Self Service

In the olden days things were simple. A writer wrote something that they though other people might be interested in reading and they sent it off to as many agents and publishers as they could thing of (or find listed in The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook). Then they sat back, bit their nails and waited for the rejection letters to pour in, which they inevitably did.

If they were very, very lucky someone would print their book and promote it, they would get a small advance and manage to pay their food and lodgings just long enough to see them through the writing of their next manuscript. And the cycle would start again.

These days things are different.

The best thing about the internet is that anyone can now see his or her work in print.
The worst thing about the internet is that anyone can now see his or her work in print.

It’s an oft-used cliché but it’s true. Everyone who feels that they have a book inside them can now log on to one of the many online publishers and make an e-book available for sale within minutes. With just a little more effort they can produce a proper paperback, or even a hardback – which puts them on a par with that Dickens fellow, doesn’t it?

Many would argue that self-publishing is basically worthless, that no author of any value would have to resort to self-publishing as the quality of their work will shine through the dross in the slush pile at a publishing house.

I’m not so sure. There’s some truth in that but surely luck and timing play their part? And won’t some writers always prefer to have full artistic control of their work? Self-publishing is certainly a way to keep that, but the price is that you then have to do all the promotion and publicity yourself as well.

And of course self-publishing is nothing new. It’s been going on since the Catholic Church got their buddy Johannes Gutenberg to knock up some bibles for them, a small vanity press project that brought printed material to (the) masses.

Way back when I was young and dinosaurs walked the earth I self-published my own magazine called ‘Cult Movies’. I was fourteen and didn’t know that there was any other way. I wrote it, printed it – after negotiating a bulk business rate on the photocopier at my local Post Office – and made it available to the masses via the small ads in the back of the NME and other youth-culture magazines of the day.

I learned about sales and what to do when you don’t have any. I learned how to meet deadlines and I learned how to self-promote. Truthfully I wasn’t much good at any of these things – ‘Cult Movies’ folded after just five issues – but the theory was sound.

I now have five self-published titles available and copies of them sell every single day. I can’t tell you how gratifying that is, that people who I don’t know are spending their hard-earned cash on something that I’ve created.

Now, if only it was as financially gratifying as the work of a guy called John Locke. He’s sold over a million copies of his self-published books.

Good luck to him. I think I need him to teach me the art of self-promotion.

© Shaun Finnie 2012