crowdfunding | Self-Publishing Poll

ysabetwordsmith pointed out this poll on self-publishing, which I visited briefly. After reading a handful of the comments, I was struck by their violence: there's a lot of emotion there in the people denouncing the practice of self-publishing.

ysabetwordsmith said about that: "Any instance of extreme hostility raises the question of why people are being so violent about it."

I think that's a good question. Why do you think some of the people opposed to self-publishing are so hostile about it?

Edit: Please note, I'm not really interested in debating the profitability of the publishing industry. What I'm trying to understand, primarily, is why there's so much vitriol leveled by writers and readers at self-published authors (as in one of the commenters who said of self-published authors that they can "call themselves authors" but they never will be real ones). This kind of extreme behavior strikes me a strange. Particular coming from writers to other writers. And readers—that makes no sense at all. If they don't want to read self-published work, they can just... not read it. Why the anger?

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One of the things I loved about running a magazine was that I could treat writers the way I wanted editors to treat me. I was pretty sure -- not positive -- that it would work.

It was enormously popular. Many of my regular writers were people I bought from on their second or third attempt, because I'd give targeting information to anyone who seemed "close" to publishable. I actively promoted the perk of having a pleasant work environment. I did have some writers tell me to bug off early in the game because I expected them to write clean copy, on time, on length, with proper footnotes if they were quoting facts. (Those are not widely required in Pagan periodicals.) But once I had time to build up a network of writers who knew me, it was great.

That's one of the things that has me quietly considering the idea of publishing, someday, if I ever have the money for it. I could once again make my little corner of the industry a nice place to work. Sure, some writers are whiny jerks, but there are plenty of personable professionals out there; I don't anticipate any trouble finding them if I need to again.

Precisely! It's sad when they forget that's part of the job. I have editor friends and publisher friends and writer friends and artist friends. It takes a team to make a great book, and the better the party in your office, the better the book is likely to be in the end. If you're not having fun, why in the world are you doing this? There are saner places to get rich.

Self-Publishing Poll

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