jennamoreci:

Both of those things played a factor, but what really solidified my decision to go independent were my interviews with other writers.

I interviewed about… uh… 10-15 authors? Most were traditionally published, a handful were self-published. All but two of them were either resentful or accepting of their defeat. The interviews were either filled with phrases like “Stay away from the writing industry, it’ll destroy you” or “I came to accept that I’ll never be successful.” This came from both sides of the aisle – the trad pubs and the self pubs. 

The traditionally published writers were resentful because they felt let down by their publishers. Their publishers treated them like a number as opposed to a person. They pumped out their books, they gave them a small, generic marketing package (for several of them, that consisted of bookmarks/posters exclusively), and that was it. What a lot of aspiring writers don’t realize is that after 2 years, a publisher can decide to stop printing your book. They can pull the plug on it if they decide it’s not profitable enough. And for a lot of writers, that’s exactly what happens. The book stops getting printed, and it’s officially dead. That’s what happened to all but one of the writers I spoke to, and it bummed them out. They had ideas for how they wanted to continue to promote their book, but they couldn’t implement them because the book wasn’t going to be sold anymore. They felt helpless because decisions were made for them that they didn’t have full control over. 

Now don’t get me wrong, the self-published writers had major failures as well. The difference was, they failed themselves. They didn’t research the industry, they didn’t know what they were doing, hell, most of them didn’t even get their books edited. And when I interviewed them, they were in complete denial over the fact that the book didn’t sell because they fucked up. They blamed readers. “No one appreciates my work.” But I saw their books. They were bad, and they were sloppy. They didn’t treat the process with professionalism, and thus no one saw them as professionals. That’s not the reader’s fault.  

Now, for the two writers who were happy: that was one traditionally published writer and one self-published writer. The self-published writer was happy because he was selling. His books were shticky, but he found a niche audience, employed lots of online marketing techniques (that he was happy to share with me, though they weren’t really my thing), and he was selling well enough as a newbie writer that he could foresee being able to quit his day job in the future. 

Then there was the traditionally published writer. She was the most seasoned of all the writers I spoke to. She had been writing for… 50 years? She was writing full time and had a sizable audience. But during our interview, she announced that it took 20 years for her publisher to take her seriously. Twenty years and however many books before they stopped killing the books after 2 years and before they started giving her ample marketing. Granted, this was a different time in writing, but still. Twenty fucking years. She happily told me if I “wait patiently” a publisher will eventually do the same for me. And I’m sure they would, but I wasn’t gonna wait no twenty fucking years.

Anywho, those interviews swayed me to self-pub. I decided that if I was going to fail, it would be because I failed myself – not because someone else was making decisions for me that I didn’t have the power to challenge. I knew I had the business savvy to make executive decisions on my own, and I trusted my judgment. And I decided that if I do go the traditional route in the future, it’ll be at a time when I have enough of an audience and reputation already built that the publisher will be forced to take me seriously and not see me as a number.