This question was recently asked, and some mighty strange answers were provided:
“…Is self publishing here to stay? Hogwash. Self publishing will be here to stay when self published authors start showing up on Good Morning America or The View or the front page of the Huffington Post or Salon or the New York Times Book Review, and I don’t mean well known marketable authors who’ve jettisoned the mainstream publishers without which they’d still be a bunch of nobodies tweeting their asses off about their latest novel. Sure, once in a blue moon an “indie” author will break through into one of those venues, but the major publishers are still dictating what America reads. Go ahead, shoot the messenger…”
And:
“…Excuse me, I forgot this is an ebook group, so let’s add the ebook phenomenon to the print on demand phenomenon! You can publish an ebook for nothing too. Of course, with both ebooks and POD, you could pay a couple of hundred dollars for a professionally designed cover, and a few hundred dollars on up to an editor, and then you could pay I don’t know how much to a blog tour broker, and you could pay to have your book displayed on a web site promoting great reads to people looking for something to read…”
And:
“…Skill has nothing to do with it. There are many highly skilled people self publishing. Self publishing, via e and print books, has exponentially increased the number of books being published…”
To set the record straight:
Yes, self-publishing is here to stay. But – to correct a common misunderstanding among legacy publishers, wannabe authors who dream of getting a 15% royalty instead of a 70% royalty, and copy editors – Self publishing really isn’t ‘self publishing.’ It’s actually indie publishing, and it’s been around almost as long as the print press.
To claim that it’s ‘hogwash’ is to display an extraordinarily myopic view of the publishing industry. There are certainly more than the Big Six … I mean Big Five … I mean Slightly Smaller Four … I guess it’s really just the More Svelte Three, now … Umm, yeah. There are certainly more than the More Svelte Three Publishers out there. There always has been. Unfortunately for the dwindling More Svelte Three Publishers, the keys to the kingdom are no longer relevant when you remove the doors, gates, moats, drawbridges and walls that kept great writers from becoming great authors. Perhaps one day they’ll realize that they’re guarding a gate that nobody has to go through anymore.
Self published authors have shown up on Good Morning America. The Huffington Post has closely followed indie publishing for years. Salon has done numerous pieces on self-publishing, and indie books have regularly appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list – and have even been reviewed by the NYTs Book Review. If you haven’t seen any of this, then the phrase “The Revolution Was Televised” will only have one meaning for you. Ebooks are, indeed here to stay. Ask Good Morning America, Salon.com, the NY Times, the LA Times, Forbes, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, or any number of mainstream media outlets who have ben covering the surging wave of self-publishing for Y E A R S.
“Major” publishers haven’t been dictating what anyone reads for a very, very long time. They’ve been doing their best just to try to stay in business by consummating industry relationships so incestuous with each other – and with bottom feeders who have appeared on ‘writer beware’ lists for a decade – that the word ‘perversion’ just doesn’t cover it.
Maybe those who think you have to sell books out of the trunk of your car like a traveling snake-oil salesman just don’t get. Maybe they never will. The industry has matured as information has become available and as technology has advanced. The writer who adapts becomes the author who sells.
It’s patently untrue that ‘you can publish an ebook for nothing.’ Sweat equity isn’t ‘nothing.’ It’s bleeding out onto the page so others may read your thoughts.
It’s patently untrue that ‘you could pay a couple hundred dollars for a professionally designed cover.’ You can pay a couple hundred dollars for a completely formatted ebook AND dead-tree book.
What IS true is that there are some serious misconceptions about the business of indie publishing; it’s an industry whose time has come, and those that adapt, understand, and overcome are the ones who are not only going to survive, but thrive in this new post-Big Six publishing world.
Skill, as always, as everything to do with indie publishing. It always has.
Self-publishing hasn’t “exponentially increased the number of books being published” at all. What indie publishing HAS done is is increased the number of sales of books and ebooks, and has increased the shelf lifespan of the printed word from a maximum of six months to forever. And forever is a mighty long time to be getting 70% royalties.
What indie publishing does best – something that the dinosaurs just never understood – is pivot. The ability to pivot and be quick, nimble, lean and all muscle is what has caused the paradigm shift in the publishing industry. Things are no longer black and white … they’re read all over.