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Blogs by Rebecca Brock
Why I self-published 10/25/2007 9:41:50 PM
Way back when I started writing, self-publishing meant sending a bunch of money to a vanity press, who would then print a hundred or so copies of your book to sell or give away to relatives or just put on your shelf so you could bask in your own published glory. It was perceived to be for people who weren't good enough writers to be published by the real book publishers in New York.
In short, it wasn't anything to be proud of. It was an admittance of failure. You were telling the world you weren't able to cut it as a real writer. And right or wrong, at least that's how it always seemed to me.
As I kept writing and submitting to publishers, I kept getting those super-fun rejection letters. Years passed. Nothing sold. I cast an eye towards the vanity publishers with a new attitude and a ton more empathy. I could understand that burning need to have at least one novel in book form, something you could hold in your hand and give to a person and say, "Here...I did this. I wrote this." Even if you had to go into debt to do it, I understood that need.
Fast forward to the digital age of publishing. Print on demand. New publishers like iUniverse and Lulu, where all the work of formatting and editing is given to the writer and the books are only published when a copy is sold. Some of these new breeds of publishers charge fees equal to the old vanity guys, but some places are absolutely free...which meant that the world of writing opened up to anyone willing to format their manuscripts and put in a little bit of time.
Good news, but it also meant that anyone could be a published writer, whether or not they had the ability to write a good story.
I'd been toying with the idea of gathering all of my short stories into a collection for a long time, but something always happened to distract me. Part of it, too, was the fear that if I self-published my collection, I'd be perceived as some hack who wasn't good enough to have stuff published in real books.
Over the years, though, I managed to sell a few stories to those "real" books, and it gave me a little self-confidence that I'd sorely needed. Writers can be notoriously angsty about their writing, and for a long time I felt like I was writing in a vaccuum. The most painful thing in the world for a writer is getting no feedback.
To fast forward, I finally got off my arse and started working on my collection. I decided to go through Lulu and got everything formatted and edited and by the time I finished, I had 245 pages of a book. Wow. I ordered a draft copy and was amazed...it looked like an actual, real book.
I self-published because I had reached the point in my psuedo-career when I felt that I needed to make a big move. Fish or get off the pot, as they say. (Or is it "Shit or cut bait"?). So far, only one person has bought a copy of it, but...that's how it goes, I guess. Being published is no guarentee of success.
It's amazing to think that I now have a book in print--with an ISBN and everything. I can hold it in my hands, look at the stories I've written, and feel as if I've actually accomplished something. Maybe that's the real reason why people self-publish. It makes you feel, finally, like you're a real writer.
