Self Published Authors – before you send me your book bear this in mind…
Posted on March 22, 2010 by Vanessa
Ask any bookseller about self-published books and they will groan. Depending on how many self-published books they are asked to stock they will groan and bang their heads on the table. If they are given as many as we are they will groan, bang their heads on the table and demand a stiff drink.
It’s not that we look down on self-published authors, it’s just that generally speaking if someone is a good writer and professional in their approach and believes in what they’re writing and listens to constructive feedback their work will find a home with a ‘traditional’ publisher (ie one which doesn’t expect the writer to pick up the tab and which spends time and money editing, typesetting, designing and marketing the book). There is no great conspiracy that stops people becoming published authors. Really – agents and publishers need to turn a profit and are looking for great books and if no-one wants yours then you need to look at the reasons you’re getting knocked back and address them.
The perils of self-publishing is something I’ve written about before about a year ago: here, here and here and other people who are much more authoriative than me such as Nicola “crabbit old bat” Morgan and the marvellous Jane Smith at How Publishing Really Works have written lots on the subject. But despite the increasing number of people warning against self-publishing – even if you don’t get ripped off it’s unlikely that you’ll end up with anything a bookshop wants on their shelves – the number of self-pubbed titles arriving on our desk is increasing exponentially.
In the last few weeks we’ve received children’s picture books with illustrations described as ‘naive’ but which were actually just dreadful; books with grammatical errors in the blurb*; memoirs of people that no-one – barely even Google – has heard of; soft porn which managed to be neither erotic or literary despite the enthusiastic claims in the blurb; books with covers so ugly only their creators could love them; books with glowing endorsements from the people who run the self-publishing outfit (to paraphrase Mandy Rice Davies ‘well, they would say that, that wouldn’t they?); poetry which wasn’t even emo-6th form level and there seems to be a never-ending supply of would-be literary fiction, YA books about vampires and children’s books about anthropomorphic toys, including a bear named after a domestic airport (I mean, WTF?). And there’s one libellous joy which wasn’t sent directly to me by the author but which the temptation to rip apart here is almost too great… for the moment I’ll wait until his on-line rantings get too personal and then the gloves will be off.
So, if you have self-published your book and want to send it to us do make sure that it will stand up to our (very) critical scrutiny, that there’s nothing on the outside which will make us chuck it straight in the recycling box and that you accept that the chances of us stocking it, based on past experience, is about 1 in 75. We’re so short of space that we don’t have room for the complete canon of Jane Austen so your book is going to have to be seriously good for me to shoehorn it onto our shelves instead of finding space for Mansfield Park.
* and please don’t jump in here to criticise any grammatical or punctuation errors I may have made – this is a blog post, not a book I’m publishing and which I expect to stand on its own merits alongside professional published titles.
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10 Responses to “Self Published Authors – before you send me your book bear this in mind…”
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March 23rd, 2010 @ 10:05 am
[...] Read on… [...]
March 23rd, 2010 @ 10:21 am
I review books on my blog, and get some self-published things there, and there are some that are beyond shocking. I had one last year that had so many errors of punctuation, grammar and spelling that it was virtually unreadable. Even my daughter, who regards her mother as a tad over-fussy about matters of punctuation, was appalled. “Huh,” she said. “If they’d ever heard you going on about the apostrophe, they’d never have sent you this, would they?” Not when they’d got it wrong on the cover, no.
March 23rd, 2010 @ 5:03 pm
I think at least part of it is the widespread assumption that writing (and indeed, publishing and bookselling) isn’t actual graft. That it is above and beyond market research or the principles of good business. That it’s something you do for fun, with spectacular results.
The other day on a forum an intelligent, liberal young woman told me that authors should expect to earn less money than others, because they enjoyed their job.
It was hard to know where to start.
March 24th, 2010 @ 1:47 pm
@Susanna:
Why not start with “They already do”?
March 24th, 2010 @ 2:29 pm
Completely brilliant post Venessa
March 24th, 2010 @ 4:18 pm
Bless you, Vanessa. It’s important for authors to understand how the “other side” sees their works. It’s not some evil conspiracy to tamp down writers, but that the work really is quite dreadful.
March 26th, 2010 @ 6:58 am
Pelotard – that was my response in the end!
March 26th, 2010 @ 3:39 pm
So you won’t be wanting my new kidult novel “Carmilla the Lesbian Vampyr Discovers Harry the Higgs Boson in Geneva” then?
Oh well back to writing for The Physical Review I suppose.
April 25th, 2010 @ 8:33 pm
Hi Vanessa,
My self-published title has just been put on the shelves of 75 Waterstones stores. So as excited as I am I have to agree with you. I paid good money for an Editor; we worked hard to find a strong cover. I spent time building a fan base then I went to Waterstones with proof of sales and audience. So on the one hand it can be done but on the other you had better be prepared to work 24/7 until you get it right and that’s just the beginning!
I must add that I couldn’t have done any of this without the constant help of my local Waterstones staff. Now I have to prove I deserve the 74 position!
If there are any grammatical errors in this document my editor doesn’t work on a Sunday night.
Best Wishes
Georgia Twynham
May 20th, 2010 @ 3:00 pm
[...] I love being a bookseller but I never expected unsolicited approaches to stock self-published books to become the bane of my life and I feel inclined to issue some suggestions based on my own experiences. Vanessa has blogged about self publishing previously here: http://www.stateofindependents.co.uk/2010/03/self-published-authors-before-you-send-me-your-book-bea... [...]