Self Publishing

This takes some chutzpah. S.G. Kiner is trying to promote her self-published book by spamming the comment sections of blogs all over the Internet. Take, for instance, this comment that she left on author Laura Caldwell's post at The Outfit:

"The Hong Kong Connection" is a legal thriller about a gutsy female attorney who takes on high ranking International officials. It's a taut, rollercoaster of a ride from New York to Palm Beach to Washington D.C. to Hong Kong. The plot is expertly woven, the characters persuasive, and the dialogue snappy and spot on.
www.StrategicBookPublishing.com/TheHongKongConnection.html

This comment, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of Laura's post. It is, however, an example of inappropriate and stupid behavior by an aspiring author. First Kiner was dumb enough to fall for the Strategic Publishing scam (the latest incarnation of Robert Fletcher's infamous Writers Literary Agency). Now Kiner is compounding that mistake by ineptly trying to leach readers off of another author. The only thing she's succeeded in promoting is her own rudeness and ineptitude. 

Karen Opas-Lanouette, a freelance editor and ghostwriter, believes it only makes sense to self-publish if you meet three criteria, which she's posted on LinkedIn. I think her list is great:

1) You have written a memoir or cookbook that you want to share with family and friends. Professional editing and cover design/interior layout are not an issue. A POD self-publisher like Lulu or iPublish is an inexpensive way to put a book into the hands of friends and family.

2) You have a successful business and a book will enhance your authority as an expert. You prefer the 50%+ of the cover price you will receive via this process than the 7-15% you will receive via traditional publishing. You can write the initial expenses off against marketing, and declare income as you hand sell books to clients and at lectures. In this case, it is worth the money to hire a professional editor, an experienced book designer, and create a combination of printed physical copies and a POD set-up with someone like Lightning Source.

3) The expenses involved in creating a professional quality self published book are worth it to you in the same way that going on a vacation is worth it–you are unlikely to make a profit, but the mental and emotional rewards of having your book out in the world, along with the statistically slender chance that your book will hit, make it worth the money.

That is one of the most-clearheaded, accurate, and helpful posts about self-publishing that I've read in some time. I agree with everything she's said. But I would add one more important criteria — self-publishing makes sense if you have written a non-fiction book and have a built-in sales and promotional platform. In other words, if you lead seminars, have a TV or radio show, teach a class, preach to a congregation, etc…a stage from which you can promote the book and a ready-made venue/audience for selling it yourself.

UPDATE: Jane Smith pointed me to this excellent post that makes some excellent points about self-publishing Here's a taste:

4) Nearly all self-published books sell in minuscule numbers. How many friends do you have? How many could you persuade to part with cash? Well, that's how many books you will probably sell. Unless you are a seriously brilliant and dedicated salesperson and are prepared not to write any more ever again because you will be selling, selling, selling. You will lose hair, weight (hmm, good idea), self-esteem and years off your life; you will gain wrinkles, bags, and new respect for book-led publishers. You will probably not make any money but if you do, you will be rightly proud of it. But too tired to do it again. 

5) Whenever someone tells you that publishing is "broken", ask yourself who is saying this and why. Is it a published author? Is it an author who has won awards, received good reviews, has a genuine fanbase? Or is it someone who has either failed to get published or who has decided to make money out of other people's failure to do so? 

6) When you hear about a self-published book becoming "successful", (and this does occasionally happen, but much less often than you are led to believe) realise that this success nearly always happens when a book-led publisher takes on the formerly self-published book. So, is that a self-publishing success or proof that publishing is neither dead nor the future?

Every time a major magazine or new outlet does a story touting self-publishing, in this case a piece on the CNN tech website, I get inundated by readers asking me what I think. So does Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware...only she probably gets it ten times worse than I do. She's written a post on the formula most of these articles usually follow. She says, in part, that they:

1. Pick a rare instance of self-publishing success–in this case, Lisa Genova, whose iUniverse-published novel Still Alice garnered a major publishing deal. Make sure not to tell the whole story–omit, for instance, the fact that Genova hired PR firm Kelly & Hall–the same firm that propelled self-published Brunonia Barry to success–to publicize her book, and acquired a literary agent as a result of the attention Kelly & Hall was able to generate.

2. Segue to the growth of self-publishing and the great possibilities it offers for budding authors, while taking a swipe at the commercial publishing industry. Totally ignore the contradiction inherent in the fact the success of the self-published author just discussed hinged on her transition to a commercial publisher.

3. Toss out a few random facts about self-publishing (not all of them necessarily relevant–Khatami notes that the self-published author "retains the copyright to his or her book," as if this were not the case with commercial publishing), while ignoring the issue of low sales (the average self-published book sells fewer than 200 copies) and limited distribution (most self-pubbed books are not distributed beyond the Internet).

The Winepress Group's print-on-demand vanity press Pleasant Word, which calls itself  "a leading light in Christian self-publishing," is threatening to sue author Mark Levine for criticizing their business practices and proclaiming them "a publisher to avoid" in his book "The Fine Print of Self-Publishing" (which I favorably reviewed).  Winepress/Pleasant Word sent out a press release through the Christian Communications Network that reads, in part:

The author makes 100% of the profits after Pleasant Word nearly doubles the printing price and adds a handling fee

I believe it's a compromise of Christian values (and just about every other moral value I can think of) when a publisher leads authors to believe that its printing costs are 100% higher than they actually are.  

[…]When a publisher choose to make religion a central focus of its service and writes copy that suggests that due to strong Christian principles authors "know they can trust us," the publisher has a duty to be over-the-top honest. Being less than forthright about the real printing costs, while advertising how honest and Christian it is, instantly makes Pleasant Word a publisher to avoid. 

[…]There are simply no pleasant words to describe the business practices of this publisher. 

Mrs. Giggles blogs today about the slew of self-publishing hype lately. She says, in part:

The problem with self-publishing propoganda, if you ask me, is that most of these circus barkers are telling people what they want to hear, as opposed to telling them the hard facts. They tell barely literate high school dropouts that grammar and writing ability don't matter because stories "come from the heart" or something like that. They tell desperate authors that traditional publishers are evil people who deliberately set out to crush their dreams. They tell these people that they are entitled to be authors, and yes, fame and success and respect will follow shortly after because look at the handful of current self-published authors who have made it big, blah blah blah.

[…] Self-publishing is no short cut to success – it is another way to get published, but it is also another kind of hard work awaiting the author. And the rewards are far lower than you would reap with traditional publishing, unless you are an expert in your field with a ready-made audience at your seminars and classes […] or you are content to sell a dozen or so copies and knowing that there is an audience, however small, that appreciate your art.

I couldn't agree more. The problem is that most of the reporters writing about vanity presses either have their own agenda or don't dig deeper than the press releases they are giving. Recently, Publishers Weekly profiled several fast-growing "small presses" but neglected to mention that two of them — Greenleaf and Morgan James — are vanity presses that make their money selling books to authors rather than readers (hat-tip to Victoria Strauss for that one). PW is an industry trade publication…they should know better.