SELF PUBLISHING: PATHETIC
LITERARY SUICIDE
One of the greatest mistakes a writer can make, and especially when writing non-fiction, is to assume that the public are interested in whatever fascinates you. Thus when we have something to say about a particular subject, something to get off our chests, a bit of history which has grabbed us and won’t let go, we start cobbling proposals together for publishers, only to discover that our obsession has no ‘commercial appeal’, and all the midnight oil we’ve burned on research and knocking the proposed work into shape has been for nothing.
That’s when the shame kicks in. We don’t realise at first that what we’re about to undertake has shame attached, and we remain oblivious to the fact that what we are embarking upon – the stubborn issue of the rejected material via self-publication – is the equivalent of sitting in the bath filled with the water of any kudos we may have earned via bon fide publishing, opening our wrists and slowly dying in the obstinacy of a thought process which dictates ‘this is good, it will be printed…’With the ready availability of sites such as lulu.com and Xlibris, we stupidly imagine we might side-step ‘the system’ and succeed.
Well, you can forget the latter if you decide to self-publish. All self-publishing achieves is a short massage of your ego and a few extra Christmas presents for your relatives and friends. Anyone with a basic grasp of design and graphics might think they know how to lay out an MSS in paginated book form, ready for printing. Yet try as you may, your critics will see the mistakes, the dodgy line breaks, the missed typos and all the other failings which flash up that neon word: AMATEUR.
And this is why I’m so relieved to be back in the bona hide publishing loop where all a writer has to worry about is his creative output. People are interested in, and actually read books from publishers, books which appear in shops, on Amazon, and even though they may not sell and end up remaindered, at least your work was good enough to warrant a deal and a contract in the first place. I have had it made clear to me by those in the loop who know about these things that print on demand self-publishing is the pits a sign that a writer has given up, lost it, and succumbed to an overblown sense of conceit over his abilities. No advances. No reviews. No publicity. No support, and you pay – sell 50 copies and you might break even. This adds nothing to the cultural life of our land and only drapes the culprit in a cloak of shame.Will I ever self-publish again? Perhaps: there’s a novel I have to get out, yet even that is in defiance of the publishing literati who tell me “Fiction and poetry are not your forte”. See what I mean? Take enough conceit pills and you’ll never wake up again.