5 ms·

Really 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 i

Really 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 ago
Just 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 ago
Absolutely! 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      This. 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 ago
        You 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 ago
        In 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.

tubbo 14y ago

Just 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 ago

Absolutely! 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 ago
I 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    This. 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 ago
      You 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 ago
      In 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.