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Invisible obstacles, unseen advantages … a woman taking the d-i-y approach. Photograph: REX/Image Broker
Invisible obstacles, unseen advantages … a woman taking the d-i-y approach. Photograph: REX/Image Broker

Self-publishing’s vices and virtues

This article is more than 9 years old
Research has taught me three main weaknesses in this new way to issue books, but also revealed some less acknowledged strengths

Almost any discussion of self-publishing seems to attract an immediate hostility quite unlike the amused tolerance that greets those who, say, exhibit their indifferent watercolours, or seek to try out their wine-making skills on their friends. The discussion (I would hesitate to call it a debate) invariably and speedily descends to consideration of the literary merits of 50 Shades of Grey (whose author in any case disputes that it ever was self-published).

A report of research I presented to a recent publishing conference, challenging misapprehensions as to what sort of people are now self-publishing, provoked just such a lively correspondence. Of those interviewed for my study, 65% of self-publishers were women. Nearly two-thirds were aged 41 to 60, with a further 27% aged over 61. Half were in full-time employment, 32% had a degree and 44% a higher degree. According to my research, self-publishers tend predominantly to be educated and busy, and not self-publishing in retirement, bitter from a lifetime’s disappointment from the traditional industry.

While this was confirmed in part by comments online, other contributions were less measured. BladeAbroad questioned whether such authors are “publishing ebooks or ‘cashing in’” and Salierei wrote: “I suspect 99% of published ebooks either dont (sic) sell or barely sell.”

It is certainly true that many self-published books are not very good, but having been involved in academic research into the sector for the past five years I have come up with three main reasons why I think the output includes so much tosh – and also a case for a cultural value that is less easy to quantify.

1. The author has not thought about what self-publishing means
My definition of self-publishing is “the process of taking personal responsibility for the management and production of content”. I do not think that marketing or selling have to be part of the process, or that a recognisable book necessarily results – you can self-publish content via Twitter or blogs, and legal settlements have regularly demonstrated the extent of the disseminator’s responsibility. The key difference in self-publishing is that it’s the author who is assuming responsibility for what is shared, without the hand-holding of a traditional publisher. It’s where the buck stops.

But this also means that the responsibility for not making content available is within the author’s control – and just because you have written something does not mean it should immediately be shared. Writers who earn their living from the process understand that work is seldom right first time; it’s a craft that has to be worked at. Material made available without sufficient thought damages not only the writer’s reputation but that of self-published work in general. Typing is not the same thing as writing.

2. Making content available is not the same as making it readable
One of the things I try to explain early to our publishing MA students is that effective publishing is often most evident when invisible. Most of the material we see from traditional publishers is so well handled that it’s only when we see badly-presented content it strikes us that publishing is more difficult than it looks. For some, the penny never drops. Publishing is a different skill from writing, and laying out content to ensure it is easy to read takes research and practice. Effective publishing is not just pressing a button.

3. Success is not defined by the number of books downloaded or sold
Many authors, contrary to Salierei’s belief, are making money. Self-publishing authors tend not to get in included in surveys of authors’ earnings, but Orna Ross, founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, says: “Many of the association’s members are earning significant salaries now. I’m not talking here about the outliers, like the Kindle millionaires, but the many who are earning enough to leave their day jobs, feed their families, pay their mortgage, afford comforts and luxuries. And let us not forget that sales doesn’t just equal money, it equals readers. It’s one of my great delights to witness what this does for their confidence in themselves and in their work.”

The business model is also changing. Traditional publishing was a bit like a fishing game I owned as a child, with a stand-up cardboard frame and a rod for each player with a magnet on the end. Fish lay inside (and sometimes outside) the box, each accessorised with a corresponding magnet and waiting to be picked up – and provided you were in the right box, or close to it, you were usually found. Publishing worked in a similar way, from a scarcity model grounded in commercial principles, selecting titles to be published and protecting their value with copyright. Ross again: “Now we are working from an abundance model, grounded in creative principles. Excess and redundancy are no cause for concern. This is how nature, the fundamental model for all creativity, works: [it takes] a lot of acorns to get one baby oak. A lot of sperm miss out on the egg.”

While discussions around self-publishing so often concentrate on the mouth-watering sales of the headliners, it’s important to bear in mind that our understanding is incomplete. Many self-published titles are made available without an ISBN so tracking them is very difficult; Amazon does not make its results public. There are certainly many poorly-produced titles that are selling in very small numbers – but also many that were never designed to sell.

Interviews with many self-published authors have taught me that there are often issues of more importance than sales. For many, the material they want to publish has long burned inside them and the process of self-publishing delivers a profound satisfaction. Even if the format offers room for improvement, at least it can be revisited in future or (as often in the case of family memoirs) accessed when the time is right for those with an interest in reading it.

Today, technology makes involvement in the publishing process possible for a much wider range of people, and from individual publishing projects with a print run of one (for instance 21st and 80th birthday books, or albums of holiday photographs) to those celebrating the output of creative writing courses (in schools, hospices, prisons), books are being created that have a social and cultural value far beyond their earning power.

The “book as treasured object” is particularly valuable within communities where books have not been a high priority in the past. In spreading an understanding of how traditional publishing works, self-publishing will surely increase diversity of recruitment within the publishing industry, and a general awareness of what kind of reading material might find a market.

There are signs now that self-publishing is turning a corner – at last being seen as part of publishing in general. At its best it offers the traditional industry a new source of writing talent and a chance to take on material with readerships already established. In the process, it cultivates the kind of author proactivity that publishers need if they are to reach markets that are no longer predictable, due both to the proliferation of new media and the challenge to reading of so many other alternative leisure activities.

But it also allows people to create products that bring huge personal pride, even if they include a few spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. As a process, the value of self-publishing to communities who want to share or preserve material is huge. But for its reputation to be assured as a medium for reading pleasure, the desire to go public straight away must be resisted. Just because you can share immediately does not mean you should. There is a world of difference between attention and approval.

Dr Alison Baverstock is Associate Professor of Publishing at Kingston University and author of The Naked Author, a guide to self-publishing (Bloomsbury). Writing Family Memoir: A 60-Minute Masterclass is published next week. Visit theguardian.com/60-minute-mastercalsses and sign up to the newsletter to receive an alert on publication.

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