Anybody heard Nell Bryden? Opera-trained singer who was seduced by the dark side by listening to Jimi Hendrix; she has the most incredible voice I've ever heard in a female singer. If you find out she's performing near you, and you want to come home with your heart and soul vibrating, go and see her. At the end of her shows she always chats to the fans, signs autographs and sells her own CDs. Incredibly approachable and charisma by the bucketload.
So far, so off-thread, right?
But: there ain't no doubt that she's a singer. Got a record deal, and performs live, and sells records. Except that she sells more CDs at her concerts than her record company does, and mentions this fact.
So: equate this to a person who's spent years honing their craft, (opera training) produces brilliant work which (at the moment) select audiences love, signed by a publisher (the record company) and does the bookstore signings, and incredible self-promotion to sell their books. That person's a writer, no?
So: equate that to a person who's spent years honing their craft, produces brilliant work which (at the moment) select audiences love, but can't get signed by a publisher, but nonetheless self-publishes, does the promotion, the signings and sells books on the net. That person's a writer, no?
So: equate that to a person who's spent months writing a book, which their friends said was great, who ignores advice and critiques given freely by people who know a lot more than this person, whose command of grammar and spelling is poor, whose storyline is indulgent and innacurate, who sells their book on the net. That person's a writer? NO.
I realise this is a polemic argument, because everyone on this thread who is thinking of self-publishing on the net is here because they want their work to be the best it can be, and are prepared to work to get it that way. Gary has summed it up perfectly - he's prepared to do the work (and pay for professional help!) work incredibly hard at his craft, get the best of everything and try to get published. The subjectivity of agents and publisher has already been touched on, and if after all that, there are no deals, that doesn't make it a bad book, far from it.
But the problem is that self-publishing has a bad name because of the thousands who are producing sub-standard work and trying to sell it as a book. That is not snobbish, it's a clear fact. Self-publishers who do it right should be more annoyed by them than published writers, because they're being tarred with the same brush - "all self published books are rubbish". That's akin to saying all soccer fans are thugs, all rugby fans are beer-swilling twits, all Catholic Priests are gay, all politicians are liars (okay, maybe that one...) and so on.
I'd ask this question to everyone: if, after ten years of working on your books, editing, rewriting, recrafting, paying for professional help, improving, improving, improving, and getting close to deals, nothing has happened, wouldn't you consider self-publishing? And how do you feel that after these ten years Gerry Tindkood writes a book in a month and puts it alongside yours, and everyone has no way of equating them?
