For as long as I can remember, one of the less pleasant roles of a literary editor has been finding a polite way to see off self-published authors.
Normally, our interactions with authors are mediated through the professional services of publishers’ publicists. It’s hard to tell someone directly and firmly that you won’t consider their book for review without hurting their feelings.
For what it’s worth, my reasoning is that on average, traditionally published books (as well as being more widely available in bookshops), are more likely to appeal to readers than the self-published sort.
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Any traditionally published book has, after all, had to somehow earn the approval of an agent, an editor and the team at an acquisition meeting before it gets into print: and all of these are publishing professionals whose livelihoods depend on having a shrewd idea about what books will persuade the public to part with their money.
So, as I put it in a recent email to one such author: ‘We don’t as a rule review self-published work, not out of snobbery, and not because some self-published work isn’t excellent, but we get hundreds of deserving trade-published books a month to consider and we have room to review only a handful of those, and if we opened up to self-published that number would go up by multiples. With the limited resources we have, we must play the percentages.’
I stand by this. And I was not simply being flattering when I said some self-published work is excellent. There are lots of reasons that a very good book might be self-published – if its potential readership is very restricted because, say, it deals with family or local history, or if the author doesn’t have the profile or connections to get a traditional publishing deal.
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But I also notice that the game is changing a little. Self-publishing used to be known as ‘vanity publishing’, and it was just that. It involved would-be authors paying a rather handsome fee to a company to have a limited run of their book published, which could then be pressed on family and friends to languish unread on their shelves. It inverted the traditional model: the author paid the publisher rather than the other way round.
But now, there are very good reasons that you might choose to self-publish. With print on- demand, the unit cost of each book is very low. You don’t need to line the pockets of some unctuous middleman for the privilege of appearing between hard covers. And you can look forward to a royalty that will dwarf that of traditional publishers: upwards of 70 per cent of the cover price, as opposed to the feeble single-figure percentage the likes of me get on sales of my books.
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Some self-published authors – Keith Houghton, L J Ross, Amanda Hocking and the immortal Chuck Tingle – have taken their books direct to readers because their work doesn’t fit into conventional genres.
What’s more, given that titans of the world of finance aren’t always as recognisable by name as they deserve to be, even an HNW at the top of his or her profession may struggle to place a memoir with a conventional publisher. Being a distinguished private citizen is an admirable thing to be; but being a low rent TV celebrity is much handier when it comes to placing a memoir
So for the HNW, self-publishing might well be the way to go. In the first place, it gives you absolute control over your manuscript. A publicity-hungry publisher won’t press you for unseemly gossip about your split from your starter wife or your succession of toy boys. And if you do have an existing platform – name recognition, a website, social media presence – you will be able to publicise it effectively yourself.
Already some businesspeople such as Steven M. Stroum (Success and Self-Discovery), Duane Jackson (Four Thousand Days: My Journey from Prison to Business Success) and MJ De Marco (The Great Rat Race Escape) have chosen this route to publication – and appear to be profiting from it mightily.
The downside? You are still highly unlikely to see a review in mainstream media outlets of the sort I work for, and you are still highly unlikely to see your book on the front table at Waterstones.
But in the internet age, neither makes nearly as much difference to a book’s chances of reaching its readers as it once did. The main attraction of both, you could say, is – well – vanity.
This article first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 100. Click here to subscribe
