You just want to write

Some people just want to write a book, send it away, write the next book and so on. As I've said over and over already, self-publishing is hard. If you just want to write, you're probably not even reading this anyway. Lolz.

1) You'd be in competition with me

And my book is amazing. Seriously. Buy it right now, then come back and finish reading this article. On you go...

Oh, okay, I'll do a serious point (because some self-publishers publish romance, and some romance readers won't be interested in a steampunk, sword and sorcery epic cross genre set in alternate reality version of 1912. This is my blog tour, I've got to plug this somehow.)

1) You want money now

Occasionally, self-publishers are considered greedy for self-publishing. I don't understand that. Every penny earned is, well, earned. But if you want money now, no matter how your book sells, the advance offered by the bigger publishing companies is your friend.

Essentially, you could well be getting money for nothing.

And that's my ten. Yes, they are tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time they each have a valid point to make. I'll sum it up quickly for folk who got bored and skipped to the end of the post (don't worry; I do that, too).

If you are skint, want money in the short term, want more money in the long-term, then traditionally publish. Self-publishing is more for the love than the money (although some self-publishers are making a wack).

If you are thin-skinned, traditionally publish. Self-publishers are attacked for the price of their books (publisher sets the price for trad books), the fact they self-published, and more.

Business is not something you enjoy/are good at. This is a biggie. Because when you write a traditionally published book, it's about 60% writing and 40% editing and submitting (it feels like more, but that's fairly accurate as a guestimation) but, when you self-publish, it is more about 30% writing, 30% editing, and 40% businessing.

Yeah, I know that isn't a word. Being a writer, I'm fairly qualified to make up new words. Dickens and Shakespeare used to do it all the time.

I missed out a couple of things there that some people might consider important reasons to traditionally publish. I had reasons. Here's the ones I missed.

1) (3rd time for number one in a top ten, impressive!) It will hurt your trad chances

No one has came out and said it won't, but to be honest, it won't. If you self-publish a book, put an ISBN on it, and it tanks, then yeah, okay, maybe. But if it does well, you might get a publishing contract out of it. And if you use a pseudonym or don't use an ISBN (ebooks don't need them) then how will the publisher ever know?

2) Self-published books are shit

Obviously, I don't agree with that. There are good books on both sides, perhaps more good books on the traditionally published side. The agent/editor dam holds out a lot of crap, but some gets through, whilst some good books seem to get nowhere.

3) Publishers have distribution links

IMO these are going to become less and less important as e-reader popularity grows, and bookshops close.

A summation

I've been verbose enough, so I'll keep this short. There are pros and cons in both directions, and you have to decide what is more important to you. On the one hand, money, a supportive team who (might) really love your book, and industry validation. On the other hand, full creative control, a much shorter publishing turn around time, the chance to set your own price, and you get to fail or succeed on your own abilities.

And finally

My Blog Tour is also a Guest Post combo. Get yourself over to my blog to read M T Murphy’s opinion on vampires. You’ll find it here.

Come along ...

The only good excuse for not following my blog tour is that you downloaded my book and it's so good you can't turn it off, a real next-page-button-pusher (page-turner sounds better, right?).

And finally, finally:

Thanks, Ty, for having me here.

Bayne's Climb revealed

My major project of late, my novella Bayne's Climb, has been written at 40,000 words. Now it's onto the editing and proofing.

But the cover was pretty much wrapped up today. The e-book novella won't be out until December of this year (God willing), but I thought I'd go ahead and give a sneak peek.

No, here and now I won't go into details about the story, other than to say it's an experimental piece in which I try to mix tropes of epic fantasy and sword and sorcery with some literary writing. Will it work? I don't know. I'm sure readers will let me know.

Until then, take a gander at that cover. I kind of like it. What's everybody think?

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 62

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

The Hunt for Red October
by Tom Clancy

I was a relative latecomer to the Tom Clancy military thriller boom. I didn't catch on until the move versions of The Hunt for Red October was near release in 1990. I had heard about Clancy and his few novels up to that point, but I hadn't bitten yet. Then when I saw the trailers for the film on television, I was intrigued enough to give the novel a try.

The tale of a Soviet submarine captain who decides to defect while taking the submarine with him, and a former CIA agent who figures this out and spearheads a U.S. response in bringing in the submarine captain are just great literature, and thrilling writing. The plot twists and turns a little here and there, but it's solid for the most part, and the characters are well thought out.

I was hooked.

I won't say The Hunt for Red October was Clancy's best novel. Actually, I don't think he hit his full stride for at least three or four more novels. I read most of Clancy's works through about the late 1990s, enjoying some more than others but liking them all, but then I began to lose interest. Clancy seemed to go into stranger and stranger land as his main character, Jack Ryan, became president of the United State's. Clancy's fictional world seem to move more and more away from the real one, and I guess for me at that point his tales no longer held the same resonance. Sad. Because I liked Clancy's writing a lot, so much so he's the only modern military thriller writer whom I've followed religiously for any amount of time, though that might not be surprising considering Clancy pretty much single-handedly brought the genre into prominence (though I'm not suggesting he created it).

As a writer studying Clancy's works, one of the things he does quite well is making his characters likable, at least the one's the reader is supposed to like. Clancy's heroes are men with honor who at least attempt to do the right thing more times than not, who set aside politics and often personal lives to deal with the dark side of the world's politics.

Great reading. I truly wish the author could have kept my interest. Perhaps I should give him a try once more.

Up next: The First Book of Swords

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 61

This is an ongoing series looking at books that influenced me as a fantasy author.

Red Dragon
by Thomas Harris

In 1991, I sometimes wore a knowing sneer on my lips. Why? Because the movie The Silence of the Lambs was released and suddenly the whole world became familiar with fictional cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the author, Thomas Harris, who created the character.

See, I'd been familiar with Lecter for a decade at that point, since reading Harris 1981 novel, Red Dragon. And I'd read the novel The Silence of the Lambs when it came out in 1988. To me, Lecter was old hat. Because of that, I felt like I was one of those people in the know.

It can be a fun feeling when you're young, but eventually you grow and realize it's kind of silly.

Still, I know about Hannibal Lecter before everybody else did. ;-)

To be honest, I also prefer the story in Red Dragon, though I freely admit The Silence of the Lambs is a darn good novel and movie. Unfortunately, the first movie version of Red Dragon, 1986's Manhunter, was a flop of a movie, and deservedly so because it just wasn't that great of a movie. The 2002 movie Red Dragon is pretty decent, but I'll admit it's not as good as the movie The Silence of the Lambs. The only thing I'll say about the other two novels (so far) concerning Lecter, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, is that I did not like where the author took the character.

Back to Red Dragon.

In this novel, Lecter is almost more of a side character than a main character, though he is an important figure to the plot. Here, a former FBI agent who retired after arresting Lecter is lured back on the job to help catch a serial killer dubbed The Tooth Fairy. Lecter comes into play when he and The Tooth Fairy enter into correspondence and Lecter attempts to help The Tooth Fairy kill the FBI agent. Of course there's a lot more to the plot than that, but I don't want to give it all away. Clarice Starling, the protagonist of The Silence of the Lambs, is nowhere to be found in this story, but that's sensible because she would likely have been a teen or even younger when the events of this tale took place.

And, to repeat, I've always liked Red Dragon over The Silence of the Lambs, despite the latter being a darn good book.

Why do I like Red Dragon so much? There are multiple factors. Being a fan of horror literature, I was drawn to this novel for it's look into the mentalities of serial killers. It really wasn't until the mid-1980s or so that the FBI began to seriously study the psyche of such criminals, and Red Dragon was one of the first novels that revealed much of how the FBI profiles serial killers. There's also the matter that is simply a well-written book with interesting characters and an above average plot.

Up next: The Hunt for Red October

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 60

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as an author.

Armor
by John Steakley

In 1984 I was a young teen. I had read a lot of fantasy by that time, but only a handful of science fiction. One day I was walking through a drug store near my house when I saw the awesome cover for the book Armor by John Steakley. The cover image was of a man in futuristic armor swinging a laser gun over his head to bash in the skull of an armored, human-sized insectoid creature. That sold me. I had to have that book.

So I shelled out my few dollars (boy, remember when that's all it cost to get a thick paperback), and was soon carried into a future where humanity was involved in an interstellar war with the insectoid race, called "ants" as a derogatory term by humans.

The plot had two time lines, a past and present one. The post story was about a human soldier and his involvement in the war against the ants. The present story (actually the future, for us readers) involved a space station being attacked by space pirates.

Toward the end of the novel, the two tales become connected, and there's a bit of a twist in that connection.

Armor was a great read, and my first introduction to hardcore military science fiction. I was barely familiar with Heinlein at the time, and I'd yet to read his Starship Troopers. Also, there wasn't a lot of military science fiction back then like there is today (thank you, John Scalzi). So, for a young teen, Armor was simply amazing, and one of my favorite science fiction novels for the longest time.

Being my first militaristic sci-fi reading, Armor set the tone for all future readings in that genre, at least for me. It wouldn't until years later, when I finally got around to Starship Troopers, that I would feel such amazement once more.

However, for those who haven't read Armor, don't expect the ra-ra!, go-military attitude of Starship Troopers. Despite all the action in Armor, it's more of an internal book than is Starship Troopers, skipping the political angles to study the inner thoughts of one particular soldier.

Up next: Red Dragon

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 59

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

Cyteen
by C. J. Cherryh

I was somewhat familiar with author C. J. Cherryh from some of her short stories in the Thieves' World fantasy anthologies, but I had never ready any of her longer works when I noticed this particular science fiction novel among those pictured in a catalog for the Science Fiction Book Club back in the 1980s.

To this day, going on close to thirty years later, I still don't why I ordered this novel. Maybe I wanted to read more from the author. Perhaps I liked the cover image with the baby. I just don't know.

But, as sometimes happens, I was more than pleasantly surprised when I started reading. The writing and the plot and the characters were downright amazing, and I always enjoy picking up an unfamiliar work from a (relatively) unfamiliar author and find out it's something great.

This was one such time.

It would be quite difficult to examine the plot in such a limited space as this posting, mainly because there's so much background material that would have to be included, but I'll try to simplify things. Basically, in a few hundred years on the planet Cyteen (which has been colonized by humans) a member of a group of "official" geniuses is murdered. For good or ill, she is then cloned, and much of the middle story includes this child's upbringing, which is rather unusual in many ways because those in charge of rearing the child want her to be as near exactly the same as her predecessor as possible, to the point of including childhood traumas on this child that her predecessor also suffered. When the clone is of age, she discovers her predecessor was involved in a secret project to restructure society in hopes of stopping society from crumbling from within. The clone decides to follow through with the project.

Oh boy. Okay, I left out a ton of stuff, and there's all kinds of back story and government and corporate information that I intentionally left out because it would be meaningless to the casual reader. But let it be said, this is one of the most interesting science fiction novels I have ever read.

As a writer, what did it teach me? More than anything, it showed me how complex ideas could be worked into complex plots and still work well. I cherish this novel for that, especially considering much of modern science fiction is either "soft" science fiction or military science fiction. I have no problems with soft or military science fiction, but it seems that's about all that's being written today. Cyteen went beyond all that and became something special, at least for me.

If you are interested and go searching for Cyteen, in paperback the novel has been split into three separate books.  I had the hardcover, keeping it all in on book.

Up next: Armor

Interview at Kindle Author

David Wisehart of Kindle Author recently interviewed me through e-mail and the outcome is now available at the website.

All I have to say about this is ... WOW!

The interview had mostly pertained to my epic fantasy novel City of Rogues, and its two sequels, but those folks at Kindle Author know how to treat an author right. Included on the interview page are images and Amazon links to all my current e-books.

So, yeah, I'm quite thrilled!

Thanks, David.