The Smells of Desperation and Need
I stopped at the local library today and they were holding a promotion for local self-published authors. The smell of desperation hung ominously in the air.
I’m torn whenever I meet someone who’s got his latest Publish America or iUniverse masterpiece. I self-published several books myself through Booklocker. The problem with self-publishing print-on-demand houses is that the market is now glutted with authors whose often incompetently written crap drowns out the good work done by the less common POD authors who’ve yet to hear “yes” from a “real” traditional publisher. The technology of publish-on-demand is a good thing; Paladin Press invested in the same equipment and now can keep my books in print virtually forever, rather than doing specific, finite print runs. But while that’s great for me and Paladin’s other authors, the POD technology is used for evil as often as for good.
I bought a zombie novel that was self-published, because it looked good. The cover was the best part, and I am not joking about that. The book itself, churned out by one of the pay-to-play POD houses, was utterly incompetently written. It wasn’t that the writing style was bad; it was that the “writer” was almost illiterate. It was so bad I couldn’t finish it. I threw it down in disgust while trying.
Self-published authors, as a group if not as individuals, give ourselves a bad name in our quest for validation, publishing books that will never sell more than a few hundred copies to friends, family, and suckers. I’m arrogant enough to believe my own self-published novels are quite good, especially my second one, “Mechanical War.” Had I the time, the willingness to absorb rejection, and the ambition to edit the thing several more times, I could probably fight to get it published by a “real” company. I might eventually do that.
Rarely, a POD author bteaks through to the honest-to-God-made-it-as-an-author side of the aisle, but I think on average we’re generating chaff that should have been intercepted by a gatekeeper. Yet I want to encourage other aspiring authors, especially the young. I met a teenager, fifteen or sixteen years old, at the bookstore a week or two back, promoting his fantasy children’s novel. I told him to keep writing, to never stop; someone who puts out a book that young just might turn out to be really great. I wish I was more encouraging to the rest of the POD authors in the world… but a lot of their stuff just stinks on ice, and there’s an entire industry devoted to enabling them. Don’t think I exclude myself from that number; I don’t. I used to be one of those people, though I do write well. After all, it’s what I do for a living, twenty hours out of every twenty-four.
I think crawling onto the lowest tier of the commercial publishing industry has made me cynical. That’s probably what it is. It’s just…those authors all looked up at me from their tables laden with brightly colored trade paperback-sized publish-on-demand novels, looked at me with big doe eyes and that expression that says, “Validate me, validate me, I’m an AUTHOR, damn it,” and I could barely make eye contact. It was genuinely uncomfortable. You never, EVER make eye contact with a self-published author promoting his work at a bookstore or other venue. It’s just a bad idea unless you’re willing to spend some money and some time… or feel like a shitheel for abandoning the poor bastard to his unfulfilled dreams and his pile of glossy paperbacks.
I’m certain I had that doe-eyed look myself, when I first published “Demon Lord.” Ghost-writing action novels to somebody else’s standards within the framework of plotlines approved by the Powers That Are hardly makes me a “real” author, I don’t suppose… That’s it; I really have gotten cynical. That might be a bad thing, or it might be a good thing. I suppose at least I look at things more realistically now. Maybe something is lost nonetheless.