Self-Publishing Poll

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

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?

Comments

[pensandquills.livejournal.com]

I want to comment so as to address several of the issues brought up in this post and the comments made by others.

Self-published doesn't always denote bad writing. I read plenty of major publisher produced bad fiction as well. I think that this is largely a matter of opinion on the part of those who make the decisions. What is good to someone isn't to someone else. It is all subjective.

Keep in mind that there are also plenty of vanity presses out there posing as legitimate ones. For those among us getting started in the industry and who are naive, it is easy to fall into their traps. (I know I did.)

Editing is the hardest part of the writing process for me personally. I would rather not edit my own work simply because I know I'll miss something. But I've heard from many published authors who tell me that even in the mainstream channels, authors are expected to provide their own editorial services now days. *shrugs*

The internet is definitely revolutionizing the industry. We have access to more resources than ever before and if you ask me the traditional industry side of it all simply isn't keeping up.

Let's not forget that anything truly original will never get published. This is mainly due to it being a business and about making money more so than about art, expression, and social commentary through story-telling. If it doesn't fit into a nice neat little genre shell or cookie cutter, they don't want to take a chance on it.

The whole thing is a catch 22 for newcomers. I'd much rather retain control over my work and do it on my own after seeing how the industry works now days. This is not to say that I'll pass on a major book deal, but still.

[tonithegreat.livejournal.com]

Deleted my reply to you, because I meant it as a reply to the original post.