Category: Self-Publishing

Posted in Self-Publishing

Ethical issues in self-publishing: Why you should care

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

j0321197It’s probably safe to say that most of us don’t think about ethics on a daily basis — at least not consciously.  But every once in a while we see, read or hear something that makes us think that something is not quite “right.”  Something about it makes us feel that it’s just wrong.  That something might be perfectly legal, but still doesn’t feel right.  That’s your own internal ethical compass telling you to look at the issue more closely. The problem is, often when we ought to see something as not quite right, we don’t even notice.  Self-publishing comes to mind.

Writers have been self-publishing for many years. Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Beatrix Potter and Virginia Wolff come immediately to mind, giving self-publishing what should be a kind of positive cache.  However, the image of self-publishing has, over the years, diminished in the eyes of many — the media, literary critics and even many readers are among those who often carry a negative prejudice toward self-published works and their authors.  This bad reputation is not always unjustified. There are myriad ethical transgressions perpetrated by self-publishers every day. These are the activities and people who give everyone a bad name.

Historical novelist Jane Steen in her article Opinion: Why We Need to Talk About Ethics in Self-publishing suggested we should be concerned about ethics because “we owe it to our readers,” but perhaps even more importantly,”we owe it to ourselves. Our indie career is not just about the books we write—it’s about the person we are.” Improving the image of self-published works is important to their (and the authors’) broader acceptance, and in the end it has to be said, success as an author.

My own personal experience and observations suggest that there are a few key areas that have contributed to negative perceptions and that are ethical minefields for indie authors. They are behaviors to be avoided at all costs.

  1. Writing 5-star reviews for crappy books. It is beyond irritating to buy a well-reviewed book only to find it riddled with stylistic errors (grammar, punctuation, sentence structure etc.) at a minimum, and be practically unreadable at the worst. Some indie authors write these reviews for others to ensure glowing reviews for their own publications.  This is dishonest and therefore unethical.  Don’t do it.
  2. Asking friends and family to write glowing reviews for your books.  This is hardly third-party endorsement.  These individuals are biased, and will likely want you to succeed so their reviews are not objective.  Readers are looking for objective, honest recommendations.  This is unethical. Don’t do it.
  3. Buying reviews.  Since the surge in self-published books, a whole industry has grown up for paid book reviews.  You can find thousands of review writers more than willing to write and post (for a fee of course) glowing reviews for you. This disingenuous practice can also be used by traditionally published authors.  Any way you look at it, it is a dirty practice and should be avoided at all costs.  Dishonest.  Unethical.  Don’t do it.
  4. Flooding the ebook stores with appallingly poor, ill-conceived ebooks.  There is another cottage industry that has grown up around the notion of simply writing ebooks on anything you can think of simply to generate income.  This is one of the most insidious ways that the reputation of all self-published authors is dragged through the mud.  Unless you are an expert on your subject matter, step away from the computer with that brilliant idea for an ebook. Unethical.  Don’t do it.
  5. Over-inflating your wonderfulness and success.  This is so problematic in the self-publishing industry.  Every time someone sells themselves to me as “best-selling” or “award-winning,” I get out Mr. Google and have a look.  That award should have been from a credible, well-known organization and you had better have had a best-seller on the New York Times (or equivalent) best-seller list or you’re padding.  This is dishonest.  Unethical.  Don’t do it.  (If you want to see how even being on these lists can be dishonest, read Here’s How You Buy Your Way Onto The New York Times Bestsellers List)

There have been a number of bloggers who have suggested codes of conduct for self-published authors.  They are worth reading and are among the following list of pieces you should read if you care about your reputation as a self-published author.

Posted in Publishing, Self-Publishing

When self-published work is derided: Often it’s justified

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

publishing word cloudCaitlin Dewey who runs the Washington Post’s Intersect Blog online wrote the following on October 2, 2014, “In the past 90 days, some 84 people have self-published Ebola e-books on Amazon, almost half of them in the past month alone…”[1]  She goes on to say that many of these books have highly-rated reviews on Amazon and yet, “…many of the books — almost all of them, in fact — contain information that’s either wildly misleading or flat-out wrong…”[2]

This is the best evidence I have yet seen on why the self-publishing world is so often deserves the criticism it regularly receives from the traditional literary media and publishers. There are no gate-keepers.  At the most benign end of the outcome spectrum all you have is drivel; at the most malignant, it can cause wide-spread misinformation if not panic, as could potentially happen in the case of Ebola.

I’ve written before about my happy and not-so-happy encounters with self-published books. A novel might simply be poorly written, derivative twaddle that otherwise does not harm other than wasting your time and clogging up the channels of entertainment.  Non-fiction, on the other hand, without benefit of editing, can disseminate all manner of harmful or simply wrong information.  So, why do I self-publish?

There are probably two reasons: first, I am sometimes impatient. Perhaps I am often impatient.  The traditional publishing process takes a long time.  Sometimes a really long time.  Second, and I am being more honest here than I have seen of other self-published novelists, my writing may not be up to the standards that the publishers I have approached in the past are looking for.  I have a track record as a well-published non-fiction writer, but I am a relative newcomer to fiction.  So, does that mean I shouldn’t publish my own novels?

Of course not. I can and I probably will continue to do so. Indeed, I’m also likely to publish a non-fiction piece or two in the future.  That being said, I have no call – nor do any other self-published writers – to either feel hard-done-by when the indie publishing industry is criticized, or to pester traditional reviewers.

If you are a self-publisher or contemplating this route, and you haven’t read Ron Charles’s recent piece No, I don’t want to read your self-published book, you should.  Charles, by the way, is the editor of The Washington Post’s Book World.  In it he refers to another piece you should read: An open letter to the self-published author feeling dissed penned by Roger Sutton the editor of a book review magazine.  Charles asked Sutton what inspired his open letter rant.  Evidently its genesis was in an email exchange with a self-published author who was feeling affronted by Sutton’s refusal to review self-published books.  When Sutton suggested to Charles that “…people are more interested in writing self-published books than in reading them…”[3] I thought, I could not agree more.  And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

[It is heartening to note, however, that Sutton’s derision of the self-published book has evolved over the past few years.  In his view, self-published children’s books today are still terrible; but he admits that “self-publishing for adults these days is demonstrating considerably greater skill and sense of audience than it used to, especially when it comes to niche topics and genre fiction.”[4]  Yay!]

The bottom line is that we should continue to write and even publish if we want to, keeping in mind that not all of our work contains as many bon mots as we think.  But we do need to stop feeling so maligned by the traditional reviewers and publishers: they are not the problem.  The plethora of unedited, poorly written self-published books is.

Of course there are many self-published authors who are probably as good as or even better than many taken on by traditional publishers. Sadly, it is more often the case that this is not true.  As a community of indie authors, what we really need to do is everything in our power to ensure the quality of our work.  Here are my suggestions:

  1. Write any kind of drivel that you want; publish only your best.
  2. Work diligently to improve you writing at every opportunity.
  3. Support other high-quality indie writers.
  4. Be honest when giving feedback or reviewing the self-published work of others.
  5. Stop feeling that the world of the indie writer is somehow in a war with traditional publishing.

What would you add to the list?

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/02/popular-on-amazon-wildly-misleading-self-published-books-about-ebola-by-random-people-without-medical-degrees/

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/02/popular-on-amazon-wildly-misleading-self-published-books-about-ebola-by-random-people-without-medical-degrees/

[3]http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/10/01/no-i-dont-want-to-read-your-self-published-book/

[4] http://www.hbook.com/2014/09/blogs/read-roger/open-letter-self-published-author-feeling-dissed/#_

Posted in Book publishers, Publishing, Self-Publishing

The hunt for a new publisher begins…again

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

And so it has started again: I’m on the hunt for yet another publisher. Why, oh why, can I not be like other writers?  Why can’t I just publish in one genre, find myself a good old publisher who actually publishes these books, and happily continue that relationship until death do us part?  Or why can I not simply throw up my hands as so many writers have done and turn my back, once and for all, on the legacy publishers in favor of going the self-publishing route from here on in?

There is no simple answer, but I’m committed to figuring it out – even if it doesn’t solve my current problem.

There are really quite a few reasons why I can’t commit to one publisher, or even one route to publication. As I wade through the mire of my own writing/publishing mess, perhaps sorting myself out might help others who have the same issues.

Why can’t I simply commit to traditional publishing? I’ve already journeyed down this route to the very end ten times.  Ten books submitted, re-submitted, re-worked, accepted, published.  TEN TIEMES!  Surely I have the issue of approaching and procuring a publisher licked.  But here’s the thing: If you’re not a best-selling author delivering books in the same genre time after time, it can be very difficult to maintain a relationship with a single publisher since they all have their own specialities, and they rarely publish outside their guidelines.  The lesson here, of course is, don’t even try to approach a publisher with a query about a book unless it falls clearly within their publishing mandate.

This is plainly illustrated by my own experience: although I’ve been through the traditional publishing route ten times, I’ve worked with eight different publishers. Yup, that’s right.  Eight new routes to navigate and even more than eight editors to develop relationships with since at one of the publishing houses, I went through three editors enroute to publishing ne book (editors do leave mid-project for greener pastures). The bottom line truth this time around is that this new book isn’t at all like any of my previous books.  I’m a hybrid author in more ways than one!

These days the term hybrid author seems to refer to those of us who publish both via the traditional route and the indie route depending on the project. It can also refer to people like me who write in a number of genres – fiction & non-fiction and different types with those broad categories.  So that makes the traditional route difficult and time-consuming.  So, why don’t I just self-publish?  Again.

I’ve gone down the self-publishing route three times at this point, but only for fiction, and this book is non-fiction – a combination of narrative and prescriptive. The conventional wisdom holds that it is easier to have non-fiction acquired by a traditional publisher than it is fiction.  My own experience would seem to bear that out, but my personal anecdotal evidence isn’t really enough to use as a basis for such a conclusion.  I suspect that I’m a more talented non-fiction writer than a fiction writer, although I’m working to change that!

If you knew how much work I’ve already done on the marketing for this as-yet-unpublished book you’d think that I was planning to publish independently. I’ve written marketing copy; I’ve had a cover designed; I’ve created an unpublished web site for it; I’ve even begun to develop a series of podcasts.  I’m also story-boarding a book trailer.  The truth is that you almost need to do this in advance of being taken on by a traditional publisher these days anyway.

I’m still a traditionalist at heart, believing in the value of the third-party advocacy provided by legacy publishers. I’m not willing, however, to spend another year searching for that publisher. I’m aghast at the notion of submission-rejection-submission etc. once again on the route to acceptance.  So, maybe my loyal blog readers could help me decide.

What should I do with the following book! (Let me know what you think – and ask your fellow writers what they think if you like.)

 

Who Will Read Your Book?

The Unknown Writer’s Guide to the Realities of Writing & Publishing

WWRYB CoverThere are lots of books about how to write a book. This isn’t one of them.  This book is about how to navigate the increasingly confusing world of twenty-first century book publishing.  Whether you are an academic with a dissertation you’d like to turn into a book, a mom with a memoir or a newbie with a novel, if you want to get it published there is probably a lot you don’t know about what you don’t know. Who Will Read Your Book? The Unknown Writer’s Guide to the Realities of Writing & Publishing starts with this seminal question then moves in to fill in the gaps.

Patricia Parsons knows a thing or two about the wild world of publishing. A communication professor with numerous professional books placed with traditional publishers, she is a closet fiction writer, has vanity published, self-published, sold a self-published book to a traditional publisher, and has scads of finished and half-finished manuscripts on her computer. 

A few of my past publisher adventures…