The Perils of Self Publishing


What’s the best thing to hit the fiction market?

Self publishing.

What’s the worst thing to hit the fiction market?

Self publishing.

Publishers had a hold on the market, similar to record companies. You’re the only outlet, so…

But the advent of free music hosting websites and the CD burner on computers cost the record companies billions. Now, they’re not so arrogant.

The book publishers were never arrogant, they just haven’t changed the way things are done in years.

They’re adjusting, thanks to self publishing.

Unfortunately, the market is now flooded with really bad books. Trust me, I’ve read a lot of really bad books in my life. I’ve read a lot of really good ones.

If you go on Amazon, and check out their publishing arm, you’ll see probably thousands of books. Great! I’m sure there’s a HUNDRED classics in there!

And 50,000 complete landfill material.

And that’s the problem. The 50,000 terrible books are making it harder to get published, because they see so much absolute rot from people who aren’t ready to publish yet. I’m sure my first novel would be the same if I’d just dumped it on Amazon the minute I was done with it.

Thanks to the fact that you can write a book and self publish, you can write a book filled with “Bunny go hop hop” for 200 pages, and it will get published, and at least 5 people will buy it. Unfortunately, it makes it harder now for someone to put out a quality book, and then go to Random House or S&S and say, “I’m a published author”, because one of them will have read “bunny go hop hop” and think that’s representative of the entire market.

And because “Bunny go hop hop” accidentally made it to Barnes & Nobles, and got the treasured shelf space, they’re now reluctant to give shelf space to anyone who self publishes.

Self publishing was good. Self publishing was bad.

Comment away!

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