Shut Up and Write

It’s been said, but I suppose it isn’t sinking in.

What with conferences being in full swing, some articles about the DOJ making decisions about publishing, and more independent authors cropping up every day, the issue won’t die.

But there really is NO ISSUE.

Repeat after me: DECIDING TO SELF PUBLISH DOES NOT IN ANY WAY MAKE YOU A THREAT TO NEW YORK PUBISHERS, NOR IS TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING A THREAT TO YOU.

Many authors still chase the dream of getting a contract with The Big 6.  Some, like myself, have been successful publishing independently/directly, and no longer have any particular interest in that dream.  That does not mean a mutually exclusive hostility exists anywhere but in the minds of people who don’t completely understand publishing.

I currently publish through CreateSpace and Amazon.  Initially, I had plans to continue submitting to New York.  After a little more than a year of doing well on my own, and liking the control it affords me, I’m sticking with the indie way.  But I’m not deluded into thinking Random House is holding clandestine meetings about me.  They have open meetings about how to combat the success of Amazon, I am sure, and that’s how business work: do it better and beat the competition. But that competition keeps all of us healthy.  It inspires improvement, drives change, keeps us working harder.

Authors can make their choices. Hostility and trash talk brands the speaker as unprofessional, clueless, and childish.  Pick your team—or double team, lots of authors have been happily hitting both ways—and shut up. Put your time into your manuscripts.

Indie or Self or… what? A DIRECT Answer:

I’m not self published.  I don’t reject the term because I am part of the paranoid fringe.  I reject it because it has nothing to do with my process, my agreements, or what I do.

At one point I did use the terms “independent” or “indie” often.  I’m not married to the phrase, but it pisses off ALL THE RIGHT PEOPLE.  The term was, for a long time, used by small presses.  Independently owned, one might say.  But for the author, it never made sense (to me, at least).  You aren’t doing this independently, you are with a publisher that calls itself independent.  Even that seems, to me, a stretch— how many people working on a book at one time can count as “independent?”

But self-publishing?  I don’t do it myself.  I’m selling through amazon, BN, Smashwords, or another open submission site.  I may format it, edit it,  and write it—or sub-contract parts of the process out—but I damn sure don’t run the site or do the grunt work once it’s done.

Last week a group of writers who are largely New York pubbed—my local writer’s group, which is lucky to have a larger distinguished list than most—chitty chatted the topic.  Many of the members who are signed with the big names are also doing some sel—err—indi--- err… publishing-by-themselves-through-just-as-big-means on the side.  We came to an agreement, within the group, to use the term DIRECT PUBLISHED. 

Direct published.  Hmm.  You know what?  I really like that.  It says what I want: I cut out the middle man, did the book on my own, and asked this big website/store/outlet to release it to the public.  I went directly from my manuscript to the customer source without passing GO, collecting $200 (at least until some stuff starts selling), and avoided the Minotaur’s maze.

Direct Publishing… yeah… I dig that.  I’m sort of a direct kind of gal.