The Sword and Laser discussion

I recently self-published my first novel, so I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ways to get people to read it.

From the start I took it as a given that most people would assume a self-published novel would be inferior to a traditionally published novel and spent a good deal of time trying to make my novel look as professional as I could.

Then it occurred to me that, while my assumption may be correct, I have the assumption because I feel that way about self-published novels!

So I wondered, how many of you share this prejudice against indie books, and how do we get around it?

I'm passed the halfway mark on my next novel, which I will attempt to get a traditional publishing house to take on for a number of reasons (validation, exposure) but the stigma I associate with self-pub has it's influence also.

Generally I agree, but I think that what I think *may* be missing from self-published books is not necessarily the quality of the writer or story, but simply a lack of steps that ensure the "quality" of traditionally published books.

What I mean is that I somehow would assume that a traditionally published book has been edited and edited again, and proofread once, twice or more and that there was more than one person involved in getting it done.

I don't necessarily assume the same thing for a self-published book - although of course someone could just as well give their book to friends to proof read and point out errors and flaws.

After all I do agree that this is somewhat a terrible prejudice because I like living in a world where people are no longer dependant on publishers to get their work out in the world. Yet I must admit that I'm more likely to read (and buy) a traditionally published book than a self-published one.

I think e-books are the way to go if you self publish.

When I look through Kindle or the iBook store, I don't even take note of the publisher. If I'm browsing for a good book I usually check out the recommendations, the higher rated books and read the comments.

If it is an unknown author to me I will get the free sample to see what their writing style is like.

Plus self-published e-books have the added benefit for the author of lower overheads and a greater return (70% of sale price) which means you can offer a book at a lower price while trying to build a loyal fan base.

What is your book? Plug it here if it's Sword or Laser.

I will admit my prejudice against self published work. My wife writes fan fiction and I end up reading a lot of fic on blogs and fanfiction.net which needed a professional editor to tell the author no. No, you cant run on sentance like the beginning of a Shanara book. No, these two characters would not behave contrary to past characterization and shag. Sometimes writers need restrictions. Most of the fanfic writers need grammar and punctuation badly. In my mind self publishing is only a step away from fanfic.

So I shy away from most self published work because it didn't get a professional edit. And yet I always buy Wil Wheaton's indie books. So, I dunno.

I agree that it is the assumption that self-pub books haven't had the attention to detail that traditional books (mine was proof read and edited :D ) and I also look for samples of unknown self-pub authors before buying.

The solution I went with, taking a cue from our very own Mr. Tom Merritt, was to offer my book for free and encourage people to rate/review it to get that all important credibility, but I wondered if anyone had other ideas for how to get around this problem, or is it just going to be a permanent hump for new indie-authors to get over.

(I wasn't sure about plugging my book, but it is The Returners)

Don't know about a way to get around the prejudice but I for one think (true or not) that a self published novel is much more likely to be less polished due to poor self-editing by the author. I guess there might be a few self-published novelist who hire independent editors to help with this. Editors should be able to guide authors and help with writing form as well as just catch basic grammatical mistakes. This isn't always the case as I recently found out reading "Empire State" which was chock full of styling issues a decent editor would have helped a freshman author avoid.

I don't tend to try works by unproven authors myself. I have a list of way too many books that have been recommended to me or books that are established classics to take my time with a book that has a higher chance of being a dud. Sure you can limit this by looking at the good reads reviews but I've seen several self-published books with only 20 or so reviews (not enough for me to feel safe taking a chance). Call my lazy if you will but that is how I work.

Unfortunately I am one of those people that assumes self published books are not as polished or equal quality to the novels that are published through the traditional means.

I honestly wish it was not true but when I got my kindle 3 I tried a lot of self published books that were free for their first week/month or inexpensive and unfortunately I found that while many of them had a decent premise they were of poor quality for a variety of reasons. Poor writing, grammar, punctuation, poor story etc... Some where very highly rated on Amazon as well which is part of why I looked around and found Goodreads and other review sites.

There have been a few self published novels that I have really enjoyed and feel that they live up to the quality of the traditional publishers however that is the exception to the rule.

I'm not trying to say the publishers never put out a crappy novel, only that the average quality is much higher vs.self published.

Now the only time I try self published books is if the premise caught my eye and it is well reviewed on Goodreads or recommended by a friend who has similar taste in books.

I will say that a low price can be a deciding factor if I am unsure about buying a book, if it is only $5 or less I don't mind taking a risk as much as if the book was $8-$15.

One thing I think self published authors get to fixated on is beating the prices of the major publishers. With most of my friends and family if the choice is between spending $0.99 on a poor-medium quality novel vs. $7-$25 on a good or excellent novel we would rather spend the extra money. There are more books published than we could ever read so why read something your not happy with. We are by no means rich or even well off but a substantial portion of our discretionary spending goes to books and we typically have a backlog of books to read.

John wrote:
(I wasn't sure about plugging my book, but it is The Returners) >

Your book discription sounds interesting John.

I'm starting to think that, until we have some kind of reliable curation, the only way self-pub books can get traction is by getting positive reviews, but that needs people to read and review it. There are ways to get those reviews if you have the cash to spend, but who does these days? (I'm speaking of getting a review only, not getting good reviews, though I'm sure you can buy that too).

Paul wrote: "John wrote:
(I wasn't sure about plugging my book, but it is The Returners) >

Your book discription sounds interesting John."

Thank you. If you want to give it a try, you can get it for free here.

Brandon wrote: "Unfortunately I am one of those people that assumes self published books are not as polished or equal quality to the novels that are published through the traditional means.

I honestly wish it wa..."

Well said, Brandon. It's a tough nut to crack - partly, perhaps, because of the thought that work that's gone through the whole selection/professional editing process is going to be superior (as you say, it probably is on average, because it is so easy to self publish now), but also because some indie authors don;t do themselves (and the indie publishing movement) any favours. For example, the number of times I scan down my recent updates page and spot half a dozen obviously self published books with awful punning titles (often in the romance/romantic-dark-fantasy genres, granted, which I'm unlikely to read anyway). Recently in one of my groups I guy was advertising a page that brought together a bunch of self published authors, and I was shocked at how amateurish it was - without exception, the cover art was painfully bad and the overall presentation dire.

This sort of thing is bound to turn a lot of people off the indie thing in the short term, but in the long run it ought to just mean the reader exercises their judgement and those indie authors who give some thought to presentation, editing, and the professionalism of their approach *should* win out.

It might be the same thing that happen with videogames... a few years ago, people didn't take indi games seriously, but great indi games came along and change that, games like CaveStory+, Amnesia: The Dark Descen and many others...

I'm not saying that no one has written a good indi novel, but, there haven't been any mainstream best-selling indi novel (that I know of).

Slight side note on the video games: I regularly get hooked on the story of certain games, one such franchise is Assassin's Creed, which I am so invested in that I bought the companion books that go with the games.

The first book at least could be seen as an example of the reverse of what we're talking about, in that it has clearly been professionally edited and afforded all the professionalism that traditionally published novels get, but the writing style itself is not great. I'm a little over half way through Assassin's Creed: Renaissance, and I've noticed a lot of fundamental mistakes in the story telling (things like drilling the same point into the reader over and over, and jumping from view point to view point).

One note on professional editing; while a publisher will find you an editor to help get your book published, most of those people are no longer employed by the publishers. Many are individual contractors, which means you can go out and hire one for yourself.

Skip wrote: "One note on professional editing; while a publisher will find you an editor to help get your book published, most of those people are no longer employed by the publishers. Many are individual con..."

Indeed, or find a well-read, literate and knowledgeable friend *cough*

Actually, the general level of editing in the major publishing houses has really suffered in recent years as they've out-sourced and de-skilled in that area.

Sorry, this is going to be a long post.

I am not sure how many others here are authors, but I am, and an independent or self published one at that. In my opinion the discussion here is both relevant and very representative of how readers feel in general, here on Goodreads and elsewhere. The melt-down on the Amazon forums showed how strongly readers felt, not just about the quality of indie books, but also the attitude of some of the authors concerned who saw them only as a point of sale. The sad thing is that I not only fully understand, but I agree. I don’t like reading promotions, especially often repeated ones, and I don’t like doing promotions. But marketing is an evil demon that sits on every writer’s left shoulder. And, sadly, poor books are out there.

But are all indie books therefore poorly written and edited and spammed by hacks? No, I refuse to believe we have sunk that low (though I may be wrong). But a large proportion is below par simply because it is now so easy to publish. There is a difference between ticking the box on your computer to say you can ride a bike and actually getting on one and doing it. Hitting the publish button too early is the same sort of thing.

The problem as I see it is that people don’t wait to learn the trade of writing before they publish. I started writing when I was a child, full of dreams and ideas, watching TV and reading exciting stories about space and adventure. I read almost all the E.E. "Doc" Smith books before they went out of print. My early writing was a development of my toy soldier playing and so was childish of course. But later in the Seventies and Eighties I started writing more. It still wasn’t any good, but they got to novel length proportions. I submitted work to Jane Johnson of Voyager at Harper Collins, and to Tim Holman at Little Brown. My work was interesting but raw and rough. I got loads of rejection letters so I gave up for a while and pursued other things like college and a real job. But I never really gave up, I never really stopped tinkering on my typewriter, so many of those works grew and changed as I learned how to write and develop characters and plot. I also learned about the things I put in my books. Many of my current titles were first started in the mid Nineties. And over the years I constantly edited and improved them. And then I did it again when I converted them to html for my website. And then I edited them again after that. And again.

I published my first book myself with BookSurge in 2006. And that was after I got hooked up with PublishAmerica for my first two books in 2005. That’s another story. One has come out of contract with them and I republished it last year. I am still waiting for the second one to do the same. I learned the trade of book production, formatting and cover art while I was with them, so I have no regrets. Since then I have managed to publish twelve titles on Kindle and ten in trade paperback. I do everything myself, from cover to cover. I never stop editing. Still doing it now, updating interior files at CreateSpace and uploading new prc files to Kindle via KDP. I even do my own covers learning graphic art to do it. I am currently editing (again) one of my previous books before it goes to Smashwords even while I have a new book in progress. That new one is stuck at 30K words because I can’t get over a hole in my story development. I have to get it right so that it flows. If it isn’t right it won’t move. So I edit instead.

Does this make me a good writer with well edited and colourful books (and yes, I am from the UK)? No it doesn’t. You decide that. Readers always have had the last word (sorry!) on a book’s success.

For any self published or independent author book history helps. Check the number of works and how mature they are. Is this a writer with history or a recent boarding of the Kindle gravy train? Sometimes reviews help. God, I could do with a few more, and I don’t care about the star count. But many poor books have plenty of reviews. In the end the only review that counts is your own.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t like or don’t read my books. Just read someone’s books. And get your children to do the same, even if it is on a pod/tablet/thingy.

Really, the thing with self-publishing is that the reception will be directly related to how much effort you put into it. There's already a strong bias because the amount of crud work increases with the lack of any controls--publishers have also put out stinkers, but at least the books themselves have had some marginal editing. Authors who go the self-pub route have to be be deeply involved in the entire process--presentation, cover art, marketing etc., and it's a rare person who's good at everything.

Spot on.

I am definately cr*p at marketing. But as for everything else...

A little bit on my thoughts of getting traditionally published;

When I decided to self publish the novel (briefly mentioned above), it was meant to be a short project that was really more for me than anyone else, but it ballooned up became a full thing of its own.

I have a much larger projects (the above book is roughly 50k long) that I've been working on, on and off, for a couple of years, and I had intended to try and get an agent to pick that up when it's done. During the process of self-publishing, I came to realise that a lot of established authors are moving away from traditional publishing, and that maybe I should just go straight there. To use a poor analogy, there would be no point in buying a combustion engine car when the market is 30% electric and electric growth is astronomical.

But then I hit all the problems we've covered about getting noticed, getting people to take a hit (financially and/or time-wise) on your book. It's OK for a Cory Doctorow who has an established pedigree, and I kind of feel that people like Amanda Hocking got in at the right time, before market was so crowded, and are unlikely to come around again.

Eventually, I've decided (for the moment, the book isn't finished yet) to try and get my other novel traditionally published for the credibility that would bring. I can get my manuscripts proof read, professionally edited, commission a decent artist for the book cover (as indeed I did for The Returners), but I don't have the marketing budget that a publishing house has, and the other options open to an indie-author betray the fact that they are self-publishing which, as we've discussed, puts people off.

Traditional publishing as a means of advertising...

Amazon ebooks have started curing me of the attitude.

Lots to pick from with a ton of reviews, all in an easy one click away

Now I tend to choose "indie" authors over others. There is just so much more to choose from.

Here I'll plug one I just read - a fun urban fantasy novel by a talented indie author



And here is a quote I enjoyed from the first few pages of the novel:

"Frankly I didn't know what to do with myself.  I was sitting buck-naked on the floor ten yards from the most beautiful thing I had ever set eyes on.  She was washing the blood of three dead men out of her hair - and I was pretty sure she was humming a show tune."