6 ms·
Why I don't self-publish
- hipsters_unite 14y agoReally like the second comment as a tl;dr of the article - "That's the exact paradox of starting your own business. If it works, you end up running a business instead of doing whatever it was you started the business to do." Fair play to Charles Stross for just wanting to write.
- tubbo 14y agoJust wanted to call some attention to the fact that an article entitled "Why I don't self-publish" was in fact self-published on Stross' blog. ;-) Kidding aside, this touches on a major reason why I believe most people do not succeed in business or any creative endeavor...there's quite a lot of "indirect" work that needs to be done. AndrewDucker brought up contracting, but I'd like to use my band as an example. Very little of the work I do with the band is actually me up there singing or playing music, or even doing a recording session. It's mostly booking gigs or rehearsals, the PRODUCTION part of recording sessions (which involves listening to the same song or maybe 1 or 2 parts of the same song for hours on end), spec'ing out and buying gear, etc. And when you book your own warehouse parties, like we do, you also have to worry about renting sound equipment, hiring security/other DJs/etc., and on top of ALL OF THAT you STILL need to make the party look good with deco and shit! All of this because you wanted to play some music with your friends. But if you don't do all of that other shit, there's little chance that you will be able to do that for a living and hire others to do it for you someday. You gotta roll in the trenches before you get to the ivory tower.
- Ovid 14y agoAbsolutely! I have two books out now and there's no way in hell I'd want to market them myself. I also know that many people are buying the hard-copy, not the ebooks, meaning that even a hard-copy/ebook split wouldn't do terribly well for me.
- chromatic 14y agoI have several books out now, and I'm jealous of anyone who gets marketing support from a "traditional" publisher. The most I've seen in the past four years is that occasionally the publisher tweets about it.
- Ovid 14y agoI wonder how much of that is because the books that you (and I) have driven through a traditional publisher have been tech books?
- cstross 14y agoThis. I had a tech book out in the mid-90s from Addison-Wesley, and I got quite a way into negotiating with O'Reilly in the early noughties. The tech publishing sector is largely driven by techies for whom a publication history is of value as a check mark on their resume, rather than people who write for a living: consequently there's a race to the margins to document extremely esoteric niche products, and this triggers a race to the bottom on advances/royalties (it's hard to justify paying up a big advance for a book with a market of maybe 2000 readers). Even a badly paid midlist SF novel can expect about twice the advance O'Reilly offer for a tech book: the potential audience is much bigger, and the incentives for publishing in the first place are different.
- Ovid 14y agoYou know, I was going to say that my advance for my last book was pretty decent and I'd be surprised that it would be much worse than a midlist SF novel. Then I saw your user name. I suspect you probably know a thing or two about this topic. But I have to admit that the direct impact of my tech books has been a boost to my career, not my bank account.
- microtherion 14y agoIn your case (for the Addison-Wesley product), that “esoteric niche product” was… how to set up a web server. You could probably find those 2000 readers for it. I have no idea how A-W treated you as an author, but as a reviewer on that book, I was very well compensated by them, so I assumed they treated authors OK as well.
- AndrewDucker 14y agoIt's basically the same reason that leads me to not being a contractor. They have to spend a lot of time selling themselves, dealing with taxes, and various other overheads that I just don't want the hassle of.
- unwind 14y agoMe too, good analogy! The upside is that there exists such a thing as an employed contractor. It has many of the benefits of doing "your own" contracting work, but you have a sales department! :) On the other hand, of course, you don't have the same control over exactly who will be your next client, and there is financial overheads too, naturally. Still, it works for me.
- HaloZero 14y agoIsn't the primary benefit of contracting the ability to choose and control who you work for and set those hours?
- cstross 14y agoI've done IT contracting (not for, um, 15 years and counting) and I've been a freelance author. There's a significant difference in terms of what you do and who has control. (I come up with ideas for products and pitch them at publishers, who then pick and choose which to buy. I then do the work. So I'm not under my publisher's control, and they don't have any input on my hours -- but they hold the purse strings and I have to deliver a product they're satisfied with.)
- unwind 14y agoYes, I guess. But there are of course (subjectively speaking) "primary drawbacks" too, such as becoming responsible for your own sales. I would not function very well if I had the responsibility to do my own sales. Instead, my "strategy" is to do my very best as an employed contractor, which seems to be working out pretty well in terms of client choice influence.
- ThomPete 14y agoHere is the thing though. There is a whole generation of young people growing up for whom this is no biggie. And tools are making it easier and easier. In fact it's more or baked into the young generation. So whether we like it or not it will be the new norm if it isn't already. So although it might be an explanation for why Charles Stross does not want to self-publish it's not advice (and I don't think he claims it to be either).
- DanBC 14y agoI just wish some of these self-publishing authors had editing friends.
- ThomPete 14y agoYeah well it will be solved too as the market expands.
- awj 14y agoI'm sure the pendulum will swing back that way (it has to, editing is too beneficial to neglect). I think it will just take time for editors to also extract themselves from the old school publishing business model.
- jseliger 14y agoThe smart ones hire line and copy editors. Development editors, however, are pretty much impossible to hire effectively: http://kriswrites.com/2013/01/30/the-business-rusch-hiring-editors http://kriswrites.com/2013/01/30/the-business-rusch-hiring-e... .
- ThomPete 14y agoThe really smart ones consider themselves publishers who write. That would be my advice to anyone wanting to live as a musician, writer, artist etc.
- mcguire 14y agoHell, I wish some of these publishers had editing friends.
- keltex 14y agoI have a friend who's a fairly popular eBook author with 10+ books to his name. We made a deal where I handle all the accounting and grunt work including dealing with audio books, layout people, cover designers etc. He deals directly with the editors and does the marketing himself. He also pays out of pocket for all expenses: me (I get a % of net), editors, designers, advertising. We can do everything ourselves online: Amazon KDP for ebooks, Smashwords for eBooks on non-amazon platforms (Nook, Apple), CreateSpace (Amazon owned) for paperbacks and ACX (Amazon owned) for audio books on audible. The only thing we don't have is distribution in regular bookstores like those in airports. But there are now authors who are cutting deals with publishers where they keep the eBook rights and sell the print rights. There was a recent article in the WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324678604578340752088305668.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732467860457834...) about this. It's a new hybrid deal that's really the best of both worlds. Because Amazon pays 70% royalties on the books he sells and with all expenses included, his net margin on eBooks is in the 45-50% range. I doubt Charles Stross is getting those kinds of margins through his publisher. Not saying this is the path Stross should take, just that there are ways to achieve what he wants (focus on writing) without leaving as much money on the table.
- triplesec 14y agoThis is brilliant! Sort of fleshing out through experience what I was trying to say in my post what he might be able to do. What would you say to people trying to emulate something like your model: where would we get good ideas about figures, expected sales, marketing etc. How did you learn?
- jseliger 14y ago>We made a deal where I handle all the accounting and grunt work including dealing with audio books, layout people, cover designers etc. Who do you hire for layout, cover design, and line and copy editing? If you're not willing to share publicly, drop me a line at seligerj [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
- runevault 14y agoOne thing that's interesting is, at least some reasonably successful authors already hire someone to help them deal with various issues. I know Brandon Sanderson has an aid who helps with pre-hand off edits along with any number of other tasks. Mind you, a lot of authors who go primarily/totally traditional can't afford someone for that, but it DOES happen even for the old route. I expect this sort of thing will become more common, and could even see people having a business where they do this sort of work you're talking about for multiple clients (not a lot, maybe 2-3). Possibly even teams like dev consulting companies who keep multiple people trained in the work that work together as needed to deal with clients.
- triplesec 14y agoI think Charlie also forgets the issue of the Mythical Man Month, and Parkinson's Law. If he does it himself he immediately at least doubles his efficiency compared with a team of 10 people. If he hires one person, he's away and laughing!
- egypturnash 14y agoI'm self-publishing my graphic novels. If I could get a publisher to handle the editing, marketing, distribution, and sales of my stuff, I would be totally delighted. Sure, I might not get as much per unit sold - but they'd be able to place it in a LOT more stores than me, and make print runs large enough to get a better per-unit price from the printer. We do, in fact, have companies doing this sort of thing in the space of modern comics. They evolve out of groups of web comics creators pooling their resources for the stuff that's not about making comics, and starting a small business to fulfil orders. Topatoco is the most prominent; go to a major comics convention and they'll have a pretty good-sized booth full of the creators affiliated with them.
- wtracy 14y agoMy personal line of thought on the matter: Self-publish if you're focused on making money from your writing. Find a publisher otherwise.