[21723]

> The article describes what it takes to getting published; ie, passing an ever increasing number of gatekeepers. Agents, "blurb writers", publishers, reviewers are all professional gatekeepers, organized in a giant, very strict filter.

If you self-publish, you have to anticipate the tastes of readers. There are millions of them; you have to reach the right ones. The best and the worst are out there, and sometimes the best for one genre are not the right readers for your book. Hit the wrong crowd, and you'll (arguably deservedly) get lackluster reviews.

As a no-name self-pubber, you'll also have to price your first book low--which itself is tricky, because the most price-sensitive readers are not the ones you really want... at some point you run into the boos from the cheap seats problem... so there's a fine line, in discounting, between rewarding early adopters (which you must do) and courting readers who won't be invested enough in your book to generate desirable word-of-mouth, and who might leave lousy reviews.

Ultimately, if you self-publish, you're betting on readers--you're betting on people with no status (nobodies like you and I and 99% of authors; mostly under-25, 75% female) but who are (of course) just as smart as the literati, and who actually read. They will push your book, but they're not influencers or "book buzz" people, so it will happen slowly (the best you can hope for is a slow exponential).

Or you can aim for trade publishing. In that case, you're betting your career on a small number of expensively educated and overly connected people who haven't read for pleasure--haven't read deeply at all; reading for work at a 45-minutes-per-book pace doesn't count--since... well, since they were under-25 nobodies with no social status.

If you do trade publishing, you have to give up on the idea of "great literature". Don't write books you love; write books people will show to their bosses, because that's what you need to get through... a manuscript that people aren't afraid to show to the next person up the chain... and it takes several decision-makers to give your book the nod to even have a chance at playing.

And yeah... MFA fiction is quite a plague. If you write enough books that nobody reads but lots of people claim to read, you can get a prestigious job where you teach other people how to write books that nobody will read. Where have we seen this before?

[bambax]

Yeah I self-published a novel last year, in French. It has been mostly a positive experience. The book did relatively well, was selected as one of the five finalists of the Amazon Storyteller contest (out of 1200+ contestants) and is still selling a little.

Before that, it had been refused by all the publishing houses I sent it to (10 of them); and the experience was rather unpleasant. There are no agents in France (the market is too small); authors send their works to publishers, on paper (nobody accepts electronic versions), and then wait between 1 to 4 months for a response. Negative answers are just a polite "no" with never any justification, or ideas for improvements, etc. (Positive answers, I don't know.)

For my next book I don't think I will even attempt trade publishing; why print so many copies, send them via post, and wait three months. I'd rather spend the time and money on getting early reviews.

I understand the appeal of traditional publishing when the full power of an established house pushes a book everywhere and gets lots of press; but if you don't get the full treatment there is little point nowadays.