So there are lots of positives about self-publishing and I'll do a post on them in the future, but I thought I'd share some of the less-than-positive things about it. Partly to share with readers what authors go through to bring you a work and partly to acknowledge what seems so rarely to be acknowledged within the industry.
Are these negatives absolute and all-consuming? No.
Do they make self-publishing not worth it? No. There are just as many (albeit different) negatives with traditional publishing.
Will everyone agree with these? Probably not (but let's not let that stop us).
Let's call this list Dark Realities of Self-Publishing:
Dark Reality One - No One Cares
As a general principle, no one really cares that you are self-publishing. Until you develop a reader base who show they care by buying your works, it's a desolate path for the self-publisher. There's no agent or publisher cheering you on. There's no one ponying up advances. There's no one lining up press or blog interviews. There's no one lining up to review an advance copy of your book.
There is no throng of readers clamoring to find the next new author that no one knows about (unlike the music industry where there has always been strong support for up-and-coming indie bands).
In short, the world-at-large doesn't care, you have to make them care (or at least hope to catch their attention over time).
Dark Reality Two - Lies, lies and more lies
The self-publishing industry is flooded with people looking to make money off self-publishers. Many will proposition themselves as wanting to help, but merely as a prelude to the eventual "We can make you a best seller for $$$".
And it's not just vendors playing loose with the truth. Other self-pub authors do so as well. Some use review services, others co-review each other's books (sometimes honestly, sometimes not so honestly), and still others will outright lie about their sales and success in attempts to sell other authors services they can provide to help them "succeed" the same way.
There are very few people and businesses interested in supporting self-publishers if there's nothing in it for them up front. I've had to ban at least a dozen self-publishing authors on twitter who follow other authors to get a reciprocal follow and then they quickly unfollow hoping to build up their "following" base without increasing who they follow. All to create the illusion that they are highly followed. Used car salesman stuff going on by a lot of folks out there.
That said, not everyone is like that, there are good folks around, but they are outnumbered by a large margin. Your dreams and aspirations as an author are to many as blood in the water is to a shark.
I've been pleasantly surprised by the community at kboards though.
Dark Reality Three - Amazon (and others) aren't really your partner
You'd think the distribution platforms would be interested in assisting authors sell more right? Nope, that's not on their agenda, as odd as that may seem. In fact, if you want to sell more, Amazon and others are happy to help with advertising services which you can pay them for. (note: I'm picking on Amazon because I know the most about them, but this is industry wide).
Now, if you manage to achieve some success on your own, then they might get behind you with various tactics to expose your book to new readers. But you can see the chicken-and-egg scenario here right? To get exposure you need marketing, to get marketing support from the distributor you need to have already achieved exposure. As with most things in life, the helping hand usually comes when you no longer need it.
The solution for new entrants? As always... pay to get that exposure (or figure out ways to do it yourself).
Dark Reality Four - What's a Review?
The stat I keep hearing is that maybe one in 1,000 readers will leave a review. Given I don't have 1,000 sales and have 10 reviews (all honest readers) on my first book I suspect that's exaggerated. That said though, people are really absent-minded when it comes to leaving reviews.
Readers, believe it or not, your review is probably worth MORE to the author than the price you paid for the book. So if you enjoyed a book and want to support the author and see them succeed, make sure to leave a review (too few readers do).
This lack of reviewing is what drives some authors to generate reviews through less than honest means. I've never done it and never will, but I can see how some authors pull out their hair when they have, say, 200 sales and no reviews. Like any product, reviews validate (or invalidate) a product to other consumers.
Dark Reality Five - Your reader list.
The #1 piece of advice you'll see everywhere on the web is to "build your reader list". If one day I won the lottery, I'd buy 100 computer monitors and every time I saw that I'd smash my monitor. I figure 100 monitors would probably last me a week.
Obviously, once you have thousands of readers, building a readers list is quite simple. But it boggles my mind how this is the main piece of advice to new authors who don't have a single person on their reader list.
Dark Reality Six - The slush pile
Getting onto Amazon or any other distributor is (relatively) easy. The problem? Your book simply gets tossed into a pile of a million (literally a million) other books with absolutely no criteria or filtering for quality.
This ties back to Dark Reality Three and Four. The distributors don't care about figuring out which books are good and which aren't, they leave that for readers to figure out. And readers, burned by poor books, are hesitant to buy self-published works.
So there could be dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of amazing, high-quality self-published books, but they are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of poorly written ones.
Dark Reality Seven - The click-bait noise is deafening
The noise in the self-publishing industry is tremendous. So many articles written that mean absolutely nothing. I've probably clicked on a hundred "advice to self-publishers" articles that offered absolutely nothing of value.
Their only purpose is to drive traffic to some marketing, editing or publishing service.
I don't fault people trying to generate visitors, but the noise is insane. It makes it very hard to get reliable, useful advice. At a certain point you almost have to avoid all advice because 99 times out of a 100 it's just a waste of your time to click on a link.
But it's not all bad...
So there we have it, seven dark realities of the self-publishing industry. Having said all that though, let's just be thankful we live in a time where there is a path forward (as difficult as it may be). Twenty years ago you were beholden to the publishing industry oligarchs who set the terms until you became successful enough to push back.
Are these negatives absolute and all-consuming? No.
Do they make self-publishing not worth it? No. There are just as many (albeit different) negatives with traditional publishing.
Will everyone agree with these? Probably not (but let's not let that stop us).
Let's call this list Dark Realities of Self-Publishing:
Dark Reality One - No One Cares
There is no throng of readers clamoring to find the next new author that no one knows about (unlike the music industry where there has always been strong support for up-and-coming indie bands).
In short, the world-at-large doesn't care, you have to make them care (or at least hope to catch their attention over time).
Dark Reality Two - Lies, lies and more lies
And it's not just vendors playing loose with the truth. Other self-pub authors do so as well. Some use review services, others co-review each other's books (sometimes honestly, sometimes not so honestly), and still others will outright lie about their sales and success in attempts to sell other authors services they can provide to help them "succeed" the same way.
There are very few people and businesses interested in supporting self-publishers if there's nothing in it for them up front. I've had to ban at least a dozen self-publishing authors on twitter who follow other authors to get a reciprocal follow and then they quickly unfollow hoping to build up their "following" base without increasing who they follow. All to create the illusion that they are highly followed. Used car salesman stuff going on by a lot of folks out there.
That said, not everyone is like that, there are good folks around, but they are outnumbered by a large margin. Your dreams and aspirations as an author are to many as blood in the water is to a shark.
I've been pleasantly surprised by the community at kboards though.
Dark Reality Three - Amazon (and others) aren't really your partner
You'd think the distribution platforms would be interested in assisting authors sell more right? Nope, that's not on their agenda, as odd as that may seem. In fact, if you want to sell more, Amazon and others are happy to help with advertising services which you can pay them for. (note: I'm picking on Amazon because I know the most about them, but this is industry wide).
Now, if you manage to achieve some success on your own, then they might get behind you with various tactics to expose your book to new readers. But you can see the chicken-and-egg scenario here right? To get exposure you need marketing, to get marketing support from the distributor you need to have already achieved exposure. As with most things in life, the helping hand usually comes when you no longer need it.
The solution for new entrants? As always... pay to get that exposure (or figure out ways to do it yourself).
Dark Reality Four - What's a Review?
The stat I keep hearing is that maybe one in 1,000 readers will leave a review. Given I don't have 1,000 sales and have 10 reviews (all honest readers) on my first book I suspect that's exaggerated. That said though, people are really absent-minded when it comes to leaving reviews.
Readers, believe it or not, your review is probably worth MORE to the author than the price you paid for the book. So if you enjoyed a book and want to support the author and see them succeed, make sure to leave a review (too few readers do).
This lack of reviewing is what drives some authors to generate reviews through less than honest means. I've never done it and never will, but I can see how some authors pull out their hair when they have, say, 200 sales and no reviews. Like any product, reviews validate (or invalidate) a product to other consumers.
Dark Reality Five - Your reader list.
Obviously, once you have thousands of readers, building a readers list is quite simple. But it boggles my mind how this is the main piece of advice to new authors who don't have a single person on their reader list.
Dark Reality Six - The slush pile
Getting onto Amazon or any other distributor is (relatively) easy. The problem? Your book simply gets tossed into a pile of a million (literally a million) other books with absolutely no criteria or filtering for quality.
This ties back to Dark Reality Three and Four. The distributors don't care about figuring out which books are good and which aren't, they leave that for readers to figure out. And readers, burned by poor books, are hesitant to buy self-published works.
So there could be dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of amazing, high-quality self-published books, but they are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of poorly written ones.
Dark Reality Seven - The click-bait noise is deafening
The noise in the self-publishing industry is tremendous. So many articles written that mean absolutely nothing. I've probably clicked on a hundred "advice to self-publishers" articles that offered absolutely nothing of value.
Their only purpose is to drive traffic to some marketing, editing or publishing service.
I don't fault people trying to generate visitors, but the noise is insane. It makes it very hard to get reliable, useful advice. At a certain point you almost have to avoid all advice because 99 times out of a 100 it's just a waste of your time to click on a link.
But it's not all bad...
So there we have it, seven dark realities of the self-publishing industry. Having said all that though, let's just be thankful we live in a time where there is a path forward (as difficult as it may be). Twenty years ago you were beholden to the publishing industry oligarchs who set the terms until you became successful enough to push back.
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