I had a long conversation recently about self-publishing and how readers perceive it. I personally occupy a weird space: I am a blogger, reader, reviewer, published author, and with every month that I run this site, I learn more about publishing than I knew when the site began over 5 years ago. I interact differently with self-published books than most romance readers. Most of the time, they are pitched to me for review.
Case in point, this book, which is on sale now at Fictionwise: Touched By an Angel by James Trivers. Mr. Trivers emailed me with the blurb to his book to request a review. I explained that I didn’t have any room on my to-be-reviewed schedule, but that I wanted to reproduce his blurb here, and he agreed:
I find there is greater freedom into what you want to write with online fiction. You can go to darker places. I have a new ebook called “Touched By A Charlie’s Angel.” A bisexual hack writer sells a script to Charlie’s Angels and is invited to snort cocaine with Robin Doe, the newest angel, when the two-person party is crashed by a star-struck lesbian cop. To avoid being busted-they kill the cop, mince and dice the corpse and make it mulch for the actresses garden. The writer flees LA for the Mojave where he hides out from the law as a born-again Christian. Two years later, Robin Doe, emerges from rehab and after given a governor’s pardon (she is a celebrity who, after all, is friends with Jerry Brown) decides to do her Ninth Step with Barbara Walters on nationwide television. Upon doing so blows our hero’s cover. What he does to save himself-you have to read it to find out.
Say it with me now: 0_o?
I honestly read that paragraph three times to make sure I didn’t miss a plot point. “Darker places” doesn’t begin to cover it. Holy holy holy. Faster than you can say “star-struck lesbian cops” my perception of self publication changes.
But thinking about this pitch, and the many-layed cake of WTFery going on in there, made me think about the conversation I’d had about self-publishing, and how readers perceive it.
My perspective is someone skewed because I find out about most self-pub books either because they are pitched to me for review, or because an author has written online about going for self-publication instead of accepting a publishing contract. I have never to my knowledge stumbled upon a self-published book in a store, or encountered one outside of the confines on my inbox or my Google Reader. And I’m really curious about how you, a reader of Romance (the very best genre in the entire world! Without hyperbole! Of any kind! With or without star-struck lesbian cops!) encounter self-published books and what you think of them.
There is so much discussion about self-pubbing, from publisher standpoints, from author standpoints, from financial standpoints, and yet, while I read stories in online news articles about the mythological author who sold books out of the trunk of her car then got a six figure publishing deal, I’ve never actually seen said author, or the trunk of her car (and if it looks like mine, those books had to share space with a stroller, a few bottles of apple juice, and some spare wet wipes). Authors who ponder self-publication, digitally or in print, are facing a lot more competition from other books, both from publishing houses and from other self-publishing authors. I’m therefore really curious: how do you, as a reader of books, view self-published books, and what do you think of those you’ve seen – if you’ve seen any?
So: I have created… A SURVEY. Oh, I can hear the excitement from here. Try to contain yourself. I’m really curious how you as a reader of romance have encountered a self-published book – if you have – and what you thought. I’d so appreciate your input. As usual, my surveys are entirely amateur (I let the survey program do the math for me) and utterly unscientific. My science is tight, but that’s about it.
Please let me know your point of view, or share in the comments what you think. And if you are a star-struck lesbian cop, please, PLEASE leave a comment. OMG. PLEASE.
ETA: I have to take the survey offline to compile the results – but please feel free to continue to discuss in the comments!
I recently published Dating My Vibrator (and other true fiction, a collection of nine short stories on Kindle. I chose to self-publish in this venue because it offers me great freedom as a writer, and I’m proud to be part of the Indie writing movement. If you’ve ever been divorced, desperate, or if you’re dating, you may enjoy these stories. Please judge the quality of my writing for yourself.
Here’s the opening of my story, Dharma Dan:
I remove my glasses, so I can really see him. Could be handsome if he’d smile. His face is soft, a little bland. Indefinite.
“So, you’re a Buddhist?”
“Yeah.” He looks around distractedly.
Friday, and the place is packed. Dim lighting and alcohol mask the lines that creep across my forehead, enhance the lines designed to lure me into bed. I spot another guy I met on Match. The accountant. About a month ago, we went out for coffee. Dutch. He’s wearing a black tee-shirt; I can’t see the logo but I suspect it says Harley-Davidson. Our conversation consisted of a blow-by-blow description of rebuilding his motorcycle. I don’t mind a guy who’s passionate about transmissions, but our date ended abruptly when he asked if I’d be into group sex.
Not if the group includes you.
Didn’t say that, but I thought it. Truthfully, the idea of getting naked with one person is frightening enough. A middle-aged group-grope holds as much appeal as a colonoscopy. In fact, a colonoscopy might be more pleasurable; they use good drugs to knock you out.
I focus on my current date. The Buddhist thing intrigues me—I want a guy who’s conscious.
“These are good.” He drains his glass and motions to the waitress. “Another Appletini.”
I didn’t know Buddhists were so into alcohol.
The waitress glances at my drink, tonic with a hint of gin—the Happy Hour special. I’ve barely touched it. Alcohol makes me forget things, like promises I make. For example: no jumping into bed on a first date. I’m not taking any chances.
“A glass of water, please.”
Thanks for reading.
Suzanne
At no point did Sarah say that Trivers’ book was self-published. She just used the the whatthefuckery of the summary to segue into a discussion about how people reject self-published books allegedly because of their over the top plots.
So she’s neither dumb, nor devious, but you’re just rude – and a really poor advertisement for your company.
That is basically her saying “People pitch me self-pubbed books to review. Here is one.”
That is not a segue, that is a statement. She said it was self-published.
My devious comment was a compliment, actually. If she set up the whole thing so she could come back at a later date and show people how their base opinions about self-publishing could be easily manipulated, that would be something I could respect.
If, on the other hand, she claimed a book was self-published when it wasn’t, and didn’t bother to check her facts, then that is dumb.
And my saying such a thing is dumb is not rude, it’s honest. I haven’t called her dumb… I’ve wondered if she is, or not. As I said, she might be devious. So I don’t think I was rude.
As to advertising my company, I’m a self-publisher so 98% of the people who’ve commented here were never going to buy my book anyway.
Not in so many words, but yes, there is room for confusion – which could have been created in the back and forth with the author over whether to publish the summary. The summary is still on crack.
Well, as another self-pubbed author, thanks so much for adhering to the stereotype of us all being obnoxious self-promoters. I really need another self-pubbed author behaving aggressively towards a blog reviewer like I need another arsehole.
Dude, let Trivers fight his own damn battles – unless you have some personal interest in the matter? In which case, declate it.
Obnoxious: fine, maybe. I see it as blunt and honest, but there are people I view as obnoxious who have told me they view it as blunt and honest, too. So perhaps being obnoxious is a sliding scale, and our opinions are at different levels.
I stand by my comment that my comments were not offensive. Perhaps they were. Should I apologise? Maybe. Will I? No. Because Sarah has just used a traditionally published book to paint a negative picture of self-publishing. Will she apologise for that?
To be honest, I doubt she’ll acknowledge it.
Travers waited a long time after this post was dead to make his comment. I’m not fighting his battle, his battle is a different one to mine.
In all the comments above you will see things like “Star struck lesbians. I am never buying a self-pubbed book.” At any point Sarah could have dropped back to say “By the way, I used this book as an example. It was traditionally published.”
She didn’t.
I am sorry if you see my comment as hindering your chances of getting reviewed. Personally, I see someone who is dishonest (she didn’t lie, but she wasn’t honest) and generates this much undeserved negativity towards self-publishing as hurting all of us.
That is my personal beef with it.
She could have found an awesome self-pubbed book and segued into a self-publishing conversation.
I recently started reading and reviewing free fiction on Smashwords. I’ve read 4, reviewed 1 (so far). One was not my thing. One was really good, one was good but needed a little editing. One was so bad I nearly stopped reviewing them altogether.
There are good books out there.
As to self-promoting, you mentioned my business before I did. I’m on a post that has been dead for a while, on a blog that’s about as far from my genre as you can get, where, as I said, most of the readers have sworn off self-publishing, and I haven’t mentioned the name of my book, the fact that it’s getting released this month, or, you know, did anything self-promoting of any kind…
We agree on one point, though, that summary was on crack. And a lot of self-pubbed books have bad summaries, too, they are hard to write.
And that’s all I’m saying, I’m not coming back, Ann. I’ve said my points, and you’re kinda right that it’s not my battle.
Hold the phones: the book that started this whole discussion was traditionally published??? If so, that’s pretty disingenuous of Sarah. I really didn’t think she’d stoop that low, so I went back and re-read the original post to see if I’d somehow misinterpreted what she said. I read it three times to be certain, and unless I’m completely blind and/or stupid, the original post is quite unambiguous in its representation of James Trivers’ book as self-published.
That being said, I did go on to investigate Club Lighthouse Publishing, and well. *cough* Let’s just say that it may technically qualify as small press e-book publishing (definitely not “traditional” publishing as I understand the term) but if the website is anything to go by, I won’t be submitting anything there anytime soon.
This of course does not excuse Sarah from her (as far as I can tell) misrepresentation of James Trivers’ book as self-published.
Maybe she simply didn’t know? I respect Sarah and SMTB a great deal, so I’m trying to give the benefit of the doubt until we hear back from her.
Far too many indie writers don’t bother with basics like grammar and the spell checker. Can you blame readers for being gun shy?
Will I buy an indie-pub book? No. I’ve a backlog of pro books to read first and am on two budgets: limited time and money.
Will I read one handed to me for free? Only the first page, and only if I wholly fail to discourage the writer from handing it to me. “Oh, no, you need to get your overhead costs back / I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the time!”
Take that as code that I’m not interested and attempting to be polite so the writer may save face.
Yes, we’ve ALL heard that one.
What we don’t hear often enough was that Paolini spent 2 years running around in a funny costume selling the books by hand. No one gave a tinker’s d—- for the book his parents printed for him through their company.
He was at the point of throwing in the towel. Sales sucked.
THAT’S what tripped things for the indie writer—sale to a professional publisher, not selling out the trunk of the car, wearing a funny costume, or having parents who own a printing company. Otherwise we’d have never heard of him.
If I thought any of THAT would put me on the NYTimes bestseller list I’d leap on it like a spider monkey.
Am I self-publishing? Yes.
I’ve done so from my website. The book was a runaway bestseller in indie terms, (500 copies sold). It tanked in commercial publishing terms, but what the heck, I turned a small profit, and the readers seemed to like it.
It was professionally edited, proofed, and obsessively polished before it went to the printer. I put a reasonable price on it, and posted a hefty excerpt on the website.
We can hope that more indie writers would do the same. Just a thought.