Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (7 of 8)

In November, 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.

7.

Edan: “Is it Best for Readers?”

Elly: “Let the Readers Decide.”

The essence of Lepucki’s argument here is that the self-publishing revolution is creating a “slush pile” that is publicly available. To parse it out, what I think she’s trying to say is that there is a lot of crap being self-published, and she doesn’t want to be lumped in with said crap. I think. She uses the example of her brother-in-law learning that she hadn’t sold her book, and warning her against self-publishing because it could only lead to the book being ignored in favor of something someone’s friend posted about on Facebook. I think.

I’m not sure I get the point here. Given a book of the exact same quality—i.e., the same exact book—the b-i-l wouldn’t buy it if it were self-published. But he would if he read about it on The Millions or heard about it on NPR. Huh? Sounds like a man who can’t make his own decisions about what he likes. Is this a person you really take advice from? Is this a person whose advice you really pass on to your reading public?

I’m beginning to feel like a bit of a broken record here, but seriously: I’m all about letting readers make their own decisions rather than letting their world be curated by a small, elite group of media who have other interests at stake than creating a culture of superb, enduring literature. To repeat myself, this is why I offer the first 15% of my book, The War Master’s Daughter, for free. If people are captivated by the story, they can purchase the rest. If they don’t like it, they become one of the statistics on my dashboard that shows me how many people have downloaded the sample but chosen to spend their money and time elsewhere.

Let the readers decide what they consider to be crap. I think Stephenie Meyer is crap. I think most of the books sold in grocery stores are probably crap. But that doesn’t mean my view of the entire publishing industry is colored to believe it’s all crap. Perhaps the degree of crappiness in self-publishing is higher, but I think the concomitant intellectual offensiveness tied to said crappiness is higher in traditional publishing. Lepucki trusts the curation of the same folks who put out The Time Traveler’s Wife, which sold millions of copies. Millions. That book seriously stunk it up, and I am offended that people even recommended it to me. But it's not going to stop me from buying another traditionally published book. That would be a comically poor foundation on which to base my choices. 

Encourage your readers to judge a book on its merits, not on its company. And don’t tell your readers what is “best” for them.