Do I Have to Do Everything My Damned Self, Including Publishing My Book?

So. Getting your book published. A fun adventure, that. And one that’s getting more complicated by the moment.

For those of you not in the throes of trying to get your brilliant tome in front of readers’ eyeballs, here’s the basic setup: Writers want to write, so they do. Writers also want to be published, but more often than not, when dealing with traditional publishing (getting an agent, getting a publisher), they aren’t. Most writers—like, 99.999 percent of them (don’t ask me to source that number—I’m going on feel, here) end up on the scrap heap and their queries and sample pages shoved from the e-slush pile into the digital trash can or recycling bin. “Empty trash?” “Yes.” Munch. End of writing career.

But lo! A light in the darkness! E-publishing has arisen, and self-e-pubbing (I’ll call it SEP from now on, to save pixels) was not far behind. Where once self-publishers had to tussle with how many copies of their magnum opus to print…and where to store the leftovers that didn’t sell…or wrangling with print-on-demand businesses like Lulu, now they could upload their masterpieces and readers could download them instantly. No muss, no fuss, no paper—just rake in the profits. It’s a miracle, I tell ya.

And, as with all miracles, there are true believers and there are skeptics. Among my writer friends, there have evolved two camps: those who are faithful to what some might see as the pipe dream of traditional publishing, and those who have turned their back on the old-fashioned process and are wholeheartedly embracing SEP. Hallelujah. Let the debates begin.

Arguments for traditional publishing:

1) I want to see my name on a paper book on a best-seller table at Barnes & Noble. I can’t help it; I’ve dreamed of that all my life.

2) An agent will navigate the treacherous waters of publishing deals for me.

3) An editor at my publisher will help me polish my book so it’s the best it can be; I value that professional guidance.

4) I can avail myself of my publisher’s PR department’s expertise and connections; in other words, they’ll set up the book signings and all I’ll have to do is show up.

5) With a big-name publisher’s logo on the spine of my book, the sky’s the limit, and I’ll be the next (fill in the blank with your favorite bazillion-seller author here), and my only dilemma will be whether to get a Bugatti Veyron in blue or red—or get one of each.

Arguments for SEP:

1) I won’t ever be rejected by an agent or publisher again.

2) I can write whatever I want and nobody will try to make me alter my story from my original vision.

3) I will have complete control of my book—the cover art, the formatting, the promotions, the sales.

4) I get to keep most of the profits; I don’t have to share them with greedy agents and publishers.

5) With complete control, the sky’s the limit, and I’ll be the next (fill in the blank with your favorite bazillion-seller author here), and my only dilemma will be whether to get a Bugatti Veyron in blue or red—or get one of each.

Which side is right? Both. And neither. Of course.

Each approach to publishing has its benefits and its pitfalls, and while both sides would likely admit that if you held a marshmallow gun to their heads, each side is usually pretty adamant that their side is the correct one.

Me, I’m going the traditional route, querying agents at the moment. It hasn’t gone too badly yet. (Then again, I’ve only been at it two months. Check back with me at the end of the year and see if I’ve pulled all my hair out then.)

When I announced to my friends that I was going to try to land an agent, several of them begged me to reconsider and to do SEP instead. They had vile stories about publishers to share. Snakes, every last one of them, they said. Don’t do it, they said. Keep control of your own stuff, they said. You’ll be sorry, they said.

I listened, but I quietly went about my business of querying agents. Yeah, I’m a stubborn Italian. I don’t have anything against SEP, but my heart was with traditional publishing. Still, while I was researching the querying process, the topic of SEP kept sneaking into my Google search results, so I took a peek.

Omigosh, SEPworld was filled with wonderful sugarplum-and-gumdrop tales of creative freedom, simplicity, and profits. Oh, and fans. These SEPers had fans! People who eagerly read their latest book and clamored for more!

Dang, who wouldn’t want fans, right?

So even though I remained firmly in the traditional publishing camp, I couldn’t help but check it out a bit more.

First I came across an article about an author of thrillers who became a millionaire SEPer. Some dude who was on Lost or something—I dunno. (Kidding. I know he’s really a 17th century philosopher.) Well heck. Ka-ching.

But I needed to know about stuff closer to home—more modest successes, and perhaps in my genre (women’s fiction, chick lit—that sort of thing). So I downloaded Kindle for Mac and poked around Amazon a bit. I came across an E-Book That Shall Remain Nameless by An Author Who Shall Remain Nameless. The blurb sounded all right, the e-book had been downloaded tens of thousands of times, and the reviews—more than a hundred of them!—were downright impressive, most of them four or five stars. Plus there was a special pricing deal. So what the hell—I downloaded it.

And it is at this point I was plunged into the Dark Side of SEP.

This book was…how shall I put it…um…

Abominable. Horrendous. Catastrophically AWFUL.

I am not kidding—this was one of the worst things I have ever attempted to read in my entire life. The plot (such that it was), the characterizations, the flow, the writing in general—unbelievably bad. The dialogue…oh dear gods above, below, and all around, the dialogue…I cannot describe the agony of reading those stilted, wretched words. My brain still hates me.

When I was able to focus again, I immediately had a thousand questions. First, did this author have no critiquers, no beta readers? Who let this abomination get so far and called it “good”? Speaking of that, who in the heck gave this book four stars or—heaven forfend—five stars? It didn’t even rate one star, as far as I was concerned. And there were more than a hundred of these glowing reviews! Finally, who were these tens of thousands of people who downloaded the book? How did they feel about it? Did they like it, or did they reel in shock and horror at the mangling of the English language and try to wash their Kindles, crying, “Out, out, damned e-book!”?

And what of those glowing reviews? Were they bought? Were they made up out of whole cloth and attached to suspect e-mail addresses? Or, a less sinister option, were they votes of support by well-meaning friends and family? The skeptic in me started tut-tutting, and now I’m going to suspect all the online reviews of e-books.

Now, of course this one e-book is not indicative of all e-books. I realize that. But my e-book-reading experience got me thinking. Although e-publishing is coming into its own, and quickly, SEP still carries the taint of the vanity press. “Those who can, get a publisher. Those who can’t, self-publish.” That sort of thing. Unfair, I grant you, and bound to change in the future, but it’s there nonetheless. And the glut of really, really bad e-books cluttering up the field only reinforces that assumption.

Let’s go back to the traditional publishing cha-cha for a moment, this time with a poorly written manuscript in hand.

First, the query process: If a writer queries a hundred and fifty agents and gets rejected a hundred and fifty times, there might be a slim chance that, oh, I don’t know, the book sucks? Perhaps it’s not the author’s hard luck, but the author’s lack of talent that’s keeping the book from being a barn-burning best seller. Agents weed out the dross. Sometimes they do so a little too enthusiastically, as any agent who rejected J.K. Rowling or Kathryn Stockett might admit if you ply him or her with enough martinis, but by and large, they are a wise bunch, and they do their jobs well.

Okay, now let’s say the story isn’t half bad, but it needs to be cleaned up before its debut in print: Editors will not allow “angry hands” or let the hero pick up the heroine, then put her down by “dropping her feet onto the pavement” (plop plop, mind the blood?). They make sure plot holes are filled. They move misplaced modifiers and insert semicolons and remove incorrectly used apostrophes. They help the author tighten up some flabby bits that might put a reader to sleep. If an SEP author does not use an editing service, s/he will never know that a well-read person on the other end of the e-book is weeping silently over the repeated misspellings “focussed” and “loosing”.

So the biggest issue here, I think, is quality. As a professional writer, I can’t help but wonder if the poor quality of so many self-published e-books is going to drag down the standards for all published works. I’m also a professional editor, so I’m a very harsh critic. I have no tolerance for poorly written books. I want to reach into the screen and fix them, not celebrate them as a declaration of publishing independence. But other people who don’t do this for a living…they might think, “Oh, this is really good.” And they would be wrong. So, so wrong. I fear the slippery slope of plummeting quality.

What, too Chicken Little-ish? Perhaps. But look at the success of horribly written print books—that’s been going on for years, and publishers are complicit in that crime. With e-books, the quality is far worse, the books are way cheaper, and they’re easier to obtain (a quick download instead of actually going out and buying them or ordering them online and waiting for them to arrive in the mail).

Personally, I see it as a sign of the literary apocalypse.

However, I know that these things that keep me up nights won’t last forever. It’s the Wild West right now, but things will settle down. They always do. Professional services for editing, formatting, cover design, and even marketing will become more prevalent than they are now. E-pubbers will become more professional and more savvy. Eventually all the traditional publishers will be players in the e-pubbing field. The game will change again, and e-pubbers will be forced to improve their quality. At least I hope so.

In the meantime, maybe I should start offering my editing services. Goodness knows some of them need it…

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