A couple of weeks ago I put up a post about my first year as an Indie. It’s the only thing that I’ve put up that seemed to get any attention, so I decided to touch base with a few of the writing bloggers out there and see if they wanted to cross post it to their sites. I put it out to about a dozen or so and only got one response, which was a professional and polite rejection.

There was something, though, that the blogger said that’s been niggling at me, squirming like a worm in my brain apple. The response was that the post had an “underlying disdain for traditional publishing”. This bugged me, because I don’t feel like I have any disdain for traditional publishing. So, I went back and re-read the post. Then I re-read it again. And then again. I discovered that the blogger in question was absolutely correct.

I’m not sure what happened there. Maybe I was so focused on getting to the bits about what I’ve learned about indie publishing onto the page that I overlooked the tone I took towards my traditional publishing experiences or perhaps I was revisiting the frustration of those early days and some of my ire leaked through. I’m just not sure.

So, for the record, I do not bear any ill will towards traditional publishing. I’m not one of those writers who has an “us versus them” mentality towards the interaction of Indie Publishing and Traditional publishing. Even though I’ve never landed a trad-pub deal, I’ve spent decades educating myself on the process and the business, so I feel like I have a little knowledge on the topic. Trad-Pub and Indie-pub, to my eyes, are really two separate things. We’re like two groups of kids playing in two different sandboxes; we might be separated, but we’re all still digging in the sand.

There are upsides and downsides to both publishing routes. Indies like to tout the lack of gatekeepers in their world. Thing is, that’s not entirely true. In the absence of editors and readers and agents for the Indie world, the reading public becomes the gate keepers. You might be able put anything you want up on Amazon for sale, but if the public thinks it’s not worthy of their notice they will ignore you and let you starve. They might let you in their sandbox, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to play with you.

On top of that, I don’t believe that a certain level of gate-keeping is necessarily a bad thing. A first reader can spot a poorly written book right out of the gate and make sure it doesn’t clutter up the shelves at Barnes and Noble or where ever. In the Indie world, you can throw up whatever ill-conceived and poorly written piece of word booger you want and it’ll get roughly the same digital shelf space as its opposite. Trust me, I’ve read more than a few of those.

To me, the big victims of the Trad-pub system are the ‘almost good enough’ books. Those books that are well written, imaginative, and created with an eye towards craft, but just aren’t something that the reader or editor feels that their house can afford to invest in at that time. I’m sure there are lots of books languishing in closets or on hard drives that could have found an audience, but didn’t because of market concerns. This is where the Indie world shines. I count myself in that camp because my current work in progress doesn’t really fit neatly into an established genre. I sent Awakened out. It was rejected for exactly that reason and I totally understand the publisher’s position there.

Publishing house, especially the big ones, are global corporations and they have to make money; period. I can’t imagine the amount of overhead they must shoulder in production and shipping costs alone. Of course they can’t put out every single book that the readers and editors might like because they have to look at what’s going to get them the best return on investment. I’ve gotten a tiny taste of this in my indie endeavors as I’ve paid for covers and editing and marketing and have yet to break even.

My opinion- and this was one expressed by the blogger, as well -is that writers are best served by going hybrid, with some of their catalog in the traditional world and some in the indie world. That’s my ultimate goal, really, because exposure in one can lead to exposure in the other and that’s one of the keys to getting your books discovered by readers. How foolish would it be to turn my back on either of those opportunities?

The point? The point is I’m too busy to be hating on anybody for trying to run their business. I regret the tone of that previous post. As frustrating as it can be, I actually love the art and commerce intersection that is publishing and I love being able to be one of the creators that gets a shot at being part of it. Time will tell whether or not I’m any good at it.

Thanks for reading.

    Darkwalker’s Den