Going it Alone

I've been thinking about Tim's post on the subject, and on the bit he quoted from Keyhole's old submissions page, wherein they argued there's nothing they can do for you as a publisher that you can't do for yourself:

We are not accepting book submissions. Really, we can’t do much for you that you can’t already do for yourself. We encourage authors to release books independently.

This struck me as a sort of insane cop-out and bit of self deprecation when I first read it months ago and I still don't get it now. Leaving aside the fact that not every writer has the resources to print a book in the first place (as Tim points out, electronic publishing is becoming more and more of an option, but that's not the fantasy I've had since I was nine: I want a damn book) it seems that genuinely believing there's no substantial difference between what a third party can do for a book and what its own author can do for it requires some fanciful thinking. 

Take for instance the example of Matt Bell's How They Were Found, a Keyhole book sure to become the indie equivalent of a bestseller. This thing has gotten more coverage than just about any other book I can name in the past year; there are probably books from major publishers that got more press, but I didn't see them. I read about -- I read -- How They Were Found.

Now the reason this happened probably has more to do with Matt than with Keyhole. Matt is a good writer and his stories are great fun. He's published extremely widely over the last couple years, and built a reputation as both a writer and a human being worth knowing. His editing of The Collagist has helped to establish the magazine, Dzanc books, and himself at a time when all three brands are rising. And he seems to be fairly well-connected, also. These things have all contributed to the success of his book rather significantly, I'm sure.

And by that same token, I doubt having a book with Keyhole -- or any other press -- can do much to ensure a writer's success. What it can do, though, without even any particular competence in marketing or editing or book layout (which seems to be the argument of that old submissions page: that there is nothing they can do that you can't, in these regards) is knock down barriers and smooth the road to success. Getting a book published by an indie press reviewed can be difficult, but it certainly happens, and How They Were Found is probably one of the more reviewed books of the year. Getting a self-published book reviewed is nearly impossible. The same can be said for placing it on the shelves of, say, Powell's books, or getting a single person in the universe to say one kind word about the thing. Really.

We can argue about whether or not this stigma should be there all day -- I think that in most cases it's fair, and that this is why good writers are so hesitant to throw themselves on the grenade and build another reality from the bodies of their failed novels -- but we know that it is. And it comes from the most fundamental problem of self-publishing, the one that will have to be solved before there can be more than a few tiny stories of success in self-publishing: the problem of getting people to willfully and intentionally associate themselves with your work.

So like fundamentally what Matt Bell and other indie authors like him have that makes the difference is connections with other people. I don't mean this as an accusation of nepotism or anything like that, I mean it in a more basic sense of he is a human being whose writing and social behavior have connected with other human beings such that they (we) feel comfortable endorsing his writing and proselytizing for it. Matt could probably self-publish successfully if he wanted because people know him to the extent that they would talk the book up and share it with friends and so on. And in fact he is right now self-publishing two stories of his online which have been previously published in print, and I'm curious how that experiment is going for him. (I hope well. I'd like to do the same with several of mine.) In any case, the point is, his book could succeed as a self-published endeavor, but only because he has the qualities that make his work desirable to publishers. Keyhole would have been stupid to turn down the chance to work with someone whose writing is so likely to spread by word of mouth and review. 

If you're the sort of writer who would thrive if self-published, you're the sort of writer some press would like to get a hold on now. It means you're relatively easy to promote.

I do have dreams of one day building such a strong brand as a writer that I can dispense with submitting and simply publish my own work as it becomes ready directly to my adoring public. How would you get to this point? Probably by publishing several major works with traditional publishers. And even once you made this leap, I suspect you would still have to find a way to give yourself the most basic service a press can provide: the association of your work with other human beings who have intentionally read it. This is so hard to get when it comes to readers, whose time is in such great demand. I have a novel right now in which I am as confident as I have been in anything I've ever written. It is one small revision away from being publication-ready, I think. I am probably now socially network'd with some hundred writers. Very few, so far, have asked to see the manuscript, and fewer still who could, if they chose, help me to sell the thing were I to publish it myself. I do not have the resources to make this thing a hit, or even to make it modestly read, or even to find fifty readers, I suspect. I don't see that as a problem. This is why we publish: to find someone to say that yes, this work is good, it is worth your time and money. People describe this as gatekeeping, but that makes it sound so much more oppressive than what it really is, which is human contact and conversation.

I started writing to feel less alone. Self-publishing, right now, would make me feel more alone. So I don't do it.

Update: This interview with Bell about his experience self-publishing the above-mentioned stories seems relevant, and perhaps more optimistic about self-publishing than am I.