The Self-Publishing War, illustrated with sarcasm.

In the self-publishing blog-o-sphere, I’ve noticed a somewhat invisible (or perhaps not so invisible) war raging between self-publishers that use an assisted publishing service and those that take the DIY approach. I personally am in the DIY camp and will gladly explain why this is the best choice for me. I repeat, for me. However, I’ve received fire from the other camp in blog comments or conversations that go something like this:

Well, good for you miss technologic-mc-technology fingers. I don’t even know how to tri-fold a piece of paper into an envelope, you think I can figure out where margins go?? What should I do, just quit my life and get a PhD in graphic design? Have fun making really bad covers while I have professionals work on my book. Because I am an AUTHOR. I WRITE. My readers care about the STORY and that’s my job, the STORY part. I can’t just waste my time learning about indents when I have all these STORIES. And just like any good writer I get an editor. I do IDEAS not COMMAS. Besides, I get up at four A.M. eight days a week just to get all my writing done, where will I find time to format a 200,000 word book? Real authors ain’t got time for that! You’re the reason self-publishing sucks because you think you can do it all by yourself and publish horrible covers and badly put together Frankenbooks. Hope you can sleep at night knowing you are turning self-publishing into a laughing stock while I get people who actually know what they’re doing to package all my awesome authorly ideas! It’s your fault books like mine don’t get a chance.

On the flipside, I’ve read blog posts outlining why using a publishing service has been the right choice for an author. Inevitably there are comments below the post that read like this:

Ooh, it looks like somebody has money! I’d like to bring you down to the real world. I’ll only ever have fifty, maybe, MAYBE, seventy-five cents to put toward my book, but I’m glad you had fistfuls of cash handed to you to burn on publishing. You know you can publish a book for free, right? Sure I don’t have any money to spend on marketing, advertising, giveaway copies, promotional materials, book events or business cards, but at least I don’t have five grand to make up for just getting an ISBN and some cute impersonal stock photos for my cover. Because guess what? I’m a MICRO-PUBLISHER and it says so on my facebook page. I’m like a CEO. I do way more than write. I have to think about things instead of handing out some greenbacks for someone else to do the not-fun parts of self-publishing. It’s all your fault for turning self-publishing into a vanity fair! You just need thousands of dollars and ta-da, author! How about some blood, sweat, and tears, huh? You’re the reason books like mine get a bad reputation.

All right.
I don’t care what side you’re on, if you’re so defensive about how you’re doing publishing, you just make yourself look dumb. Because both the tirades above are right: either route done badly is a great blow to the “self-pub image.” But either route done well is likely going to be the best choice for that particular author. Time, money, and management skills are necessary in self-publishing, regardless of the means. And what matters most is the book. If you aren’t writing the best book you can, it doesn’t matter how you publish or how that guy over there is publishing. If the book isn’t the center of your focus and falls short in execution, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.

So, really, do you need to go to college to be a better writer? My musings.

Well, the problem with college, I think, is that everyone thinks you’re stupid if you don’t go to college, but people think you’re even stupider when you do go to college and choose to study creative writing. Or art history. Or any field in the humanities.

Now, I don’t know about master’s degrees. I’m talking about the good, old fashioned B.S. or B.A. Maybe someday I’ll attack grad school. But like many in my position, it was about all I could do to scrape up enough for an undergrad degree. So, let’s muse about that.

When I signed up for a Language Arts Non-Teaching degree, most people would say, “What, you’re not going to teach?” I would shrug. Nope, don’t want to teach. Then, I’d get a little swagger, a little head tilt, a little grin, and the belittling question, “Well, what are you going to do to make a living then?”

Well, my honest answer was, I’m not going to college to get a job. I’m going to college to study literature, as long as I get scholarships and work three jobs to pay for everything and not go in debt. Then I’ll go get a job that probably won’t need a degree. But since that’s not a very socially correct answer I would say, “I want to work in journalism.” That usually shut the nay sayers up. “Oh, I didn’t think of that. You could be a reporter or an editor.” Yeah. Or I could work at a grocery store and write novels in my spare time.

Right now I am also a part time library clerk working on my public librarian certification, which, coupled with my bachelor’s, does open up a few more job opportunities for the future. The only reason I’m not working in journalism is because I live in an itty bitty town 60 miles from anywhere in any direction and if I did take a part time reporter position at any of the small local papers, I’d still be working part time at the grocery to pay bills. Until I can have access to working in a bigger city, I won’t have the opportunity to apply to a job “in my field.”

At any rate, I never wanted to work in my field in the traditional aspect. I wanted to write books. So, here we are. Did I need those 5 years at college to write books?

I went into college right out of high school. The first years, I bumbled around and kind of just did whatever was right in front of my face. Short story class, I wrote short stories. Poetry class, I wrote poetry. Modern Drama, I wrote plays. You get the idea.

Like I said, I took 5 years to get my B.S. though I tacked on a hefty psychology minor. The first three and a half years I was pretty much input, output. Memorize whatever was needed for the tests, keep one or two assignments I thought were randomly interesting, and sell back most of my textbooks. Sure, I was being exposed to a lot of new and interesting things, and I was learning and growing, but it wasn't until the end of my junior year and the start of my first senior year that I started putting any of it together.

Still, it amazed me how many people in my capstone English class, by far the most deep-reaching in critical analysis of literature, would say things like, “Well…I didn't like that book... that was a bad book,” and “I liked this book a lot, this was a good book.”

Which I suppose is just evidence of the myth of college, that college makes you a professional. College makes you an expert. College is what you need to succeed. This is not true. You make your degree. Buying books on literary criticism are utterly useless if you don’t read them. Skipping or sleeping through modern novel class will never give you insight into the structure of novels. You can say Shakespeare class is hard all you want. Actually reading it is harder.

Do I think there are talented writers without school, right off the bat, from the time they start writing? Yes, I do. But no one can write more than one piece and not start to learn about what they're doing. In various writers groups I've been in, I'm always impressed at how many good pieces are shared, and one piece from someone who has never studied or practiced writing can be just as striking as a piece written by someone with an MFA in creative writing.

And I'm not exaggerating. In fact, sometimes the novice has better pieces than the “pro.” The interesting thing, though, is when a person starts working on the piece, you start to see where it falls short. Where it needs work. When the sparkle of the ideas fade, the structure comes out and authors either hit or miss with rewrites. So, in a way, I think it takes either talent or a lot of work to get to point A, but as writers, we need to study and practice to get to point B, C, D, and E.

To do that, you must read and write, a lot. Which is basically what you do in college. I was restricted to swift paces set by semester classes (or sometimes half semester classes) of 8-16 weeks where we would read 5-8 novels, countless short stories and other materials. One week, my heavy week in all three of my lit classes, I had 800 pages assigned Monday, due Wednesday.

This was great, it made me read things I wouldn’t have sought out myself, maybe never even found on my own. The downside of that is I had to read so much of what was assigned, if something sparked my interest, I had no time to explore it, savor it. If I spotted a spark and wanted to build fire, well, too late, we have a quiz on chapters 1-5 of the next big thing.

I was especially a sucker for this in my psychology classes. In each class I had to write a paper. I would get the idea approved and go nuts, purchasing used books on the topic, so after I wrote my paper, I could continue to learn about the subject until satisfied. Well. That never worked. I would barely get through half of one book before the paper was due, so I would scramble to finish the paper then toss the books aside to revisit later. The pile of books I had to read by graduation was phenomenal, and my interests had become more specific, so many of the non-fiction books I thought would be epic ended up being quite sub par because I hadn't done enough looking into them. As for the fiction, well, I've been dying to read The Bluest Eye for 5 years now, and it's still sitting on my shelf.

Now I'm free to read what I'm interested when I'm interested in it. Which is why I've once again pushed Toni Morrison back to read other books I feel like reading now. My interests still tend to be faster than my reading pace, but at least I do get to the books I want to read, and write what I want to.

My first year out of college, I knew I needed to practice writing novels. So I challenged myself to write a novel in a year. It took two, but I’m very happy with how much I learned on my own. In fact, I think I learned more about writing when writing on my own than when I was in school. But without the foundation, I might not have been in the position to make such strides.

Honestly, I feel that I'm just now reading fiction from both the feeling and thinking sectors or my brain. I can get knocked out with brilliance and also appreciate the technical aspects. In psychology and sociology, I'm retaining the concepts and putting ideas together into coherent arguments. It's great that I can finally hold my own in debates, even if they are just friendly, or on facebook. But it gives me encouragement that I can write social commentary books/essays, the goal I had in mind when I added that psych minor.

I’d like to think my bumbling years weren’t worthless. If anything, we all have the bumbling years, whether we’re in college or not. Ultimately, I think writing well takes time, and practice in that time. I had a lot of opportunities to challenge myself in college and produce pieces I may never have otherwise. Some were excellent. Some were absolutely terrible.

The thing is, however, I spent a lot of time writing my own work, working on pieces that had nothing to do with the assignments or papers I had to write. So in many ways, now, it’s a lot like in college. I go to work, I do my librarian certification assignments as I am required, But in my spare time I’m always trying to write my own stuff, read what I want, and better my craft on my own.

One last thought. In both college and now out “on my own,” I participated in writing workshops. I have to admit, these are invaluable for me as a writer. Our little group that meets at the library has been wonderful. Being able to share a piece and receive feedback from a variety of viewpoints is such a great resource. And listening to someone who has worked very hard and made an impeccable piece of work means you glean a lot of insight for yourself. And I learned just as much from college centered workshops as the outside groups, set up by people who simply love to write.

So I don’t have a simple answer for anyone who wants to know if they need college to be a good writer. Ultimately, I think you need to ask yourself this: Is your bookshelf (physical or digital) overflowing with books? Have you read most of them? If a friend interrupts a free afternoon of yours will they find you reading or writing? Do you read and write on your breaks at work, or in the doctor’s office waiting room? College or not, you have to actually do the things you want to accomplish. You must work at it to be an expert. Without the work, degree or not, nothing else matters, because you won’t hold up in the real world. You won’t have readers. Fancy letters after your name aren’t any good if readers put the book down.

So in conclusion, get busy! Go write something!

Better than you

I like to read blog posts about the philosophy of writing, why we're all so crazy to be doing what we're doing. I glean a lot of insight from traditionally published, independent, and self-published authors. I usually find the blog posts themselves don't particularly fire me up, even when I disagree with them. The comment wars that tend to rage beneath the posts, however, sometimes do. Mainly because it boils down to two camps throwing serif-ed insults at each other: Traditional publishing is stupid! Self-Publishing is stupider!

 

After awhile I feel like I'm beginning to see the Matrix. We're all really super human gravity defying martial artists, the mediums we practice are fake and pliable. It's the other people swearing other ways work is what's keeping us from success, keeping the Matrix in place.

 

Or let me put it this way: We're all full of crap.

 

Because, whatever we do, it has to be because it's better than how someone else does it. And knowing we're doing it the right way isn't enough.

 

If someone posts something about how it worked for them differently, it MUST be because they never gave your way enough of a chance. They don't believe.

 

I'm not a Christian. I'm a Buddhist. I've thought about this before. But plenty of people see me as a wannabe hipster with weird hats and even though my religion is based in compassion and Karma, I'm still probably mean to the cashiers at McDonalds. Because all hipster Buddhists with beret hats that you've seen at McDonalds are. So what if I read over a thousand pages of Pali Canon translation. That Mala bracelet isn't a cross, I'm obviously wrong. And of course I've seen plenty of "free thinkers" that turn into a sputtering pile of defensive self-righteousness at the mention of Jesus. We've all seen this.

 

Sadly, the more I read author blogs, the same principle is surfacing again and again. Writers that read a perfectly well thought out and informative blog post, but find SOMETHING in it they disagree with and go nuts in the comments.

 

Now, I supposed I understand if someone is completely and unfairly bashing the way you do things, you would probably feel upset. But even when an author puts a disclaimer at the beginning of the post saying "this is the way it works for me and I'm sharing, you do not have to do this" comments still get crazy. It makes me wonder if writers are reading these blogs to gain insight, or just looking for affirmation that their way is right and to argue when someone does something different. I still have faith that there are plenty of writers learning from these blog posts, but they just keep quiet and don't try to skewer other authors on literary sticks when they disagree.

 

When I first started writing, there was still a stigma attached to self-publishing, and ereaders had not taken off yet, so I was very much swayed toward traditional and print publishing. But I changed my mind and found independent publishing worked very well for me. Unfortunately, I'm seeing a lot of Self-Pubbers trying to trash the traditional route, trying to attach a stigma to authors that are having a good go at traditional publishing. Trying to steal the elitism from "an editor approved my work and I was paid an advance, I'm better than you," to "I had to direct the formatting and cover design and plan all my own marketing, I do way more than just write, I'm better than you."

 

Well, if that makes you feel better about yourself, go for it. But why tell either a self-published or traditionally published author, who is happy, successful according to their definition, and has a readership, that they are wrong and stupid? I certainly can't imagine walking up to a successful traditionally published author and saying, "Hello, have you heard of Smashwords? Allow me to enlighten you."

 

I obviously live in the Matrix, since I have a writing blog and opinions on such things are keeping me from jumping up and flying around like superman delivering my bestsellers to the puny drones below. If only everyone listened to me and shaped the writing game to my standards, but noooo we all have to do things differently than me to keep the Matrix in place, to keep everyone asleep, and make stupid authors more successful than me.

 

Right.

 

Here's the deal, or at least, my opinion: There's no formula for success. Success is defined by the author and each book, author, target audience tastes, and means of transmission are going to have so many factors, there will never be a perfect way to publish a book. There's no perfect combination for a great cover, no super-elite tips or tricks for a synopsis that will get everyone to read the book. There's no scale to rate perfectly-flawed characters. There's no way to determine exactly how abstract or how relatable a plot should be. So don't argue like there is.

 

There are good ideas out there. I have gotten excellent marketing tips from traditionally published authors. I've found wonderful ideas that work in crafting my non-fiction books from fantasy e-book authors. I've looked at hundreds of covers and observed things I liked and things I didn't like and applied it to what I was doing. There are great ideas out there.

 

The only way you can learn and advance is to look at how others have done things, put things together, arrived at their conclusions, then arrive at your own.

 

 

My response to "that" Sue Grafton quote, and self-pub philosophy in general.

So, I'm a little late on this topic, but I feel it's time that I sat down and assembled my philosophy of self-publishing in wordage. And the topic/quote is a springboard for just that.

So, bestselling author Sue Grafton made a lot of independent and self-published authors angry when she basically called self-publishers lazy wannabes. I originally saw the quote in this Forbes article by David Vinjamuri, and soon after on writer's blogs. Grafton has since issued some damage control and explanations about her quote, but the embers still burn.

Here is the quote, I found here:

"The hard work is taking the rejection, learning the lessons, and mastering the craft over a period of time. I see way too many writers who complete one novel and start looking for the fame and fortune they’re sure they’re entitled to. To me, it seems disrespectful…that a ‘wannabe’ assumes it’s all so easy s/he can put out a ‘published novel’ without bothering to read, study, or do the research. Learning to construct a narrative and create character, learning to balance pace, description, exposition, and dialogue takes a long time. This is not an quick do-it-yourself home project. Self-publishing is a short cut and I don’t believe in short cuts when it comes to the arts. I compare self-publishing to a student managing to conquer Five Easy Pieces on the piano and then wondering if s/he’s ready to be booked into Carnegie Hall."

So, here we go.

Honestly, getting mad about "wannabe" writers is the third in the Big Three, as I like to call them, of Things Every New Writer Thinks. One is needing to put a © symbol on everything they submit/don't submit for fear of having their work stolen. Two is honestly believing that their book's themes are universal themes, so everyone will want to read it. Third, I reiterate, "Omg, I bleed ink better/harder/longer that that guy. I'm mad now." (And I'm speaking from experience as well as observation.)

I ran into the same thing in college. I was a lit major, and I took lit classes. I had peers who never read the books assigned. (That's all lit classes are. Reading books. And they didn't. Why. No idea.) Or the scope of their literary criticism/critical thinking was, "Yeah, I didn't really like that book. That wasn't a good book." Well, guess what. I loathed "Cry, the Beloved Country" but that thing is underlined and noted on every other page, and I learned a lot from reading it. At the end of the day, it didn't really matter that they just read Sparknotes and got C's or B's, when I stayed up every night reading 300 pages and got A's. We graduated with the same degree. And since it doesn't really matter if you can list Dante's circles of hell when applying for jobs in telecommunications or customer service, I guess everyone wins. (I mentioned writing literary criticism as a hobby at my interview for the grocery store. Express cashier, baby.)

But it's everywhere. In every job I've had, in every hobby I've seen, there are people standing around lamenting over the wannabes. Fearing they may be thought of as a wannabe. Pointing the finger at the wannabe, haha, wannabe! But let's not dwell on the wannabes. Wannabe's gonna wan..na.

The main point that has ruffled so many feathers is "Self-publishing is a short cut and I don’t believe in short cuts when it comes to the arts." Like many of the angered self-pubbers out there, I do not see self-publishing as a shortcut. I have spent hours (Blood! Tears!) teaching myself formatting. I have honed my skills as an editor, because, honestly, good editors are very hard to find. I've read graphic design and art books to learn about cover design and have actively been trying to sharpen my skills in photography. Not to mention that I spend hours in between my three jobs reading fiction, non-fiction, blogs and articles. I take notebooks with me everywhere I go. I write on napkins, in texts, on my breaks, late at night. And many self-publishers do that. They work diligently to polish their product and get better at their craft. But it doesn't matter to anyone else that I'm sitting at my patio feverishly trying to get a page written before I have to go to work. No one's life is changed by me staying up too late again to write this blog post. We're all doing our own thing, to cope, to live, to survive, to escape, to whatever. And we get great books out of it all, that we all enjoy and share. We also get bad books.

Because, yes. The stereotypes can be true. Self-publishing can be a shortcut. Authors are people and people come up with a million annoying marketing schemes and will always feel entitlement for attention and praise. Many out there believe their 30,000-word piece can change souls and minds and make them rich without even taking off their slippers. And some don't edit. I read a self-published book… where the narrator kept making… dramatic… pauses. And one ellipses… had 14 periods. Fourteen. Not, "Oh, typo, there's four," or even "Um, didn't anyone tell you five dots is too many?" Fourteen. It begged to question if the author had ever even read a book, let alone why this person thought s/he had the qualifications to write one.

But that's not to mean a junky self-published book was put together hastily under visions of grandeur. I worked as a tutor in lit when I was in college and I worked with some students who loved literature, wanted to write and critique. But they had a hard time. Even when they read and read and discussed and we went over themes and symbols and everything, on tests they were lucky to pull B's and their writing took several rounds of editing to get to something workable. But they were bleeding more ink into it than students who easily read something once and wrote decent essays. So even if you do work really hard for years and years, your execution might be off, or you just might not be able to tell a story in a way that readers can palate. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm on the brink of taking the plunge with my first book, and could very well not have executed the way seven years of work should have. But I'll publish again. And again. Which, in my world is exactly "taking the rejection, learning the lessons, and mastering the craft over a period of time."

I want to rally around good self-published books, because I like them, because they're well done, and because I respect the work it takes. But I will be honest, I don't want to give 5-star reviews to books I think are badly written, and don't want to review books in a positive light just because they're self-published. I want to read good books. And that starts with us, as writers.

I think self-publishers have to be on their best game to do well, or even all right. Because traditional publishers have a whole team of people and ideas crafting a product, not to mention money and resources that will far overshadow the capabilities of a softcover POD book as far as physical product goes. But with ebook and even better print technology, it still comes down to what's inside the book.

A wannabe is always going to shine through. Annoying people with self-centered selling strategies are only going to get so far. So, let's be honest. The fact that 50 Shades has allegedly sold more copies than the Harry Potter series makes me want to drink mustard and milk mixed together to induce vomiting. (A guy did that in my high school biology class once. It worked.) Not because of the sex (I want a sociology degree. I have many a sex book.) Nor because I don't think she didn't spend hours working on the book. I think she did. I just think it has the structure of a malformed plastic sack at the bottom of the stack we throw away at the grocery. But that's my opinion. It's a book. Let's look at books and quit worrying over who bleeds more, or who needs to fill a void in their life for whatever reason by writing books. I'm sure we all have one, deep and dark.

If you think a book is bad, say it's bad. If you're a self-pubbed author, for everything lovely and nice, don't solicit reviews or try guerilla tactics by shoving your book/business card in someone's face just because they're in a library. Don't try to force readers to be into something they just aren't interested in.

If you think a book is good, say it's good. Does it irk me that I stay up until 2 a.m. formatting an ebook and someone else is all, "Yeah, I paid my computer friend to format my ebook, she'll get it back to me next week and I'll be published!" Yes. It does. But if it's a good book, well-written and fresh, I will gladly say so.

So, this is where I stand. Research the writing world, but don't get too caught up in it. Work hard, read books, write, and edit every day. A pot always fills one drop at time.

For serious writers only!

All right, I gotta say it, and I mean it. Everyone is a serious writer. It doesn’t matter if you write two hundred bajillion words in a day, or just think maybe sorta writing a book would be cool. All writers are serious. I’ve never met a single person who identifies as a writer that wasn’t serious.

Seriously.

I’m tired of the limitless barrage of egotistical forum and blog posts asserting how much more serious of a writer someone is because s/he’s doing something other people aren’t or not doing something other people are. And how there’s a difference between real writers and amateur writers. No, it doesn’t have to do with money or publication credits or education. It’s about how serious you are. How many words you type, how often you think about writing seriously, how you comprehend plot structure and character development.

Not like those posers who start blogs and don’t keep up with them, that pay other people to format their books, that don’t understand publishing contracts or have stupid pen names or write cheap, flat, lurid, pasted together stories for mere entertainment, or self publish their books without an online platform (the humanity!) or don’t use spell check because they’re so dumb.

But writing is a process. When my Dad barely survived two heart attacks, I didn’t exactly keep my word count up. I barely did any writing the months when I changed jobs, the plumbing in our house blew up, or when I got married. I ditched a “literary” endeavor to write a zombie book because A) it’s zombies, that’s awesome and B) I’ve gotten a massively better reception from potential readers from this set of characters and storyline. I’ve launched my blog seven times. It took me five years to get my bachelors degree and six to write and edit my first novel, still unpublished. I wrote a play and it’s terrible. I kept it, but I fear it’s unsalvageable. I don’t have enough money to pay anyone to format my book, though I might do naughty things for someone to teach me (but that’s another story). Anyone can stumble upon a writer that has a lot to learn and a lot of ground to cover, but my guess is everyone’s been there. I know I have, and still am.

I understand there being a separation between “serious” writers and those they deem as… uh… “un-serious.” I have a list of people that irk me to no end with their delusional plans of literary grandeur, that swear they don’t have to read or listen to feedback, that everything they write is EPIC and everyone else is just so sub-par and books they like are good, but books they don’t like are horrible and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there are some people that aren’t writers that are all talk and no action, lest it be mediocre or least-effort action which usually ends up being useless anyway. It’s not a curse restricted to writers.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be proud of the hard work you put into studying the craft of writing and working on your own. But the person using much less work and thought energy is just as proud and enthusiastic about his/her book as you are. You shouldn’t judge the quality of your work to how crappy someone else does theirs.

In summary: The term “serious writer” can be beneficial in some cases, but there are poser scrub newbie people in every field, including writing, and there always will be. So be a serious writer… just don’t talk about it.

And this is pretty much awesome.


Have a nice day.