Publishing Insights

What You Actually Have to Give Up to Self-Publish Your Book

Like many writers going through the college to MFA pipelines, I did not expect that I will be publishing myself.

You know what it is…the seemingly unserious, even one shall say shameful route of self-publishing is not something that one promotes in the hallowed hall of the MFA institutions. I should know since I went to one of the biggest programs in the country. #ColumbiaMFA lol

Again, I’m not saying that being traditionally published is not something one should aspire to. I hope that one day perhaps I will find myself at a path where that route is not only possible but aligned to my goals.

With my upcoming novel, The Napper, to be published by an imprint that I co-own with my husband, I am basically choosing to negate the not-so-small judgment and biases against self-publishing that is subtly inculcated in my “training” as a writer.

I should know that I was always going to head this way… One of my initial titles for my MFA thesis was called, pardon my French, “F*ck My MFA.” It started as a non-fiction piece about my essays as a writer trying to make sense of the world, while being a woman and in my twenties, while meeting people in non-academic setting like Miami or NYC. Perhaps one day I will publish that piece….

(Above: a picture of my husband’s jazz big band performance – a metaphor for my final point in the essay)

For now, the reason why I think I allowed myself to self-publish — basically to allow myself to have a tiny sliver of the cake that is publishing is due in part because of the changing landscape of our current literary world. For better or worse, one may argue.

So here are some of my ideas surrounding self-publishing and why the new digital economy/ world is priming small, indie writers to self-publish their works

  1. Cry Me a River but BookTok phenomenons ain’t going nowhere

I recently watched a Youtube Video by the creator According to Alina, who made many a video about why the BookTok phenomenon is creating a massive audience for books who succeed in the TikTok algorithms world.

Look no further than the Colleen Hoover phenomenon and why her success was exponentially increased thanks to her fans spreading their rave on the TikTok App.

Some folks, like Alina argued in her video, have been quick to go online to decry how such phenomenon of fans screaming their support for a “mainstream” book is “ruining literature.”

But is it?

We are in an age of the Golden Era of Television (or at the tail-end of it) and books are competing with more and more diverse forms of media such as Youtube, Hollywood movies, and yes even short-form video content on TikTok etc…

One may say either let yourself get eaten or be eaten.

What I’m getting at is this. Once again, much like how the digital world is affecting other industries with its ease and swiftness of people reviewing how much they adore a certain lipstick, the internet is also the ultimate judgment (so to speak) of a book and its popularity.

Perhaps it means a certain performativeness of reading, even reading for aesthetics, but it also means that small writers, like Colleen once upon a time, get a chance to be read by millions before she needs the big fat machinery of Big Publishing to approve of her.

That, I say, is a great thing. Small writers deserve to win too. In my humble opinions…

  1. The theory of 1000 Fans

According to Kevin Kelly’s essay, “Thousand True Fans,” in this new economy as a creator/ writer/any sort of creative, one only needs to reach 1000 fans to succeed.

In a similar fashion, perhaps your (my) writing is not deemed profitably marketable enough for Big Publishing. But if I have an audience for my writing, even if not say provable by Big Publishing analytics, I will still succeed.

The trick is still of course, to find those one thousand readers who will support your writing. Which at the cusp of my debut book coming out, actually seems a super duper big number LOL.

Is it bad to set a goal of selling 50 books for my debut work? The skeptical/pessimistic in me is hoping to shoot for a low number so that I won’t cry myself to sleep… LOL

  1. An Artist Doesn’t Care Who “Gets” It – and You Are An Artist, Too

One of the funny things that happens when an artist marries another artist (like yours truly) is that your exposure to artists compound by the hundreds.

My husband, also a writer but who works as a jazz bandleader, has exposed me to so many talented jazz musicians who, if you are familiar with the jazz world, succeed first and foremost by the quality of their musical capabilities, yes — but also succeed due to their improvisations, their abilities to sing a song ten thousands different ways, and also to do it their way.

As a writer traditionally educated myself, I was trained, whether intentionally or not, to perceive writing as a black and white thing. Either you’re good or you’re not. Either you suck or you don’t. And if I’m not lying, a part of me still believes that (LOL thanks super critical and judgmental internal voice).

But the truth is if you’re an artist — and writers are artists too — in theory, you don’t, shouldn’t really care what other people “think.”

I say that knowing full well that there is a paradigm involved in which even when one is an artist or writer, we should still do the bare minimum of making sure our work is up to a certain standard (say avoid typos or grammar errors or formatting mistakes of our book). Also there is also a theory that in this economy, not everyone can risk not pleasing what the public thinks if they aim to feed themselves as a writer.

I get that. But next time as a writer you feel like you’re the worst of the worst kind of writers (and I have a feeling you’re not – if you’re reading this), just go watch LIVE jazz, and see the soul of the music as a metaphor for your writing.

You get to self-publish, you get to publish, you get to WRITE what you think and believe in this planet. Your life is too goddamn short for anything else.

Or if you’re like me, you HAVE to self-publish to show your little ol’ self that you too deserve space and a piece of this world.

So for TLDR: You have to give up the part of you that loves the validation of external metrics, of publishing folks screaming your book’s accolades or of well-meaning “industry” professionals or mentors dolling yourself up.

You have to be your goddamn mentor and supporter first and foremost is what I’m trying to say….

In conclusion, I wanted to say, for all you small indie writers out there, whether you’re form is Substack or jazz or the self-published book form, I SEE YOU.

You got this.

May we all find our 1000 fans, somehow, somewhere in the ether of the Internet…and in the circle of our friends and family who dare to support us.

Footnotes

Images sourced from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/the-drum/2022-01-13/booktok-creators-and-popular-books/100743006

Youtuber Mentioned: According to Alina

One Thousand True Fans Theory


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