Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (1 of 8)

Last month, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

1.

Edan: "I Guess I’m Not a Hater"
Elly: "I Guess I am?"

In this point, the author states that the argument that traditional publishing is dying is moot because trad pubbers are making more money than ever. She says they consistently put out great books and she wants that stamp of approval on her own book. “I trust publishers,” she says.

Saying you trust publishers to tell you what’s good for you in literature is like trusting a doctor to give you a prescription for a pill that has him rolling in kick-backs. They don’t have your best interest in mind; they have theirs in mind. They are a business. They do not put out the best books; they put out the books that sell the most. Most of the time, these do not overlap.

Nobody’s saying that traditional publishers don’t know what they’re doing. But the model is set up to favor incumbents. Large advances—or any advances at all, really—are a gamble unless spent on a known commodity. Times are tenuous for the big guys, so they’re going to continue to put out what they are fairly sure will make money. They also have the power behind them to be tastemakers. Books that become inexplicably wildly popular (read: Twilight) do not do so solely on their inherent merits. They are calculated business ventures. See, “Recursive Self-Homogenization.”

Trad pubbing doesn’t favor the fresh or the rebellious. The whopping, weird 1Q84 would never have come out in the U.S. if Haruki Murakami wasn’t already a known commodity. Guess what: I’m not, and likely you aren’t. Trad pubbing is for folks who can have their name bigger than the title on the cover, and the occasional one-off they can squeeze in using profits from the former.