Why not?
With trade and legacy publishers sacrosanctly allowing an author to publish only one book a year, and with all publishers themselves publishing a limited amount of "choice select" books every year - what are all the other talented writers to do with their talent?
Believe they don't have any talent because some numpty in a publishing house said so?
Bury that talent and do something else?
Or keep all their rejection slips from their mostly "unread" scripts to line their coffin at a future date?
For any "choice select" author to tell or warn all new and aspiring writers NOT to self publish is no different to telling them to
TAKE THE BUS -- DON'T LEARN TO DRIVE A CAR YOURSELF.
All this stigma and high-nose sneering about self-publishing Indie authors is fake anyway. And it's the trade and legacy publishers themselves who have come out of the dark and proved how fake it is -by trawling through Amazon and paying millions to sign up self-pubbers like Amanada Hocking and others.
So if she's so good - why was Amanda Hocking rejected so many times over so many years by publishers which led her to self-publish and PROVE that she was good and worth reading by so many readers.
What if Amanda had decided to keep waiting to see if another bus came along? She would still be standing and waiting and waiting as yet another bus and another bus drove by with the FULL sign up.
I have been published by three major publishers. GHOSTS IN SUNLIGHT has been sold to and translated by six European publishers and ORDINARY DECENT CRIMINAL to even more including Japan - and I wasn' even a "choice select" author who got all the push and publicity either. Yet all I got from all those sales was pennies in comparison to what the publishers and bookstores got from the sales of those books created and written by me.
So when nicely-cushioned published authors like Jodi Picoult, and others like her, tell new and aspiring writers NOT to self publish - remember just two words - AMANDA HOCKING.
Oh, PS: In one of my own genres, Historical Fiction, I see that today, Easter Saturday, April 7th, the #1 bestselling book is that large category on Amazon's Kindle store is by a self-published author - "The Girl Who Came Home" (A Titanic Novel) by Hazel Gaynor. It is also #1 in two other categories.
So all I can say to that Indie authors is, congratulations and well done!
Good luck to all Indies
Gretta
www.grettacurranbrowne.com
10.
www.grettacurranbrowne.com
After reading the Daily Beast article, I wondered briefly if they misquoted her. Perhaps she was saying writers need to hone their craft before throwing a first draft out there. But, after a quick Google, and reading some other articles on her, I think the Daily Beast got it right.
ReplyDeleteI certainly won’t take her advice – already I am making a livable income from the books I self publish under my real name, and several pen names. Each month my income grows, and I wonder what next year will be.
Three and a half years ago, I felt as if I was the only one out there advocating the possibilities of self publishing. The conventional wisdom back then was the same as Picoult’s today. I remember one published writer (she was published by a small publishing house) tore into me, giving me all the old pat lines about the evils of self publishing. Today (after her publisher went defunct) she self publishes.
Hi Bobbi
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear you are doing so well on your own, which proves the case. A few months ago I met a young teacher who was over the moon because she was getting her first book published (by a small press) and then I met her again yesterday and she was full of disillusionment - none of the bookstores would take her book into stock because it was not produced by one the big houses. If that's not fixed marketeering then I don't know what is. No wonder so many of us are fighting back against these cartels.
Amazon's view is that it will always be the readers who decide and will sort out the good authors from the rubbish, and in your case the readers seem to have spoken - well done, and I wish you a million-fold more success with your work in the future.