Lately I've been curious about the idea of self-publishing. I haven't been curious in a "Should I publish my own book?" way, but more of a "Why is everyone against it?". In one of my classes last year, a fellow student was talking about a book she read and how she really liked it until she found out it was self-published. At that point in her conversation, her voice took on a snide tone and everything that followed was all the overly hateful criticisms. It's almost like the word in itself has become derogatory. It's the relative of published books that everyone talks about after they leave the family get-together. I myself, have been drawn towards these new self-published books (mainly because they are pretty cheap). While I will admit there are a lot of not so great books, every once in a while you find a pretty awesome one. I guess what I'm trying to get at is, what about self-publishing adds a different twist to the book? Is it the idea that there are bound to be a couple grammar and editing mistakes? Or are self-published books just not as good? 
I am not going to lie, I look differently at self-published works. I of course applaud and am happy for the author who self-published. But at the same time my thought is that an editor is meant for a purpose of editing your work and getting it ready for the world to be seen. A sculptor would not show his work if he hadn't polished it or gone over it. But I guess thats where everyone becomes critics because people can tell an obvious grammatical error, but they may cannot see a dent in what the artist has done.
ReplyDeleteI have liked a few of the books I have read that are self-published. Sometimes I can get over the grammatical errors because they are no biggie. But sometimes the story isn't good to me. But then again some published authors who have editors write books I don't like either.
Anyways, I think you bring a good point that we shouldn't snub authors for self-publishing, instead we should be encouraging them more (especially if they are great).
I say do whatever floats your boat. There's always going to be critics. It's hard for to understand why people would judge a book by it's publisher. lol. Don't judge a book by it's publisher.
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to judge a book on its own merits, not the fact that it comes from an established publishing house or has numerous awards. If you like the book, then you like the book. If only life were this simple, right?
ReplyDeleteJust because a book is self-published does not mean that it contains absurd grammatical errors. There are other ways to proofread outside of a professional editor. As with most things in this world, people are far too quick to judge something superficially.
I haven't read a large number of self-published books, but I definitely agree that a book should be judged on the quality of the story and the writing rather than the publishing method. There are good and bad books that are self-published as well as good and bad books that are professionally published, as it is with anything. The bias against self-publishing can be detrimental to all forms of publishing.
ReplyDeleteYou must be careful with self-publishing. I don't think that self-publishing makes a book bad by any means, but there are a lot of drawbacks. The biggest one is advertising. When you have a publishing house or a small press publishing you, they advertise for you. They get information about your book into bookstores, libraries, websites, and a lot of other things. What good is publishing a book if almost no one knows about it?
ReplyDeleteYou also have to create things like the cover, the summary on the back, edit the book etc. yourself (or pay for other people to do it). You don't want to self-publish and have no one take it seriously due to a bad cover or too many grammar mistakes. Just make sure you self-publish intelligently! Use your resources and don't be afraid to seek help.
I never read a self-published novel and I think the reason for it is because of the factors that Rianne talked about in the comment before. Either I don't hear about them because their not advertised, or if I hear about them something like the cover or the summary turns me off. If a self-published book interested me, I would read it without any thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI think this is interesting. Sort of like the hierarchy of acceptability that seems to come with all things written. I will admit that there are several self-published books out there that are...special. But that will never change until writers who can do even better get out there and self-publish too. I guess it's a matter of figuring out what you want from publishing and considering the pros and cons.
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