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Hemingway and Rowling also had editors. People at publishing houses who found their work, took a chance on it, and put it out there. People who worked huge dist

Hemingway and Rowling also had editors. People at publishing houses who found their work, took a chance on it, and put it out there. People who worked huge distribution pipelines and promotional angles. Granted, the work had to be good, and it had to find a fit with an audience large enough to support the mass publishing business. But publishing did quite a bit of legwork in helping these writers break out. What I find most interesting about today's writing scene is that it's simultaneously easier and harder than ever before. In theory, it's much easier. You don't have to have the capital to own printing presses and distribution pipelines, nor do you have to pitch to someone who does. But that's still the best way to go if you want to get big. For the time being, at least, the "well, everyone already knows who he is" critique is largely valid. The biggest acts in self-publishing -- be it music, film, television, or books -- first made it big the old fashioned way. No matter how media evolve, I suspect that two effects will always be necessary: 1) reach, and 2) tastemaking. Traditional papers, publishing houses, and magazines have long held a monopoly on both. Their ownership of the former is slipping away (more slowly than we imagine, but it is). Their ownership of the latter is still holding firm, though the precedent for disruption in that space is growing. What currently makes publishing "harder" than ever is that we're in a muddy middle ground. The old titans are dying, but they're not yet dead. The new titans are rising, but they haven't yet risen. So we're seeing a strange mix of success stories coming out of both camps, and the progression doesn't appear to be linear or neat or orderly. "For nearly everyone who you know now who is "famous" you can go back and see that they have been practicing their art for many years, often several decades. It is a painful reality that finding an audience is a fickle thing, and finding your style." True. Very true. This even true for the self-publishing wunderkinds we keep hearing about. There are no overnight success stories. Behind every "overnight" breakout are many years of preparation for it.

thenomad 13y ago
The essential problem here is that publishers do, it turns out, actually fulfil some useful roles. Publicist is one of the major ones. (Editor and designer are two other important, undervalued skills that publishers traditionally take on.) Having self-published video online for one and a half decades now, I've acquired quite a bit of knowledge of the publicity/marketing side of things (enough that I use it to fund my filmmaking, in fact). That knowledge how I gain an audience for my films - it takes time, sure, but it also takes knowledge, skill, and often, money. I see a lot of filmmakers, comic artists and novelists attempting to self-publish without even realising they need that skill, let alone attempting to develop it or spending time practising it. That generally doesn't go too well. Charles Stross has an excellent article on why he takes exactly the opposite route, being conventionally published, precisely because he doesn't want to have to be or manage publicists, designers, editors and so on: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/why-i-dont-self-publish.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/why-i-do...
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  "The essential problem here is that publishers do, it turns out, actually fulfil some useful roles. Publicist is one of the major ones. (Editor and designer are two other important, undervalued skills that publishers traditionally take on.)" Exactly, and these roles are a lot more crucial than most would-be self publishing authors take into consideration before getting started. Amanda Hocking, one of the more famous of the self-publishers in recent years, decided to switch to a major publisher. Her rationale was that marketing, publicity, design, etc., had become 99% of her job, relegating writing to 1%. She wanted the reverse. She loves to write; she is less interested in running a publishing startup (which is, essentially, what a self-published author needs to be doing to be successful). I think it's a very interesting insight.

thenomad 13y ago

The essential problem here is that publishers do, it turns out, actually fulfil some useful roles. Publicist is one of the major ones. (Editor and designer are two other important, undervalued skills that publishers traditionally take on.) Having self-published video online for one and a half decades now, I've acquired quite a bit of knowledge of the publicity/marketing side of things (enough that I use it to fund my filmmaking, in fact). That knowledge how I gain an audience for my films - it takes time, sure, but it also takes knowledge, skill, and often, money. I see a lot of filmmakers, comic artists and novelists attempting to self-publish without even realising they need that skill, let alone attempting to develop it or spending time practising it. That generally doesn't go too well. Charles Stross has an excellent article on why he takes exactly the opposite route, being conventionally published, precisely because he doesn't want to have to be or manage publicists, designers, editors and so on: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/why-i-dont-self-publish.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/why-i-do...

jonnathanson 13y ago
"The essential problem here is that publishers do, it turns out, actually fulfil some useful roles. Publicist is one of the major ones. (Editor and designer are two other important, undervalued skills that publishers traditionally take on.)" Exactly, and these roles are a lot more crucial than most would-be self publishing authors take into consideration before getting started. Amanda Hocking, one of the more famous of the self-publishers in recent years, decided to switch to a major publisher. Her rationale was that marketing, publicity, design, etc., had become 99% of her job, relegating writing to 1%. She wanted the reverse. She loves to write; she is less interested in running a publishing startup (which is, essentially, what a self-published author needs to be doing to be successful). I think it's a very interesting insight.