Today I came across this article in Newsweek about the recent rise in self-published titles:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/30/who-needs-a-publisher.html
The basic gist of the article is that some authors have been lucky enough to hit it big with self-publishing. What the article doesn’t mention, however, is that, when you self-publish, you usually get little or no promotional support, which forces you to take sole charge of marketing your book. Stephen King could probably market a book on his own, but I doubt that most first-time authors would be as successful. Without industry connections or PR experience, they’re basically adrift. It’s hard enough to sell books with the backing of a publisher’s publicity machine. I can’t imagine how much more difficult it would be to go it alone.
The other major problem with self-publishing is that there’s little or no quality control. This was vividly proven a while back when a group of (published) sci-fi and fantasy authors got together and wrote an intentionally awful book entitled Atlanta Nights. And when I say ‘awful,’ I mean it. This book had characters who changed from scene to scene, duplicate chapters, and an entire section written by a text generator. They submitted their work to a well-known self publishing company and, lo and behold, Atlanta Nights was accepted (though the company later dropped it when they realized they’d been duped). Sadly, Atlanta Nights is only a little bit worse than a lot of the sample chapters from self-published books that I’ve read on Amazon.com.
It has been argued that self-publishing is The Great Leveler that allows John Q. Public to compete with J. K. Rowling on an even playing field. But there’s still the issue of talent to contend with. If no one is interested in John Q. Public’s novel (and I’m assuming he’s queried widely instead of just contacting five agents and calling it a day), it’s entirely possible that it’s not as polished as it should be or else it’s just not marketable. Of course everyone has heard about how Harry Potter was rejected by numerous publishers before it was picked up by Scholastic. But, ultimately, it was picked up by someone. Maybe I’m just a Pollyanna, but I believe that good books will eventually get published, albeit later rather than sooner in most cases. Self-publishing may allow you to get your work out there, but if the writing’s not good or there’s no market for it, you’re still going to be out of luck.
So while more and more people may turn to self-publishing, I suspect that traditional publishers will remain an author’s best shot at turning their hobby into a career.
