8 ms·

The internet is already full of self-published crap because self-publishing in digital form is already trivially easy. Making it easier to self-publish is not

The internet is already full of self-published crap because self-publishing in digital form is already trivially easy. Making it easier to self-publish is not going to disrupt the publishing industry, because the publishing industry still serves a valuable service: they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories. More importantly, they identify promising authors and mentor them into authors worth reading. If you want to disrupt the publishing industry, you need to develop an alternative solution for helping people figure out what is worth reading (probably not too difficult) and and alternative solution for developing the skills of writers (much more challanging).

Shorel 15y ago
You can self publish a lot of free and full of ads crap. Self publishing to the App Store seems a good model for professional writers, the diference is a distribution channel you can profit from without ads. This is more a competition to Amazon and Kindle than competition to blogs and wordpress sites.
muhfuhkuh 15y ago
"they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories." Wouldn't customers be a better sifter than the publishing industry? Word of mouth and discovery? Samples and free reading demos (like Barnes and Noble does when you go into the store with a Nook)? And, for every published nugget, there are tonnage worth of published muck and runoff polluting the shelves; their filter isn't so great either. "If you want to disrupt the publishing industry, you need to develop an alternative solution for helping people figure out what is worth reading (probably not too difficult) and and alternative solution for developing the skills of writers (much more challanging)." The publishing industry is plenty disrupted by the fact that eBooks are now 30% of their entire market in copies sold and is the format with the biggest share (2nd place is mass market paperback). Amazon sells more eBooks than paperback and hardcover. And, an increasing number of self-published authors are finding their way to the top 100 on Kindle and Nook paid eBook charts. Some self-pubbed authors have multiple titles in the Amazon top 100, meaning they sell at least several hundred of each of their titles per day. As far as developing professional writer skills, you're ready for the business the minute you've made a sale and perhaps a fan. The idea of the minimum viable product (MVP) in the professional writer's world is akin to the dime novel or "penny dreadfuls" of yesteryear, where some of the greatest genre writers (Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, HP Lovecraft) started their craft with generally bad writing. Believe me, nothing says "welcome to reality" like getting a godawful review or even a return (which you will see when you self-publish through markets like Kindle, Kobo, and Nook).
- lucasjung 15y ago
  Most of those eBooks are still being published by the big old publishing houses. Of the authors who are successfully self-publishing, most started out publishing through traditional channels, built up large fanbases that way, and then broke out on their own once they had sufficient popularity to sell books without help from the big publishers. People who jump right into self-publishing and experience dramatic success are way out in the narrow part of the tail. The dime novels you mention were not just an entry-level publishing platform: their more important function was to let the editors and publishers work with new authors, mentoring them and helping them grow. A guy with "one sale and one fan" is still missing the most important part: regular, constructive feedback from successful professionals.
  - pedrocr 15y ago
    >People who jump right into self-publishing and experience dramatic success are way out in the narrow part of the tail. The same is true for traditional publishing. Both mediums are very hard to break into, it's just that in the dead tree version you don't get to see as many of the failures.
    - lucasjung 15y ago
      There's another difference: in traditional publishing if you are almost (but not quite) ready for prime time, you have a chance at getting the help you need to get your work into a saleable state before it's published. As long as your potential exceeds the current quality of your work, traditional publishers will work to help you develop that potential. If you are self-publishing, you'll take that same not-quite-ready work and publish it, and it will fail miserably. You'll get plenty of feedback telling your work isn't good enough, but little or none telling you what to do about it. Also, you will have established yourself as a second-rate self-publisher, decreasing the chances that anyone will bother trying any of your subsequent work, so even if you do manage to improve it won't matter because nobody will take the time to read your newer, better work.
      - 15y ago
melling 15y ago
You can crowd source this by allowing people to rate the material. Sounds like a good idea for a startup. A "rottentomatoes.com" for self-published books? User rating and "pro" rating?
- lucasjung 15y ago
  A rating can tell potential readers that a book is worth reading or not. It can't grow a talented but unskilled author into a great author. Most successful authors will tell you that they had to write hundreds of thousands of words worth of crap before they were able to produce anything worth reading, and then only because they were getting quality coaching while writing all of that crap.
  - huherto 15y ago
    Following your line of argument. Is there a career path for independent writing coaches? Would it be possible to create a service for that?
    - lucasjung 15y ago
      As far as I can tell, the closest things currently in existence are: 1: Writing workshops 2: Short-fiction magaziness #1 is open to anyone who has the cash to get in the door, but isn't well set up for establishing long-term mentorship relationships. #2 is good for long-term mentorship relationships, but you have to already be a pretty good writer to get your foot in the door and the price of entry is selling the rights to your work. Also, a "slow-starter" with the potential to become a world-class novelist might never get off the ground under this system. I'd love to see someone establish independent coaching services for developing writers, but I think there are some significant difficulties. The biggest problem is: where do you get the coaches? Good traditional publishers and editors are good at mentoring authors because they have years of experience acquired by slowly working their ways up through the traditional publishing industry. I'd like to believe that there are other ways to make great editors, but there's no substitute for experience. You would need a seed of experienced editors from the traditional industry and they would have to do double-duty mentoring both aspiring authors and aspiring editors. Eventually you might be able to get to the point where you have a self-sustaining community where the authors have reputations based on their work and editors have reputations based on the quality of the authors and editors they have mentored.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
roc 15y ago
> "More importantly, they identify promising authors and mentor them into authors worth reading." I disagree somewhat. What publishers actually do, is: identify economically promising authors and mentor them into writers of books they can sell. Sometimes this aligns with good writers and good writing. Sometimes it does not.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
atacrawl 15y ago
they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories Any market selling anything operates in the same exact way -- producers filter out the bad to find the good that they want to sell, and consumers filter further from there.
macrael 15y ago
But the interesting part of this to me is not that "anyone can publish"; tumblr gives you that. What is interesting is that they are building a framework for beautiful interactive "storytelling" as they said. It is something you definitely can not do on the web right now. Most books probably won't really benefit from this work, I don't think I want an interactive version of The Great Gatsby, but their tools allow for the creation of something new and interesting.

Shorel 15y ago

You can self publish a lot of free and full of ads crap. Self publishing to the App Store seems a good model for professional writers, the diference is a distribution channel you can profit from without ads. This is more a competition to Amazon and Kindle than competition to blogs and wordpress sites.

muhfuhkuh 15y ago

"they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories." Wouldn't customers be a better sifter than the publishing industry? Word of mouth and discovery? Samples and free reading demos (like Barnes and Noble does when you go into the store with a Nook)? And, for every published nugget, there are tonnage worth of published muck and runoff polluting the shelves; their filter isn't so great either. "If you want to disrupt the publishing industry, you need to develop an alternative solution for helping people figure out what is worth reading (probably not too difficult) and and alternative solution for developing the skills of writers (much more challanging)." The publishing industry is plenty disrupted by the fact that eBooks are now 30% of their entire market in copies sold and is the format with the biggest share (2nd place is mass market paperback). Amazon sells more eBooks than paperback and hardcover. And, an increasing number of self-published authors are finding their way to the top 100 on Kindle and Nook paid eBook charts. Some self-pubbed authors have multiple titles in the Amazon top 100, meaning they sell at least several hundred of each of their titles per day. As far as developing professional writer skills, you're ready for the business the minute you've made a sale and perhaps a fan. The idea of the minimum viable product (MVP) in the professional writer's world is akin to the dime novel or "penny dreadfuls" of yesteryear, where some of the greatest genre writers (Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, HP Lovecraft) started their craft with generally bad writing. Believe me, nothing says "welcome to reality" like getting a godawful review or even a return (which you will see when you self-publish through markets like Kindle, Kobo, and Nook).

lucasjung 15y ago
Most of those eBooks are still being published by the big old publishing houses. Of the authors who are successfully self-publishing, most started out publishing through traditional channels, built up large fanbases that way, and then broke out on their own once they had sufficient popularity to sell books without help from the big publishers. People who jump right into self-publishing and experience dramatic success are way out in the narrow part of the tail. The dime novels you mention were not just an entry-level publishing platform: their more important function was to let the editors and publishers work with new authors, mentoring them and helping them grow. A guy with "one sale and one fan" is still missing the most important part: regular, constructive feedback from successful professionals.
- pedrocr 15y ago
  >People who jump right into self-publishing and experience dramatic success are way out in the narrow part of the tail. The same is true for traditional publishing. Both mediums are very hard to break into, it's just that in the dead tree version you don't get to see as many of the failures.
  - lucasjung 15y ago
    There's another difference: in traditional publishing if you are almost (but not quite) ready for prime time, you have a chance at getting the help you need to get your work into a saleable state before it's published. As long as your potential exceeds the current quality of your work, traditional publishers will work to help you develop that potential. If you are self-publishing, you'll take that same not-quite-ready work and publish it, and it will fail miserably. You'll get plenty of feedback telling your work isn't good enough, but little or none telling you what to do about it. Also, you will have established yourself as a second-rate self-publisher, decreasing the chances that anyone will bother trying any of your subsequent work, so even if you do manage to improve it won't matter because nobody will take the time to read your newer, better work.
    - 15y ago

melling 15y ago

You can crowd source this by allowing people to rate the material. Sounds like a good idea for a startup. A "rottentomatoes.com" for self-published books? User rating and "pro" rating?

lucasjung 15y ago
A rating can tell potential readers that a book is worth reading or not. It can't grow a talented but unskilled author into a great author. Most successful authors will tell you that they had to write hundreds of thousands of words worth of crap before they were able to produce anything worth reading, and then only because they were getting quality coaching while writing all of that crap.
- huherto 15y ago
  Following your line of argument. Is there a career path for independent writing coaches? Would it be possible to create a service for that?
  - lucasjung 15y ago
    As far as I can tell, the closest things currently in existence are: 1: Writing workshops 2: Short-fiction magaziness #1 is open to anyone who has the cash to get in the door, but isn't well set up for establishing long-term mentorship relationships. #2 is good for long-term mentorship relationships, but you have to already be a pretty good writer to get your foot in the door and the price of entry is selling the rights to your work. Also, a "slow-starter" with the potential to become a world-class novelist might never get off the ground under this system. I'd love to see someone establish independent coaching services for developing writers, but I think there are some significant difficulties. The biggest problem is: where do you get the coaches? Good traditional publishers and editors are good at mentoring authors because they have years of experience acquired by slowly working their ways up through the traditional publishing industry. I'd like to believe that there are other ways to make great editors, but there's no substitute for experience. You would need a seed of experienced editors from the traditional industry and they would have to do double-duty mentoring both aspiring authors and aspiring editors. Eventually you might be able to get to the point where you have a self-sustaining community where the authors have reputations based on their work and editors have reputations based on the quality of the authors and editors they have mentored.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

roc 15y ago

> "More importantly, they identify promising authors and mentor them into authors worth reading." I disagree somewhat. What publishers actually do, is: identify economically promising authors and mentor them into writers of books they can sell. Sometimes this aligns with good writers and good writing. Sometimes it does not.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

atacrawl 15y ago

they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories Any market selling anything operates in the same exact way -- producers filter out the bad to find the good that they want to sell, and consumers filter further from there.

macrael 15y ago

But the interesting part of this to me is not that "anyone can publish"; tumblr gives you that. What is interesting is that they are building a framework for beautiful interactive "storytelling" as they said. It is something you definitely can not do on the web right now. Most books probably won't really benefit from this work, I don't think I want an interactive version of The Great Gatsby, but their tools allow for the creation of something new and interesting.