Boom in Self-Publshing

Once again, the topic of self-publishing has made headlines, this time in both Time magazine and last week's New York Times. It seems that while traditional publishers are laying off employees by the score and narrowing their acquisitions to those penned by well-known figures, self-publishing is experiencing a mini-boom.

On one level, this news is hardly a revelation. It stands to reason that writers who are desperate to publish their books will resort to self-publishing as the entry to traditional publishing becomes more and more restricted. In addition, when print-on-demand options bring the price down, there really is no reason why they can't take matters into their own hands.

Which is what many of them have done with varying degrees of success. Of course, the success stories, like Lisa Genova's self-published novel, Still Alice, for which Simon & Shuster recently acquired the rights, are center stage and no one talks about the limited success of the majority of self-published works.

"For every thousand titles that get self-published, maybe there's two that should have been published," notes Cathy Langer, lead buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstores in Denver who says she is constantly besieged by requests from self-published authors to sell their books. "People think that just because they have written about something, there's a market for it. It's not true."

And no one talks about the added expenses of doing self-publishing right--which involves the author hiring an editor and book designer to make it look like the "real" thing.

Actually what probably bothers me the most about the self-publishing hype is that in some ways in feels like another hoop for the unknown author to jump through. It would be horrible to think that in some ways success in the self-publishing world becomes a prerequisite for success in the traditional publishing world.

Even worse is that this concept somehow lets the big guns off the hook. "Try self publishing," you can hear the sales and marketing team at Random House telling would-be authors. "And if it sells, we'll take another look."

As I have said before, I truly believe there is value to self-publishing if the book you are writing is for a limited audience, say a family history or commemorative tome. But if you are trying to reach a larger audience, the work and expense, may not be worth it.