Self-publishing for the modern lover
All of Hollywood's secrets revealed!
It has never been easier to publish your own book. Even compared to a few years ago - people are using Large Language Models to write whole books and about things they know very little. They have likely never even read their own books, and those books likely will never be read by anyone else. But you can lay it out and get AI cover art and print it and bind it and sell it for not much effort. Imagine trying to explain that to some monk who just spent his entire life producing a single illuminated bible. Sorry, churchy!
But let’s talk about human publishing.
Traditionally, most publishers are incentivized to publish your work if they believe it will be purchased by enough people to make a profit (for themselves). A writer might be working on their craft just to simply make as much money as possible, but if that’s the case it seems like there are MUCH easier hustles they could be pursuing, including just asking a computer to write their book for them.
I imagine most writers’1 primary goal for putting their writing into public view is to find readers who respond to their work - with making money off of that work being at least as important, maybe even less important. I think it is rarely more important to writers that they make a profit than they find an audience.
The basic mythos of publishing, then, is:
Writer want reader
Publisher want money
Writer want money
Publisher find reader
Money!
Of course, there are all kinds of “profit” associated with being an artist, and economic profit is only one of them…2
You know what, I don’t know. I don’t know why you do the things you do. I’ll just talk about myself.
When I started out in the world of slam poetry (ca. 2002)3, making little chapbooks was fun and a normal way to circulate your work to the people you would meet, either on tour, or with the folks who came out or were touring your local shows. You’d charge $5 but also trade with other poets, or give it to someone you were sweet on. You would do your own cover art or ask your brother Dan to do it, and then lay it out in MS Word or Works. I still remember feeling like a whiz kid hacker when I came across a downloadable plug-in that allowed you to print the pages in booklet order, so you didn’t have to try and figure out how to print page 1 on the right side of the paper, and page 30 on the left. Then flip the already printed pages, put them upside down and facing the right way in the printer tray and make sure on the back of the first page you have page 29 on the right side and page 2 on the left. Now that printing option comes standard in word processing programs.
It was also great back then if you worked somewhere you could exploit the photocopier when no one was around so you could print your chapbooks for “free.” Then you just had to go into your local Kinko’s and use their long stapler to bind them and they didn’t even charge you for the staples - the fools. Maybe that’s why FedEx bought them out.
(I have no idea what the current trend in self-published chapbook culture is, although you can buy my latest not-self-published one here4!)
I do know that, then as now, telling certain people you self-published something feels like telling those same people you went to a state school. Even if they don’t do it on purpose, you can sense them recalibrating their expectations for the conversation and maybe even looking for an escape route to someone cooler. Is this unfair to them? No! They’re hypothetical and have no feelings, those rotten judgmental pricks.
All that to say, there is a debate in me that I assume others grapple with as well: whether to cultivate your audience purely grass roots-style, being the sole source of your work (possibly trying to go viral), or to seek sundry publishers to help edit, package, market, and distribute your work.
The self-publishing route has some pitfalls for me.
You are responsible for your own Quality Assurance. You have to make sure your shit is edited and clear and pretty: it must be true to your aesthetic intent. Having someone else whose job it is to do those things can be super nice. When it is just you running the show, it is more likely you will make simple errors or not sound how you think you sound.
You have to be your own marketing and communications department. If you are trying to grow your audience, it can be super exhausting to constantly look at your personal network and figure out how you can make people buy AND read your work. Some are much better at this than others (arguably some are better at this than they are at making compelling content - art and marketing are totally different skillsets).
You are limited by your own reach and imagination and energy. Just because you are connected to people, even a lot of people, on social media doesn’t mean you automatically have “fans.” They will not instantly buy something you make, even if you keep asking and they really like you (they might like you less and less the more you ask). Having someone else do the asking, and to people you don’t have to see at the office every day, can help take the strain off of using your own connections for support. Influencer culture can be exhausting to watch.
You might not be what Hollywood is looking for. Everyone can and should write creatively, but that doesn’t mean anyone else is guaranteed to LIKE what you make, no matter how much you liked making it. This haunts me! I wrote a poem once about the idea of finding your own “voice” in writing as a general thing you are encouraged to do, but what happens when you find your writerly voice, and nobody wants to hear it? Only sociopaths would not be at least a little bothered by that. In fact…
You might feel all kinds of ways. Am I a megalomaniac for thinking anyone would want to read what I write? Am I a dummy because it’s impossible for me to not always totally split my infinitives? Maybe those people who shrunk away from me when I mentioned going to Illinois State were right: I am invalid! Don’t tell me I have imposter syndrome - that implies that I actually do have valuable things to say. My writing is an extension of my very soul and people won’t even pay $5 for a piece of my soul. I’m a turd.
But as you know, you are not a turd. All of those pitfalls are not magically fixed by finding a publisher, unfortunately: 1) Other people being in charge of QA for your work doesn’t guarantee that they are good at that. 2) Same for marketing. 3) There’s nothing inherently wrong with making work and distributing it at the capacity you have to give. 4) As Idris Goodwin says, “I’m not doing this for love, my mama loves me.” 5) The fun thing about insecurity is that you can bring it with you to any level of personal and professional life.
I think whether you want to publish your own work or you want to convince someone else to, unless you have a community you show up for when they need it, then you will be less likely to have folks show up for you. Friends can help with reading your work and sharing it out and giving it thought and care. Whether I am published by myself or by someone else, I think that the only way it can be fulfilling is if there are other people’s ideas and feelings and truths as unnamed coauthors. I think if I invest in my people with my attention and empathy and actions, then the work, in whatever venue, will take care of itself. That’s what I’m betting on anyway.
I suppose a distinction is important here. I am talking about writers of lit (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, drama), and not so much writers of ad copy or journalism or technical writing. There can be an artfulness to all kinds of writing - even AI productions. But artfulness is not art. imo. And I’m sure there are lit authors whose primary goal is making money, but probably they are either short-lived as authors, or have some other form of sponsorship to supplement their income (trust fund, bread-winning spouse, being a mediocre white guy).
“Rule of Acquisition #22: A wise man can hear cultural capital in the wind.” from The Rules of Acquisition by Grand Nagus Pierre Bourdieu.
You can see my very good dance moves at the National Poetry Slam in 2003 here:
From Bottlecap Press, who I found via Instagram ad.