Publishing…good, effective publishing…has defined stages. Ignoring those stages can lead to career-stalling gaffes like:
Querying before the mms is polished, or even completed. Not researching agents and publishers before querying them. Querying publishers before agents. Not understanding that commercial publishing can have a backlog and/or schedule of years during the publication process.
That’s been the biggest problem I’ve seen with some overeager self-pub authors. They chose that route after realizing it would take at least four to six months before they could write off non-responding agents, and another year or two to query publishers one at a time. Without giving an agent or publisher’s slushpile a chance, they abandoned the process and jumped right into self-pub.
Sure, they got a novel on Kindle very quickly. Is it the best novel it could have been? In many cases, no. I’m seeing some authors who are taking down their early self-published work because it was so bad it was dragging down their later, better work. They’ve grown enough as artists they can now tell the difference.
Reputable literary agents and publishers still have many value-added benefits, which I (and a lot of other people) have talked about before. Good editing. Solid cover design. Effective marketing. Secondary rights management.
The brutal truth is that most unprepared self-published authors won’t be any kind of commercial success. They won’t approach the sales numbers of Hugh Howey, C.S. Pacat, or Andy Weir. Daydeaming won’t make it happen, but some very hard work, skill, and luck might help them carve out niches of their own.
I get all that. I know the responsible drill is: seek agent in your genre>seek commercial publisher in your genre>exhaust those opportunities in a reasonable time-frame>line up self-pub resources>self-pub>write next book. Doesn’t stop me from fidgeting about my own schedules, and planning the next steps along the way. I just have to remember to let those first stages run their due course.
I think a lot of writers look at their earlier works and cringe a little. If we’re doing it right, we grow as writers and what looked polished five years ago is shameful now. Method of publishing doesn’t change that.
As for hitting the self pub trigger too fast? There are many reasons for writers to ignore the responsible drill altogether. If they only write novella-sized stories. If they write in unpopular genres. If they’re sick of editors with their hashtags supporting diversity pick up book after book of the same ol same ol. (Yeah, that last one’s a bit personal!).
Yeah, at the risk of jinxing myself, I’m seeing a whole lot of diversity flagwaving and not as much corresponding *action*, especially in the mainstream commercial SFF field.
I know I’m not the best writer I can be, without some external editorial help. I also know I’m not a terrible writer…I’ve improved my skills compared to five years ago. But publishing is so subjective, and I can’t fault agents for being careful with their time and energy. If I don’t find a reputable agent who loves this silly book as much as I do, I’ll self-pub.
Oh, agents got mouths to feed too, so I don’t fault them. Too much. It’s just frustrating that we live in a world of insta everything, yet it takes two years for Random Penguin to bring a book to market.
Hmm. I can actually answer that, hopefully in a way that will make sense. Small publishers, even quality ones like Riptide or Dreamspinner, *can* push a book to market in a short amount of time. Big Five imprints can only do it if there is the potential of enormous and time-sensitive sales. Given RP’s huge numbers of books in the pipeline, plus all the behind the scenes commodity and task scheduling that has to happen, 12 to 18 months is entirely normal. And that’s in a normal timeframe. Another publisher I know and love was rocked by twin disasters recently (which I’m not going to share), and those appear to have set their already-slow slushpile and work schedules back by another six months to a year. It happens.
I used to work for a medium-sized art publisher, and our turnaround time for 150 – 200 new showroom ideas was about 4 to 6 months, and that was with a staff of 60 working our asses off. So imagine the shock in the early 2000’s when we realized the Chinese art companies were doing our bread-and-butter pieces better, faster, and cheaper than we were! In the space of two weeks we re-invented our art lines to something the Chinese competitors were not adapting so easily. Mandatory overtime happened, and some of us just brought sleeping bags and slept at work. AFAIK, the company is still chugging along after several more catastrophic reinventions, but I’ve been away for a decade.
Commercial art is just similar enough to commercial books that I can see the parallels in the sheer scale of effort. An informed, diligent self-publisher can be more nimble…but after that comes the vast desert of marketing and promo. That’s where the bigger, better commercial publishers can gain startling momentum.