Why Self-Publishing Suddenly Makes Sense for Midlist Authors

Neal Pollack writes a NYT essay about why he's going to digitally self-publish his new novel. I've been advocating this approach, especially for writers telling stories beyond the hetero mainstream. In a nutshell: Your money is much better, your timing is much, much better, your control is total, and the lack of big media review coverage isn't really any worse than what your overworked publicist may, ultimately, have failed to get for your conventionally published book. Pollack says,

"for a writer like me, which is to say, most working writers — midcareer, midlist, middle-aged, more or less middlebrow, and somewhat Internet savvy — self-publishing seems to make a lot of sense at this point. Early in my career, because of some lucky breaks and a kinder economy, I was able to get advances that helped me support my family over the months it took to write a book. I haven’t been a huge best seller, and I’ve never seen a residual check except for an independently published book of crime stories that I edited, and that was only because I got nothing up front. But I’ve built a modest audience and a name. Now that the advances are smaller and the technology is available, why not start appealing directly to those readers?"

Digital publishers like Kindle also offer the option of customers buying a physical copy of your book through their print on demand program. Increasingly, mainstream publishers are producing their backlist the same way.

Although his straight thrillers are the opposite of the lesbian or gay literary fiction I had in mind, John Locke makes good points in this Wall Street Journal interview. He refuses to budge from his 99 cent pricing. "When I saw that highly successful authors were charging $9.99 for an e-book, I thought that if I can make a profit at 99 cents, I no longer have to prove I'm as good as them. Rather, they have to prove they are ten times better than me." In March alone, his nine novels earned him $126,000. Now that he has New York publishers' attention, he has zero interest in them. "It wouldn't be fun for me," he says. "I don't want to be told when to publish, I don't want to soften my character, and I don't want to be told what stories to write."

Comments

[The Devoted Classicist]

It is great to hear of such a success for self-publishing. Thanks to the digital technology, the previously disqualifying up-front costs are eliminated. I hope this opens up the market for all the aspiring authors.

[Charles Francis]

I sought to publish the papers of gay civil rights pioneer Frank Kameny----LGBT America's Rosa Parks and Thurgood Marshall, now on exhibit at the Library of Congress exhibition "Creating the United States". Kameny's papers were the first gay archive to be acquired by the Library of Congress. I got rejected by U. of Wisconsin Press, New York University Press, Oxford University Press and Harvard University Press (Kameny's alma mater). In the process, we wasted a full year with many, many hours of preparing proposals and the submission process. What I joke. So, I went to Kindle Direct Publishing/ Amazon and published "Petition Denied. Revolution Begun" and we have found our readers (and a fair deal). Kameny's petition is now on exhibit at the Library of Congress, and written about by Associated Press, Washington Post and more than 200 newspapers across the country. Traditional publishing-- and editors ---could have cared less. It was an eye opening experience.

Charles Francis
Kameny Papers Project
Washington, D.C.