All publishing is vanity publishing.
Sep. 13th, 2011 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI've said it before.
It's worth repeating.
All publishing is vanity publishing.
That is, all commercial publishing of fiction involves an author buying services from a publisher.
As an author, you own 100% of your work and you are entitled to 100% of the money it generates. The only way you lose that is by trading it away. Be careful about how much you're giving away, and in exchange for what.
Are you selling the majority of your income-generating potential away forever in exchange for a series of one-time services?
If so, why?
In the past you didn't have a lot of options. Now, you do, and publishers are increasingly relying on two things to justify you giving up rights and money to them. One is the cachet of Being An Actual Author Published By An Actual Publisher. Maybe they don't have to sell you on that idea because you've always felt that way.
But ask yourself this: if you need them to give you an Actual Author License, who gave them an Actual Publisher License? Who let them into the club? Who told them that they're allowed to be there? That they're the real deal?
If just writing a book doesn't make you an author, then just publishing a book doesn't make you a publisher. Right? That stands to reason.
The other... and this closely relates to the first... is the notion of gatekeepers. Without the publishers to act as a filter, the market would drown under a rising tide of irredeemable crap. Readers would suffer because we could never find anything we want to read. Authors of quality would suffer because nobody would be able to find them. And so on.
One of the implications here is that if you can't find a publisher to take you, then you're part of the ocean of crap... and if you have been published, well, then you're in. Why rock the boat and risk falling overboard?
Of course, I have the same rebuttal to this as I always do: reality. Reality is that we don't all spend every morning wading through one hundred random blogs of poorly written crap to get to the one we want to read. Reality is that no number of crappy MS Paint webcomics on free servers will ever interfere with the ability of a decent cartoonist to make a living in self-publishing.
Reality is that the ocean of crap is the same on either side of the trad pub fence; the fact that we can all see the slush pile on this side doesn't force us to wade through it. Good writers don't actually have to worry about competing with bad writers... if they did, they wouldn't be good writers.
Basically, the gatekeeper myth is saying that if you have a marathon that anyone can join, it's not fair to the faster racers because they will have to spend 42 kilometers with slowpokes in front of them.
Does that image make sense on any level?
(And yes, I know some races do filter participants through things such as qualifying events. But the idea behind the necessity of gatekeepers is that all races must have qualifiers, which raises the question of how one gets to try out in the first place.)
Now, these two factors have always been part of publishing, but it seems like with the rise in alternative forms of publishing they're becoming even more central to the trad pubs' marketing strategy.
By which I mean the strategy they use to market themselves to writers, not the strategy by which they market writers' books. By and large, they don't market writers' books. Not on a level that approaches or equals what the writers themselves do, which to me suggests that the writers should be getting paid more of the proceeds of any sales. They wrote the book and promoted it, and in many cases were responsible for polishing it.
With the changes in the publishing industry and the marketplace, authors are usually being paid less by publishers who are doing less for them. This situation is only possible because of the Gatekeeper Myth, because we're used to thinking that the invisible imprimatur of printing is itself the goal and that earning money for our work can only come about as a side-effect of that.
We chase the dream of Real Publishing and we hope money comes along with it... and when it doesn't, well, we're told that's the state of the industry. So many pages of tips for writers, so much advice out there is focused on chasing that shiny brass ring, and on making sure that newbie writers are pre-braced for the financial reality that comes with catching it.
And when we ask why we're chasing the ring, we're told that it makes us Real Authors. We're told we need Gatekeepers because the alternative is cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!
And the point of this is not "BOO PUBLISHERS". No. Not at all. I have friends who have been trad-pub'd by presses who from what I can tell provide them with wonderful services. They produce gorgeous books. They help connect authors to audiences. And of course, they take care of the little technical details that I know from personal experience can drive an author 'round the bend.
The bare minimum service a publisher provides is publishing a book, and I can tell you... again from experience... that is not a little thing!
But the reason I'm making this post and mostly reiterating things I've said before is that I just saw a small publisher touting the gatekeeper myth, and it blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind.
Because that question I asked rhetorically up above: who gave them a license? That's got to be playing on small press publishers' minds. I have to imagine that anybody in the publishing business whose company's books don't show up on the shelves at your friendly local liquidator is going to grapple with the same Impostor Syndrome that authors do.
So to see them buying into the gatekeeper myth... no, scratch that... to see them selling the gatekeeper myth? It's disheartening.
Publishers: offer authors a good service at a good price. Or enter into a fair and equitable partnership with authors, if you prefer. Don't sell them on pie-in-the-sky and a secret decoder ring. If you're offering value, you shouldn't need to.
It's worth repeating.
All publishing is vanity publishing.
That is, all commercial publishing of fiction involves an author buying services from a publisher.
As an author, you own 100% of your work and you are entitled to 100% of the money it generates. The only way you lose that is by trading it away. Be careful about how much you're giving away, and in exchange for what.
Are you selling the majority of your income-generating potential away forever in exchange for a series of one-time services?
If so, why?
In the past you didn't have a lot of options. Now, you do, and publishers are increasingly relying on two things to justify you giving up rights and money to them. One is the cachet of Being An Actual Author Published By An Actual Publisher. Maybe they don't have to sell you on that idea because you've always felt that way.
But ask yourself this: if you need them to give you an Actual Author License, who gave them an Actual Publisher License? Who let them into the club? Who told them that they're allowed to be there? That they're the real deal?
If just writing a book doesn't make you an author, then just publishing a book doesn't make you a publisher. Right? That stands to reason.
The other... and this closely relates to the first... is the notion of gatekeepers. Without the publishers to act as a filter, the market would drown under a rising tide of irredeemable crap. Readers would suffer because we could never find anything we want to read. Authors of quality would suffer because nobody would be able to find them. And so on.
One of the implications here is that if you can't find a publisher to take you, then you're part of the ocean of crap... and if you have been published, well, then you're in. Why rock the boat and risk falling overboard?
Of course, I have the same rebuttal to this as I always do: reality. Reality is that we don't all spend every morning wading through one hundred random blogs of poorly written crap to get to the one we want to read. Reality is that no number of crappy MS Paint webcomics on free servers will ever interfere with the ability of a decent cartoonist to make a living in self-publishing.
Reality is that the ocean of crap is the same on either side of the trad pub fence; the fact that we can all see the slush pile on this side doesn't force us to wade through it. Good writers don't actually have to worry about competing with bad writers... if they did, they wouldn't be good writers.
Basically, the gatekeeper myth is saying that if you have a marathon that anyone can join, it's not fair to the faster racers because they will have to spend 42 kilometers with slowpokes in front of them.
Does that image make sense on any level?
(And yes, I know some races do filter participants through things such as qualifying events. But the idea behind the necessity of gatekeepers is that all races must have qualifiers, which raises the question of how one gets to try out in the first place.)
Now, these two factors have always been part of publishing, but it seems like with the rise in alternative forms of publishing they're becoming even more central to the trad pubs' marketing strategy.
By which I mean the strategy they use to market themselves to writers, not the strategy by which they market writers' books. By and large, they don't market writers' books. Not on a level that approaches or equals what the writers themselves do, which to me suggests that the writers should be getting paid more of the proceeds of any sales. They wrote the book and promoted it, and in many cases were responsible for polishing it.
With the changes in the publishing industry and the marketplace, authors are usually being paid less by publishers who are doing less for them. This situation is only possible because of the Gatekeeper Myth, because we're used to thinking that the invisible imprimatur of printing is itself the goal and that earning money for our work can only come about as a side-effect of that.
We chase the dream of Real Publishing and we hope money comes along with it... and when it doesn't, well, we're told that's the state of the industry. So many pages of tips for writers, so much advice out there is focused on chasing that shiny brass ring, and on making sure that newbie writers are pre-braced for the financial reality that comes with catching it.
And when we ask why we're chasing the ring, we're told that it makes us Real Authors. We're told we need Gatekeepers because the alternative is cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!
And the point of this is not "BOO PUBLISHERS". No. Not at all. I have friends who have been trad-pub'd by presses who from what I can tell provide them with wonderful services. They produce gorgeous books. They help connect authors to audiences. And of course, they take care of the little technical details that I know from personal experience can drive an author 'round the bend.
The bare minimum service a publisher provides is publishing a book, and I can tell you... again from experience... that is not a little thing!
But the reason I'm making this post and mostly reiterating things I've said before is that I just saw a small publisher touting the gatekeeper myth, and it blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind.
Because that question I asked rhetorically up above: who gave them a license? That's got to be playing on small press publishers' minds. I have to imagine that anybody in the publishing business whose company's books don't show up on the shelves at your friendly local liquidator is going to grapple with the same Impostor Syndrome that authors do.
So to see them buying into the gatekeeper myth... no, scratch that... to see them selling the gatekeeper myth? It's disheartening.
Publishers: offer authors a good service at a good price. Or enter into a fair and equitable partnership with authors, if you prefer. Don't sell them on pie-in-the-sky and a secret decoder ring. If you're offering value, you shouldn't need to.