There has never been a better time to self-publish

I used to worry myself that traditional, including ‘mass’ publishers, and major chains of booksellers such as Waterstone’s weren’t sufficiently interested in the writings of relatively unknown and new authors, attempting to break into the mainstream of publishing and bookselling. However, over time I’ve realised that the ‘mass’ economy of the mainstream of ‘celebrity’ and ‘established’ authors is somewhat the victim of its own prioritising of sales over quality of writing. In other words, the mainstream, including the mass market is very much driven by what maximises profits for publishers and bookshops, rather than by the intrinsic merits of the content of the writing, which over decades I’ve become convinced is what motivates authors. And what better history could there be to inform this, with many if not most of our greatest living and dead authors in the UK beginning their writing careers by self-publishing? I’m sure we can all think of many examples.

So, rather than us beating ourselves as authors about our failure to break into this much vaunted mainstream of mass publishing, we should reframe our view of the entire publishing and bookselling industry and recognise that the internet and all the Print on Demand, ebook and self-publishing opportunities that it offers have offered us on a plate the means to empower ourselves and do things our way.

As a postscript, we can look at the way the success of various recently published ebooks that haven’t gone down the traditional routes to mainstream publishing have created waves among large, including global publishers. They’re started focusing on what is being self-published in the hope, presumably, of picking up the next cash-generator. If nothing else, this makes me smile. It’s such an ironic comment on their attitude to date, which basically has been looking down their noses. Now suddenly some of them have woken up and smelled the coffee. One mass publisher whose name I won’t mention is writing to authors on my US publisher’s list asking them to get in touch and provide inside information on various things. I, for one, won’t be giving anything away. In my case, this is bliss. It enables me to get on with my life as a writer rather than pretending I’m anything else as well.