Known Unknowns #7: Self-Publishing

The Known Unknowns is a weekly series of posts about the things that bedevil me in my writing life. It’s a catalog of what I’ve learned, and am still learning, from years of missteps, blind lunges, and thick-headed perseverance.

I had a whole big, essay-style narrative set up for this post on self-publishing, but I’m going to spoil the original ending right up front and explain my feelings this way: When I think of publishing my own work, it is when I am down and depressed and desperate. I don’t mean self-publishing is for the desperate, I mean this is where I’m at right now with regard to it. It’s never the thing for me — until nothing else is. In other words, it’s not you, Self-Publishing, it’s me.

Self-publishing is a constant topic among writers, traditional publishers, booksellers — and, of course, friends and family of everyone in these categories. For every time I’ve been asked by a friend if I’d ever consider self-publishing, I’m sure an editor at Knopf or Graywolf has been asked a thousand times, “So…is self-publishing going to kill you guys or what?” I think the most appropriate response in either case is to turn the question back to its asker: How likely are you to buy a self-published piece of literature?

It’s a question I ask myself all the time, as it is a situation I find myself in all the time. The answer, honestly, depends. One guy I follow on Twitter, a thriller writer, is constantly offering Kindle excerpts from his books for free, and entire novels for $2.99. I have yet to take him up on one of these. On the other hand, I’d already struck up a Twitter friendship with Jane Devin, author of self-published memoir Elephant Girl, and was all too happy to purchase the book. Ditto actor Stephen Tobolowsky’s Cautionary Tales, a $1.99 Kindle Single, a kind of literary “bonus track” to his essay-style podcast, The Tobolowsky Files.

Clearly, then, I am still at the stage of trusting self-published material only when it comes from a known source. With Devin, I could glean some of her style and voice from her tweets — and the book is terrific — while I knew Tobolowsky’s writing from listening to dozens of episodes of his podcast. With Thriller Guy, I not only didn’t know his work, I was turned off by his Twitter style: He tweets several times daily with links to his many, many e-books, and little else. He has a lot of drive and focus, he has my admiration, but he does not have my three bucks.

It seems a little crazy that I’d be hesitant to spend $2.99 on a novel, but that’s the thing: It’s a novel. It’s a commitment. Not a huge one, like marriage or parenthood or becoming a Mac owner, but it’s a little leap each time, isn’t it? And when we make that leap, I think we like to have the assurance that someone in a capable position thought this would be worth our while. This is the question of LEGITIMACY, and I’ll get to it more in a second.

When I used to assign readings (usually short stories or novel excerpts) to my workshop students, there’d often be some pretty strong reactions to the less “mainstream” pieces. “What do I think?” someone might say. “I think this writer is on drugs.” Then the workshop would devolve into discussions of whether or not the writer was on drugs, which would lead to a debate about whether the writer ought to be writing at all. Which is not constructive, nor instructive, in any way.

Now when I assign a reading, I know enough to preface with: “If something about this doesn’t appeal to you, just remind yourself: Someone thought it was worth publishing and sharing with the world. What do you suppose they saw in it?” This bit of critical cockblocking has bled the workshop of a lot of unnecessary discussions about authorial legitimacy.

But now here I am, having that same debate with myself. When I see a book on a shelf at Barnes & Noble, I don’t think to question its legitimacy. It’s on a shelf! Someone stocked it there after (because) someone else decided it was worth acquiring, editing, printing, and distributing! (This goes double for independent stores like New York’s Three Lives & Co. If a book is on the shelf in that tiny, wonderful store, it can only be so with the blessing and love of the booksellers. Or so my sentimental brain believes.)

Then there’s the literature that has not gone through a publishing gatekeeper. You know that moment in the car when you look up and the GPS is showing nothing — only the little icon for you, in your car, in a sea of white, no roads or markers anywhere? What is the reaction then? Panic. You know you’re on a road, and therefore are somewhere — probably right where you should be — but we’ve become so trained to trust our GPSs that if our GPS doesn’t say we’re anywhere, then we might be…nowhere! This, for me, is self-publishing. If no one in a position of editorial authority said yes to this book, then aren’t we suddenly without a map in front of us? Isn’t it less worthy than the book someone at a publisher said yes to?

This thinking, of course, is some crazy shit. Again, look at the GPS analogy; you’re not nowhere, you’re just in a place where the GPS either has no signal or which hasn’t been mapped yet. Aside from the fact that there are probably more purely terrible books in a large bookstore than even partly good ones, I have this stubborn blindness in no other part of my life. I own a 9-volume set of Andy Partridge’s XTC demos, Fuzzy Warbles, which Mr. Partridge put out by himself. I paid the “whatever” price to buy Radiohead’s In Rainbows album directly from the band. Ditto with Dresden Dolls’ live A Is For Accident. Three weeks ago, I paid five dollars and downloaded Louis CK’s self-released comedy special, and I felt good about it, as if I were contributing to a larger cause. So why this issue with books? Why do I hesitate to purchase someone’s self-published novel or short-fiction collection? And why does the thought of publishing my own novel, when it’s finished, make me queasy?

The answer, I’m ashamed to say, is LEGITIMACY. If something is self-published, even if I come to regard it on a par with traditionally-published works, I initially believe it to be less than legitimate. And this is because if I were to self-publish, I would be less than legitimate. Because one of the reasons I write, besides to entertain myself and others, is to feel somehow legitimate. So you see, this is mostly my own dumb thinking. And it’s probably a lot of people’s own dumb thinking that keeps self-published works from being taken seriously. I  tell my students to consider the fact that some professional thought a story or novel worth publishing and making available to people, but what if there’s also something to the idea of the writer so committed to her vision and independence that she either refuses to be told “no,” or refuses to be hemmed in by the constraints of traditional publishing? And again: So much crap on the shelves. Who says someone’s a lesser writer because he or she hasn’t been able to find traditional publication? Or didn’t want it?

The current poster-person for the self-publishing movement is Amanda Hocking, whom I always want to call Amanda Knox. Hocking began self-releasing her novels after she was unable to find a publisher for them. She sold them on Amazon for a couple of bucks each, and gradually built a word-of-mouth following. She’s since sold more than a million copies and now has a deal with St. Martin’s, one of the largest publishers in the United States. Let’s not skimp on that last part. By self-publishing (and by first writing books that connected with readers), she found success, yes, but she also found her way into the traditional publishing model. This is probably the best scenario for a writer, as it is exactly the scenario followed by a thousand bands. Sure, occasionally you hear about some band being discovered in a tiny club, but most create self-financed singles or albums and distribute those themselves. When a record label signs a band, it’s generally because they’ve demonstrated an ability to a) craft quality material; and b) develop an audience for that material.

That is still the end-game, to be published by a traditional publisher. Not only does Hocking now have distribution where she didn’t before (a LOT of readers still prefer print books), but she has others to do her marketing and PR and day-to-day business while she is allowed to concentrate on writing. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone will make a career of publishing independently. I’m guessing more than a few will, as digital publishing isn’t getting any smaller. But I also wonder if it’ll be enough for all writers, having readers who love them. I wonder if it’s not part of some writers’ personalities to also need that feeling of Getting In, receiving the approval and love and confidence of a publisher. I will admit right here and now to being one of those.

On the other hand, I will be putting out a Kindle Single early this year. As mentioned in my last post, I’m curious about the actual reach of literary publications, even the major ones. Meanwhile, I have more than 2,000 followers on Twitter, at least 40% of whom may not be bots or marketing experts. If 20% of them trust me enough to download a free Kindle Single, they might be motivated to share it with friends, who may like it and share it with their friends, and so on. As I said in that last post, I just want readers. But the novel is now 2/3 revised, and I will soon be looking for an agent through whom to find a traditional publisher.

I know this process already and it’s gross and heartbreaking, and I’m looking to put my fate and years of hard work in the hands of people who may never like or love or fight for the “product” that is me. But it’s the way it’s done, and I still don’t think it’s the wrong way. And if the book comes back and no one loves it or even likes it, then I will put it out myself and I will claim all the way that that’s how I wanted it done anyway.