Should You Publish or Self-Publish?
Kerri Miller of the morning show, Daily Circuit, on Minnesota Public Radio is a lover of books and an avid reader. Kerri often interviews authors about life, writing and their latest publication.
Here is a link to a show, Self-publishing your book: 5 benefits, 3 drawbacks (program audio).
Her guests were:
- Guy Kawasaki: Co-founder of Alltop.com, an online magazine rack of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures
- Lee Goldberg: Author
- Andrew Karre: Editorial director of Carolrhoda Books, Carolrhoda Lab and Darby Creek
- The bullet points were copy/pasted from Daily Circuit page.
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I see no problem with self-published books, so long as the authors hire someone to copy edit. From a readers perspective, self-published books are more democratic. That is, with a self-publisher, you’re not going to see something like: an MFA student with a well-known professor writes a safe, technically sound but actually probably pretty boring novel, gets a high-profile agent based on also having a few short stories accepted by The Paris Review, or some other magazine the agent has heard of (perhaps on the strength of the well-known professors recommendation, perhaps not), the book gets sold to Penguin, the New York Times raves about it, because they’ve heard of the MFA program, the well-known respected professor, (she’s from the Iowa Workshop, this must be stellar, for example) the book wins the national book award, or some other award. Essentially, and I know this is a bit cynical, the traditional model is, not always but more often than not, less about quality of the work, and more about who you know.
I agree. Unfortunately, a well-written self-published novel may not get their full due for lack of the proper connections.
Another unfortunate fact is: Self-published authors try to go it all alone. Everyone needs, as you have already stated, an editor and designer to produce a professional novel. They also need a marketing strategy to get the novel to the public.
Self-publishing is a lot of work that takes time from writing.
Some love it; some need more education to be successful.
Good Luck to all of them.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. ;0)
This is interesting to me. I’ve only just released The James Diary (self published) but am keen to hear that audio. Thanks!
Good for you. I too am re thinking self-publishing for my next novel. This novel is traditional publishing.